On the Mithraic Origins of the Tarot
Esmé Wynne-Tyson
Introduction
The Tarot, to use a French expression, has been put in every sauce; almost no occasion to find the alleged missing origins of this deck of cards has been missed; ancient Egypt, Kabbalah, Pythagoreanism, Islamic mysticism, Gnosticism, Renaissance hermeticism, practically every one of the mysteries of East and West has been invoked at some point or other to justify the origins of this deck of cards and its symbolism.
Speculative and as adventurous as these claims may be, one ancient mystery school is conspicuous by its absence at the roll-call of tarological lucubrations: Mithraism.
One writer, Esmé Wynne-Tyson (1898-1972), proposed this theory in her book Mithras, the Fellow in the Cap (1958), and with one exception, it has not gained any acceptance or credence. Wynne-Tyson is perhaps best remembered as a friend and collaborator of the English playwright and performer Noël Coward. She also penned a number of philosophical works, such as this examination of the mysteries of Mithras.
It is worth noting that Wynne-Tyson became a Christian Scientist in later life, albeit remained heavily influenced by Hinduism and ancient Greek Neo-platonic philosophers such as Porphyry. Equally, Mithraic studies have come a long way in the decades since the publication of her book. One will bear these points in mind while reading the following excerpt, a passage from Chapter 8, Mithras’ Other Hiding Places (pp. 187-191).
Mithras and the Bull. Courtesy of the British Museum
Wynne-Tyson, however, errs in conflating the symbolic slaying of the bull in Mithraism – the Tauroctony – with the gory sacrifice of the Taurobolium of the Mysteries of Cybele, the Magna Mater or Great Mother. One will note her incidental aversion to religions practising animal sacrifice, due no doubt to her militant vegetarianism.
Contrary to what Wynne-Tyson states, C. W. King does not appear to have mentioned the Tarot cards in connection with the Templars, at least, not in his chief work The Gnostics and their Remains (1887); the connection rather being the tenuous one between the Templars and Freemasonry instead.
As mentioned above, this theory is not well-known, and only one author has proposed it in recent years, though apparently without knowledge of Wynne-Tyson’s work since it is not listed in the bibliography, Stephen Flowers‘ Magian Tarok (2015), largely based on the work of Sigurd Agrell (1881-1937).
Further discussion lies beyond the scope of these introductory remarks, and so we leave the reader to consider the following passage as a documentary contribution towards the historiography of the Tarot.
For further information and images on the cult of Mithras, one may consult the excellent website The Roman Cult of Mithras.
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Undoubtedly one of the means used to preserve the Mithraic Mysteries was the incorporation of a number of their symbolical figures in that curious set of playing cards known as the Tarot, the origin of which has always been a subject of debate.
In Eliphas Lévi’s book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, we read that in the dark ages when the wise men, or wizards, were persecuted and their secrets threatened with extinction, they decided to have the sacred, magical signs depicted in a pack of playing cards since no one would think of looking in such a place for Divine Wisdom; and vice, in the form of gambling, which perpetuates itself from age to age, would ensure that the cards and their signs were never lost to humanity since they would be kept in continual use. Many of the symbols on these cards are today clearly recognizable as being of Mithraic origin. Among them we find the Crown, the Emperor and Empress, the Pope or Father of fathers, the chariot of Hermes which is Mithras in his Sun chariot, the Judgement, the Hierophant, the Baphomet, or Head of the Goat of Mendes, the Burning Star and Eternal Youth (Mithras having always been alluded to as the brightest orb in the firmament, and represented as being eternally young), the Radiant Sun which is the Sun-God or Prince of Heaven himself, the Fool who is also the Juggler, wearing the cap that identifies him with Augustine’s “Fellow”, and finally, the Pentacle, the Mithraic symbol which ensures the soul free passage in its ascent to the Supernal Light. The prayer which is said to be offered with it almost certainly refers to Mithras whose number has always been seven since we first hear of him as the Seventh Amshaspand:
O first and seventh one, born to rule with power, Chief Word of the Pure Intelligence! Perfect work in the sight of the Father and the Son (Timeless Being and Ormuzd); by presenting unto thee in this seal the sign of life, I open the gate which thy power hath closed to the world, and freely traverse thy domains.
Now the Pentacle is said to be Solomon’s Seal, and Eliphas Lévi received his knowledge of the Tarot from the Kabbalah, of which King writes that many authors erroneously date it later than Christianity whereas its teachings belong to a far more remote antiquity, as is evident from the Book of Daniel with its Kabbalic symbolism. Furthermore:
The idea of Emanation is . . . the soul, the essential element of the Kabbalah; it is likewise… the essential character of Zoroastrianism. We may therefore consider that it was through their very intimate connexion with Persia that the Jews imbibed that idea. According to the Kabbalah, as according to the Zend-Avesta, all that exists has emanated from the source of the Infinite Light … all is an emanation from this Being; the nearer . . . that any approaches to him, the more perfect is it, and the less so does it become, as it recedes from him: this idea of gradation is eminently Persian.
