There is much “higher“ evidence that carries the cards back to the Atlanteans and the master teachers who were appointed to save a remnant of the race. While there may be few among us today who can claim equal rank with the most spiritually minded of them, we may at least give thanks for the revelation of as much of the teaching as we are able to grasp.
As the devil can always “cite scripture for his purpose“, so may we all, through ignorance or carelessness, distort and misinterpret the most sacred symbols and the most priceless of teachings. We may do no harm to ourselves— and surely none to the “little book“— by using it as an innocent pastime, but we are missing something valuable and important if we regard it only as a pack of cards.
An outgrowth of the familiar 52 cards is the tarot— a collection of 22 major cards or “trumps“, setting forth, on the tree of life, the Kabbalistic teachings concerning the One Source of all created things and the universal laws that govern them.
The true origin of the tarot cards is not known; many so-called authorities differ widely among themselves. It is universally conceded, however, that the teaching was given to the wise man of old, divinely appointed as leaders and guides for the seekers of the “path of return“ and that the symbolic statements in the tarot were invented by them.
Of one small group, formed in the early part of the 13th century, we have record; of others who may have ante-dated them by hundreds of years, nothing has been written. The purpose behind the teaching was to find a prevention and cure for the one great tragedy that accounts for all the ills of mankind in the world he has lived in from the beginning of time—what the occultist calls “the crime of separation“. We well know that the great departure from the divine source of being followed swift on the heels of the Commandments given through the voice of Moses and of the laws set forth in the Pentateuch. We are dangerously far from that source today. The tarot and the “little book“ are given us as way-showers...
As the tarot sets forth the pattern of the universe and the immutable laws that govern it, man is, of necessity, included in that pattern and affected by those laws. But within that larger field he has an individualized pattern, determined and condition by numbers, elements and the “seven thunders“ which surrounded him at birth. It is the little book that gives him a clue and a further extension and clarification and astrological and numerological maps, strictly calculated according to the elements, attitudes, emotions and reactions to all others— and, most emphatically, to himself.
About 120 years ago a few members of a secret order were instructed to give out some of the knowledge of these sacred symbols. This is in part recorded in the “Mystic Test Book” by brother Olney H. Richmond, first published in 1893, under the authority of the brotherhood.
May the cards serve to clarify for you the plan of life, to reveal to you a rightful place in the Universal Scheme and to enable you to understand and harmonize relationships with fellow man. ♥️