Tarot Symbolism

by Bob O'Neill

The Association for Tarot Studies is delighted in being able to present Bob O’Neill’s important classic: Tarot Symbolism.

The recommended retail price is set at AU$ 35 (approx €22 / US$ 35) plus postage and handling. Airmail to most parts of the world is above our charge of AU$ 28. If within Australasia, please first contact us for postal charges. Purchasing multiple copies attracks a reduced total cost, subsidised through ATS-incurred partial postal charge.

Total cost (+ postage): AU$ 35 (approximately equal to €28 / US$33, subject to currency exchange rates). Also note that this book is also available from Tarot Garden.

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Featured Review

We have taken the opportunity to therefore feature one of the most detailed and critical of various reviews of this book.
The following is an excerpt from the abridged article available in the June 2004 issue of the Association for Tarot Studies Newsletter. Michael J. Hurst's former site, Carte da Trionfi, unfortunately is no longer online.

Book Review of Robert O'Neill's Tarot Symbolism

by Michael J. Hurst

Robert V. O’Neill wrote what is probably the most interesting of all the historically oriented Tarot books. It is 392 pages and expresses the author’s view that early Tarot was in fact virtually all the things claimed by the eighteenth-century occultists and twentieth-century neo-Jungian interpreters, more or less. The book claims that occultists have done much to “elucidate the meaning of the symbols”, and “many occultist interpretations are justified”, while taking care to reject none of the occult sciences as possible “influences” on Tarot. Because occultist views of Tarot have held center stage in terms of Tarot interpretation for over two centuries, and because this book is the most notable apologetic for the historicity of their interpretations, O’Neill’s work is must reading for anyone interested in either occult or historical Tarot studies.

O’Neill devised a novel approach in arguing for the historicity of occult Tarot, however. First, he argues against a systematic design in terms of a coherent sequence of the trumps. Second, he argues against a systematic design in terms of congruent content of the trumps, the kind of thematic design wherein all the trumps are interpreted in terms of a single source or type of source material. Instead, he presents the subject matter as diverse, and the sequence as merely a vague progression. These two conclusions constitute a nearly-complete rejection of the earlier occult systems of meaning, all of which took a unified content (unified within each of several layers of correspondence) and precisely ordered sequence as key to understanding Tarot. Although O’Neill rejects the earlier occultist interpretations of the Tarot trumps as a coherent, precisely ordered group, he adopts most of their various and conflicting interpretations of the individual cards. These three elements of his approach are closely interrelated, and shape the structure of the book.

No Sequential Meaning or Mapping

The theories presented by generations of occultists were primarily systems of Qabalistic and astrological correspondence. They associated each of the 22 allegorical cards with one of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and thereby with a host of other esoteric correspondences including astrological subjects and Paths of the Tree of Life.

This essential core of occult Tarot is rejected by O’Neill, who notes in Chapter 10 that “there are correspondences, but nothing so simple as reducing the whole symbolism to the Tree of Life... There is sufficient evidence to postulate that Kabbalah had an influence on the designers.” He conclude that some Qabalistic “influence” is “increasingly plausible at this stage in our explorations.” (Page 253-4.)

Introducing an appendix to that chapter, O’Neill is a bit more clear.

[...] any such exploration must be relegated to the sphere of pure speculation. Since we are not compelled by logic or by the symbols themselves to accept any of the traditional assignments, we should feel free to explore new possibilities. [...] In many cases, understanding the relationship of the occult sciences to the Tarot requires that one make use of the imagination. It is at this level that the cards have their greatest appeal. (Page 257)

Every chapter, as well as the appendices, relies on intuitional messages (i.e., vague analogies) and the abandonment of traditional images and sequence in favor of occult images and interpretations of those images outside of their sequential context. In Tarot, sequence conveys meaning. The cards’ rank or place in the sequence is in fact its most defining characteristic. The Pope triumphs over the Emperor, both Love and Death over the Pope, and the Angel of Judgment over all that. Sequence conveys meaning. Likewise, in Hebrew letter mysticism, sequence is also essential to meaning.

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Read the rest of the article in the June 2004 issue of the Association for Tarot Studies Newsletter.