Game: new World of Darkness by White Wolf & Onyx Path
Venue: Mage: The Awakening
Chronicle: Mage: The Horsemen
In-Character Date: Location: Spring 2011 , Colorado Springs, CO
Legends and rumors of the First Tarot
By LoreKeeper Casstiel of the Five Horsemen
Tarot Card Research!
We have an Artifact, the 10 of Cups... what could it be? From The History of the Tarot, a short book written in
1979. Gabriel sent it over from her
library:
-The original imagery hails from Egyptian gods and symbolism
-Tarot throughout history is used as a divination tool
because of its imagery, inspiration, and means of reflection
-The first deck was discovered in 1470 in Italy and featured
only the Minor Arcana (56 Cards) and by all accounts they were effectively
playing cards (BTW, the Joker is the Fool)
-In the 15th and 16th Centuries they were used in Europe for
parlor games, including tarocchi appropriate in which the shuffling cards were
used to tell a story of sorts using the imagery
-Until 1781 it was a high class game, and what we know as
playing cards were used for divination starting in the mid-15th century.
-It was Etteilla and Court e Gebelin that returned the deck
to the "lens" of Egyptian mysticism and began interpreting the cards
as a universal key to reading and interpreting the universe.
--They proposed that the Egyptians hidden this key in the
imagery of the cards and shielded it from Christianity
-Kabbbalah and Hebrew lettering worked into the cards from
their own very similar card divination systems
-In 1909 the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn worked
Christian and Hermetic meanings into the imagery... a cauldron of meanings and
symbols and parallels, a universal key to the meaningful symbols of the fallen
world.
-After that, neo-paganism and new age movements have evolved
the Tarot into what we know today. Still
used by gypsies and con-artists and nervous teenagers.
- Occult lore has many theories on what Tarot is really all
about, mostly that you are tapping into truths of fate and time through
symbols. But the whole business has been
dumbed down in modern times.
- Psychologists would tell you that Tarot readings works
only to the extent of an intuitive person making some correct assumptions about
a person and give them some good advice.
Unethical fortune tellers also use cold readings to swindle and fuck
with people.
Turns out an
acquaintance of Gabriels wrote in the margins where the next bit of information
comes from… he was an Apostate Sage/Soothsayer Acanthus and Cartomancer named
Bateleur:
-
The theory among Awakened Cartomancers is that
the symbolism of the cards came into man’s mind through dreams and glimpses at
the Supernal Truth behind the Lie.
-
The symbols have always been the same, but they
have been culturally refined – Kabbalah, Egyptian Mysticism, Christianity,
etc. All glimpses in the “Truths” that
define the Supernal and the Tapestry.
-
A Cartomancer taps into the Supernal Truths,
(I’m beginning to think that the “Truths” are like the Arcana or a Supernal
God, Exarch, Oracle, or other Ascended beings)
-
Okay, now we are getting somewhere. In the margins Bateleur makes mention of a
legend of the First Tarot Deck
-- Supposedly the deck is a complete
Artifact originating from the Supernal Realms, not one single realm but from
each of them… and clearly there are more than 5… 22 Realms then for each Major
Arcana in the deck?
-- The first two cards were rumored to be
found in Atlantis itself! Specifically
the Tower and the Hierophant card
--There are a lot of rumors about this mage
“urban” legend… the cards are a big
deal, if that is what this thing is. The
Pentacle have been collecting them throughout all creation and over the course
of post-Atlantean history. The chances
it is this most famous of artifacts seems silly… but this was all I could find and
its really fucking cool.
---The First Tarot, as they are known,
always gives accurate and useful readings.
Even more effective than a Time Master.
It can do readings on any topic but it requires the reader to maintain
complete and absolute concentration.
---The Deck is incomplete, rumors persist
that the majority of the Deck are in an Athenaeum somewhere. Assuming of course that there really are only
78 cards in the deck and not more…
---A suspected Archmage one said that every
Atlantean temple every left behind has a place to put a single card that
represents the temple. If the right card
is chosen then the temple defenses an guardians become completely inert of
subverted and all secrets laid bare. The
wrong card most likely leads to certain death.
Like the theory on there being more than 22 Supernal Realms, Bateleur
makes postulations that there may be 78 or 56 for the Minor Arcana/Temples in
existence.
---Supposedly any card in the deck can
automatically act as Magically Dedicated tool to any mage as long as it is
possessed on their person, regardless of Path or corresponding realm of the
card.
---Supposedly, Seers of the Throne cannot
perceive one who carries a card. They
are a gift from the Oracles and a means of hope after the fall, they hide the
awakened warrior from servants of the Exarchs (I MAY HAVE TO TEST THAT ONE!)
---Of the cards collected, two are from
Supernal Realms unheard of by Mages. The
World is one
of those cards.
-The Note were short, this Bateleur seems
to be an authority on this relic though he doesn’t seem to know where the cards
are or much about them. With access to
the highest ranking members of the orders we might be able to learn more.
From my own observation of the Card itself:
-
It is plain to see that this thing is an
Artifact, it carries a single dose of Mana and like all Artifacts it
replenishes every day.
-
The Resonance of the item doesn’t show much
about what the card does. The resonance
on the card is that of what is displayed on the card. In this case it is a wooden card fire cut
with the image of the 10 of cups. 10
cups floating in the configuration of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and the
Roman numeral X. Scrutinizing it, I only
get what the card MEANS, which is what we already said.
-
So other than the rumors that it is part of a 78
piece Artifact, I have no idea what it does…
-
Next Stop will be the Codex of Lost Pages for
more…
Clues from the Codex of Lost Pages:
15 straight hours of leafing through that
Astral Artifact with one of my minds allowed to walk the world of the
soul. Very little to go on, put that
mind to be, very frustrated. My theory
is that the information surrounding the book is still in existence or being
protected by sorcery beyond my understanding.
Hell, for all I know this is part of the History of Atlantis that was
literally whipped from reality and history, as if it almost never was. Or maybe the Oracles put in a failsafe. Here is what I did find
- A letter written from one member of the
Pentacle to another in London in 1666,
an Awakened named Flight, an Acanthus, stole “44 pieces of an relic” that the
Pentacle had been collecting from all over the world. She was captured very quickly and was found
with “68 cards,” “Only 10 are missing.”
On trial, Flight apparently begged for death because she had made a deal
with what more than likely was a Greater Abyssal Entity. I am unable to find destroyed data on the
cards before or after the letter. The
paper in the codex looked burned. The
date on the letter corresponds to the great fire of London in 1666. It is possible that is what claimed the
letter, perhaps the Abyssal unborn god showed up.
-The only other piece of evidence is a
destroyed (water/pulped/shredded) Léger from a Athenaeum also located in
London. Artifacts to be shipped to the
Americas in order to protect them from a predicted disaster. The Léger is highly encoded but there is an
item number for 68/78 pieces. Seems like
it could be good bet this would be the same First Tarot rumored to exist. The date on the shipment was June 6th
1940, three months before Germany bombed London at the start of World War II.
-I have mixed feelings about these
findings, it would be easy to create false information and then destroy it so
it would turn up. Making the VERY
arrogant assumption that no one can do what the codex can do (a long shot)
there is most likely a whole misinformation war raging between magical factions
throughout history.
-Is it possible that we have found one of the
missing 10 cards? Or is it part of the
68 that were shipped to America and stashed somewhere? Impossible to know without approaching the
Orders on Order secrets… good luck with that.
Chances are if either side knew we had something that might be one of
the famous cards to unlocking the divinations of Atlantis itself we would be
liquidated immediately.
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