Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson

Author:Paul Huson [Paul Huson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company
Published: 2012-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

The second-largest unit of these plays was made up of those that arose around the feast of Epiphany on January 6. Among them evolved a small but popular drama, again taken from the New Testament, that concerned the three wise men or magi from the east who followed the miraculous star of Bethlehem that led them to the newborn Jesus.

The belief that they were kings arose during the sixth century, and that their names were Jasper or Casper, Melchior, and Balthasar, during the twelfth. The play was known variously as the Tres Reges, Magi, or the Stella, “Star,” and it was performed by three of the clergy, who donned crowns and regal robes to play the kings. In the Rouen version of the play, the kings would approach from the west, north, and south ends of the church. They would meet and identify themselves and their mission, displaying their gifts in gilt chalices: gold from Tharsis to honor Jesus’s kingship, frankincense from Arabia to pay homage to his divinity, and myrrh used for embalming (foreshadowing Jesus’s death) from Saba or Sheba, today’s Yemen, famous then for its myrrh, aloes, and cassia. Then the kings would follow the star to the high altar in the east. The star itself, frequently lit by candles, would be drawn along a wire strung high above the worshipers’ heads.

Both sets of trump imagery use the star as a symbol of hope, expectation, and advent; the first for the advent of daylight, the second for the advent of the Messiah.

It’s interesting to note that Pratesi’s cartomancer focuses on the gift aspect of the card. Christian actually identifies the card as the Star of the Magi. As “Grand Orient,” Waite begins by following Christian, Mathers, and the Golden Dawn in interpreting the Star as a sign of hope. Eleven years later, writing under his own name now, he includes an interpretation of the trump as a star of ill omen, something that was started by Etteilla with his addled rearrangement and “rectification” of the trumps.

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