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History, structure and symbolism of the Tarot.
Published in 1980 by the Club du Livre Histoire, structure et symbolisme du Tarot. A port-folio printed in 120 copies with a study by the author and a reproduction of the 22 major Arcana of the Jacquot Tarot.
From the very first lines, Abellio clearly sets out the meaning of his work: Of the three very different purposes usually attributed to the Tarot - card game, medium of divination, vehicle of secret knowledge - we shall study here only the last, the noblest, certainly....
(The meaning of the Tarot) is nothing less than an illustration of what esotericists call the Primordial Tradition, i.e. knowledge whose origin and mode of revelation are lost in the mists of time...
The Tarot is thus akin to the essential ideograms of humanity, such as the I Ching of the ancient Chinese or the Sephiroth tree of the Hebrew Kabbalah...
From this point on, the author's thinking is in line with his essential approach, that of the search for the Absolute Structure, named after his eponymous 1965 book. Back in 1962, in his novel La Fosse de Babel, he had clearly defined his objective: ...we finally discovered not what we were looking for, but what was looking for us, our well of science unknown to maps, in short what we spontaneously called the Absolute Structure, because it was indeed, within this world of opaque relationships, the unique structure that brought them all together and illuminated them, like the invisible network that, from a rough stone, makes a sparkling crystal. It was the very essence of all genesis, the genesis of geneses. It was the geometric image of the single, gigantic, perpetual movement...
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