Friday, September 11, 2015

[Mage: The Awakening] Legends and rumors of the First Tarot (Part Three)

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


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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