This connexion of the Kabbalah with Mithraism would suggest that we may have stumbled on the explanation of yet another historical mystery—the reason for Julian’s wish and attempt to restore the city and temple of Jerusalem. Both he and Ammianus refer to this in their writings, and of how it was prevented in what seemed to be a supernatural manner by the appearance of alarming globes of fire which killed some of the workmen. This phenomenon was considered to indicate the disapproval of the Gods and the project was abandoned. But many historians have been puzzled by Julian’s attitude to the Jews in that he not only took deliberate measures for alleviating the oppressions felt by them but should also wish to rebuild Solomon’s Temple, the monument to an alien Faith. Our present evidence would seem to point to the fact that on its esoteric side, its Kabbalic teachings, the Faith was not alien, but so akin to that of Maximus and his pupil that they might well have visualized the rebuilt Temple of Solomon as providing yet another repository for their secret doctrines, a fitting shrine for the wise King’s Seal. Moreover the Jews shared Julian’s repellent proclivity for animal sacrifices, their altars being as blood-washed as Mithras’ Taurobolium. (1)
C. W. King suggests the possibility of the Knights Templars having been responsible for the plan of the Tarot Cards at the time of their persecution and dispersal in 1307. This Fraternity is believed to have been the Ancestor of modern Freemasonry. Lessing writes of them:
The Lodges of the Templars were in the very highest repute during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and out of such a Templars’ Lodge which had been continually kept up in the heart of London was the Society of Freemasons established in the seventeenth century by Sir Christopher Wren.
This would appear to endorse Michelet’s supposition that some of the Templars who escaped formed secret societies. He tells us in Histoire de France that all except two disappeared in Scotland from whence the highest mysteries of Freemasonry have come, the highest grades being called the Scotch.
It appears that the degrees in Freemasonry have one very strong similarity to those of Mithraism in that the first three do not denote illumination or true initiation, and the neophytes are only admitted into the Mysteries, thus becoming Illuminati, when they reach the Fourth Degree of Scottish Novices; the Fifth Degree being Scottish Knights.
King writes that: “the most important division of French Freemasons style themselves Parisian Templars and say they have kept up the succession of Grand Masters unbroken. François I was said to have burnt alive four men convicted of being Templars. If true this suffices to prove the existence of that fraternity down to a period but little removed from the public manifestation of the Rosicrucians.”
This savagery on the part of a Catholic King would suggest that the vigilance of the church against the survival of any form of the Mithraic cult was still unrelaxed in the sixteenth century. But it was evidently unable to prevent the renaissance of the Mysteries a century later by the Lutheran Mystic, J. V. Andrea, the Founder according to Nicolai, of modern Rosicrucianism.
This man, who was almoner to the Duke of Württemburg, used the Knights Templars badge of the Rosy Cross for his own fraternity, which aimed at fusing all Christian sects into a universal brotherhood. It is interesting to note that Martin Luther’s seal was a Rose and a Cross.
Mithraism may also be traced in modern occultism, especially in astrology and numerology which were prominent features of the Mysteries, and of Babylonian origin. Cumont points out that even before the Roman Emperors had forbidden the exercise of idolatry “their edicts against astrology and magic furnished an indirect means of attacking the clergy and disciples of Mithra”. He also says:
Astrology . . . owes some share of its success to the Mithraic propaganda, and Mithraism is therefore partly responsible for the triumph in the West of this pseudo-science with its long train of errors and terrors… .
But when we have cited all the external, unorthodox hiding places of the Fellow in the Cap from which he has continued to sway the minds and hearts of men, we must not forget that his chief and most dangerous hiding place is in those very minds and hearts. While they harbour his spirit, while the mind craves for dark mysteries and secret doctrines, and is not content with the clear, clean-cut and simple teaching of the Man of Galilee, and while the heart secretly loves and clings to the natural world and all that is in that world proving that the love of the Father is not in it; while it admires and applauds the militaristic virtues, the world-conquering spirit, instead of loving and enthroning the pacific, world-transcending spirit of Jesus the Christ, there can be no real Christianity on earth, nor in the policies of the world. For what is secretly loved must inevitably be manifested. Men may profess to be Christians but their behaviour will always betray them. The nationalism, materialism, violence of the present age clearly reveals not the worship of the Christ but of Mithras.
It is from this final hiding place — the soul of man — that the pagan god must be ejected, and once this is done the search for him may cease. There would be no need to seek through the ages in orthodox and unorthodox places for evidence of his presence and worship in order to dislodge him, for without our hearts and minds through which to function he could not live for a moment. It is our hearts that give him life, our minds that give him power. Withdraw them and enshrine in them instead the compassionate Christ and the real victory over Mithras believed, falsely, to have taken place in the fourth century, would at last, and in our time, be achieved.
1. In this connexion the following citation from The Sibylline Oracles, translated from the Hellenistic-Jewish Texts by the Rev. H. N. Bate, M.A., is of interest:
Thereafter shall there be a holy race of God-fearing men … who will pay honour to the temple of the great God, with the fat and savour of holy hecatombs, with sacrifices of fat bulls and rams without blemish, the first-born of sheep and fat flocks of lambs making holy oblations upon the great altar.” (Book iii, 573-9.)
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Traditional Tarot 