Translator’s Introduction
One of the most obscure and curious exegeses of the Tarot, surpassing even the lucubrations of Court de Gébelin’s Monde Primitif, must be the work of the Belgian artist Louis Delbeke (1821-1891). Delbeke’s extensive and incomplete work must rank among the oddest interpretations undertaken concerning the significance of the Tarot cards so far, and yet it also ranks among the least known. This is due no doubt to the very limited circulation of the self-published tomes and the lack of publicity at the time.
A chapter is devoted to Delbeke’s life and work in L’Art Flamand [Flemish Art], by Jules Du Jardin, 1898.
Portrait of Louis Delbeke
“Louis Delbeke made it clear that his seeker’s spirit had been struck by the sublime intelligence of esotericism and that he meant to devote his life to the study of the occult science in which he had the firm conviction, he would discover the seeds of the supreme art!”
His works are described as ” hermeneutic books, sprinkled with schematic drawings, of an abstract ideology, exegeses unfortunately difficult to read for the writer was not possessed of the genius of the French language.” (p. 117)
Delbeke’s influences, according to his biographer, included Éliphas Lévi, Fabre d’Olivet, and Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (ibid.). Delbeke’s symbolic language is composed largely of Biblical scenes, Masonic imagery and depictions of the Greco-Roman pantheon. Certain allusions to astrology, alchemy and various other religious traditions can equally be seen.
A comprehensive review of the work, indeed, the only one, taken from the catalogue of the Librairie Nourry, reads as follows:
L’Harmonie Universelle, by the learned initiate Louis Delbeke, is a work of high occultism which was never commercially released and was reserved for a mysterious association of mages. The master explains the Universal and Omniversal Harmony by means of the keys of hermeticism (alchemy), the Kabbalah, astrology, magic, the astral light, numbers, the Apocalypse, and the Tarot. Never before has such a complete concordance between the abstract and the concrete, the invisible and the visible, been established; and so, the reader will find, within these somewhat forbidding but transcendent pages, the revelation of the hieroglyphs of the great book of nature. The language of the birds, which one must understand symbolically, enlightens the great religious and political mysteries for, says the author, the hermetic philosopher has hidden therein the genius of the Egyptian arcana and knowledge of the absolute. The part devoted to the various nations in their relations with the laws of number, the planets and the zodiac, is particularly suggestive and the events have justified Delbeke’s predictions. Finally, the different religions, notably those of Egypt and of India, are more particularly considered according to the arcana of the Tarot. The economy of this remarkable work hinges from one end to the other on the two messianisms: the Christ of light and the Christ of darkness. For the author, Christ corresponds to the second phase of the Tarot, he lets flow the waters of justice which have their origin in Agni, Vishnu, etc; but he announces a new Moses who, addressing himself to the intelligences, will bring back the reign of the spirit into the world. One must also note the mission of Saint John in the foundation of Freemasonry and the secret societies. But we must refrain from an analysis of this powerful book. A more in-depth study would lie largely beyond the scope of a brochure. This work, undertaken with the help of a sponsor, was interrupted by his death. It remains unfinished, but such as it is, it deserves a place of choice in the libraries of occultism.
By way of introduction to the multi-faceted thought of this little-known Belgian artist, we present some excerpts from his work.
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Universal and Omniversal Harmony
Louis Delbeke
The hermetic art as science is the interpreter of the Olympian gods as well as the earthly powers. By Olympian gods we mean the intellectual powers of the flourishing world, or the learned Oriental element, which preceded the reign of philosophical science, the preserve of the Egyptians. This Oriental science, finally summarised in Zoroaster, was elaborated in the tree of life; a tree laden with apples, and hidden within the bosom of the mysterious garden known as the Garden of the Hesperides. The golden apples are akin to the Tarot: it is an assembly of enigmatic portraits of which our deck of cards gives a fairly vague idea. This assembly of living portraits encloses the entire secret game of the universal harmony.
– Harmonie universelle: quelques notions sur l’absolu en science et en art ou la loi du vrai et du beau, 1861, p. 13.
The Tarot, a series of emblematic images, depicts by means of a certain number of tableaux, the phases which a regularly organised society must undergo before reaching its fulfilment. This Tarot, image of the Great Work, encloses moreover allegorical and emblematic images which constitute the representation of the phases which the must work must undergo, in the form of the four suits or typical formulae, the powers which, akin to satellites, come to help the accomplishment of the goal; they are the active limbs of the game, the arms which push the wheel or the Great Work, until its complete accomplishment.
These same arms, we possess them in our decks of cards; they are distinguished by colour as by form. The suit of hearts was distinguished in the occult science under the denomination of cups, or composed or parabolic lines. Our diamonds were called staffs, or straight lines or right angles. The spades were flaming swords or spirals, or tendrils. The clubs in the [occult] science were called wheels, circles, coins or dragons.
Each of these active forces, called to push the social wheel, belongs, according to its nature, to one of the four agglomerations of islands surrounding Europe. The cups belong to the Italian islands: this is the preserve of the priest and that of the poet; the staffs, or straight lines or right angles, belong to the islands of Greece: this is the preserve of the prince and that of the shepherd; the sword or flaming line belongs to the British isles; this is the preserve of the judge and of the warrior; the circle or coin, the so-called clubs, belong to the islands of the north: this is the preserve of the merchant and of the historiographer-geologist.
(vol. 2 pp. 75-76)
As above, so below, may be interpreted as follows: the Tarot is akin to the Zohar, the face of the Devil is akin to the face of God; the one is dark and palpable, the other is white and abstract, both have the same origin, emanating from the edenic science, each rendering in its own way the various phases of the Great Work of universal creation. In effect, the Tarot, regardless of the transformation of its figures, by the depth of its thought which governs the pictures which form the three receptacles, depicts the universal creation in every respect with that fidelity and that accuracy which are the preserve of all that is absolute in matter of living science, and that is why, next to God or light, a shadow will appear to affirm the radiance of the light and the complete the whole, in the same way, the Tarot will remain akin to a witness of the Zohar and of all the edenic science which is the luminous principal of all knowledge and of all truth, with respect to the succession of things in the domain of creation and the spiritualisation of the world.
(vol. 3 , pp. 4-5)
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Traditional Tarot 