EDGE
OF THE CIRCLE BOOKS
IS
PLEASED TO PRESENT
THE
FOLLOWING
IN
DIVINATION:
THE
TAROT, MAGIC, ALCHEMY, HERMETICISM, AND NEOPLATONISM:
An
exploration of the Tarot’s mystical roots, with a guide to The
Tarot of Marseilles, The Waite Smith Tarot, The Alchemical Tarot, and
The Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery
By
Robert M. Place
Hermes
Publications,2018
List
Price: $35.00
FROM
THE PUBLISHER;
The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism is my newest book. It incorporates the material that was in Alchemy and the Tarot and The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, but updates the facts and, as you can tell by the title, covers a lot more material—about three times as much, with 680 pages and over 300 illustrations.
The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism, and Neoplatonism is my newest book. It incorporates the material that was in Alchemy and the Tarot and The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, but updates the facts and, as you can tell by the title, covers a lot more material—about three times as much, with 680 pages and over 300 illustrations.
This
book is intended to be a guide to my Alchemical Tarot and my Tarot of
the Sevenfold Mystery. It will be the companion book for both decks.
But it will also cover the Tarot of Marseilles and The Waite Smith
Tarot. So that it will be a guide to the Tarot for anyone using any
deck. Each chapter starts with a full-page illustration on the left
hand page and the text on the right hand page.
**
THE
RAZIEL TAROT: Majors Edition
(A
Tarot based on thousands of years of Jewish lore, teachings,
Kabbalah, and magical practices)
By
Robert M. Place
Hermes
Publications,2018
List
Price: $40.00
FROM
THE PUBLISHER:
The
Raziel Tarot: Majors Edition is a deluxe large size, three and a half
inch by six inch, set of 24 cards with gilded edges designed by
Robert M. Place (creator of The Alchemical Tarot) in a boxed set with
the same size 186 page book authored by Rachel Pollack (author of
Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom).
"Like
a latter-day Rashi, Rachel Pollack has co-created an iconic midrash
on the secrets of the creation, with the help of Robert Place’s
dazzling art. This masterly tarot shines into the hidden heart of all
life, revealing the mysteries!'
~CaitlÃn
Matthews, author of Untold Tarot, Lost Book of the Grail, and
Singing the Soul Back Home.
The
Raziel Tarot is a deck co-created by writer Rachel Pollack and artist
Robert M. Place. Based on thousands of years of Jewish lore,
teachings, Kabbalah, magical practices, and the vast treasure house
of stories, inspired by the Bible but going far beyond it, it
nevertheless is solidly rooted in Tarot tradition. The cards are
drawn in the sensual Jewish Art Nouveau style created by E M Lilien
in the beginning of the 20th century, but they are also inspired by
the classic Waite-Smith Tarot, often with an extra layer. For
example, Strength shows a woman with a lion, but now the woman is the
Queen of Sheba, the mysterious figure who comes to test King Solomon,
and was probably the female lover in the Song of Songs. Solomon
himself is the Magician, his posture subtly recalling the Waite Smith
Magician.
The
title comes from a medieval Jewish myth that an angel named Raziel
(“God is my secret”) gave a book to Adam and Eve that contained
all the mysteries of existence and could predict all future events.
This is exactly the myth that has dominated the Tarot for the past
250 years—the idea that the structure of the Tarot contains the
Hermetic secrets of the universe, but when we mix the cards and set
them in a spread they can predict the future. Raziel himself appears
in The Lovers, one of the cards directly inspired by The
Rider-Waite-Smith.
The
card most connected to the Waite-Smith deck is the High Priestess,
where we see a seated woman between black and white pillars of a
temple. This is no accident, for Waite refers to the woman as “the
Shekinah,” a term which he does not bother to explain. In the
Raziel Tarot the Shekinah becomes central, reappearing in various
cards, and we learn that She is the female aspect of God—the male
is the Holy One. This idea, that god is both male and female, seems
radical and modern, but in fact goes back at least two thousand
years. It also sets up the all-important theme of exile and return.
In Jewish myth, the Shekinah has gone into exile with humanity, and
cannot be re-united with the Holy One until human beings re-discover
their true selves. This too is a major theme of the Raziel Tarot.
The
deck also contains two extra major arcana cards: The Tree of
Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Despite all these levels and extra
cards, the divinatory interpretations for the deck are
straightforward, combining traditional meanings with some of the
implications of the pictures.
Special
note: while the Book of Raziel began as a myth people have actually
created magical texts with that name, in particular a full-length
book published in 1701, in Hebrew, in Amsterdam. It is said that if
you have a copy of The Book of Raziel in your home it will never burn
down. We cannot promise you that having The Raziel Tarot will allow
you to cancel your fire insurance, but it can’t hurt!
Comments