Eliot and the Tarot

Author(s): Robert Currie

Source: ELH, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter, 1979), pp. 722-733
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872487 .
Accessed: 20/12/2014 09:54
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
ELH.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

ELIOT

AND THE TAROT

BY ROBERT CURRIE

Lines 43-55 of The Waste Land introduce "Madame Sosostris,

famous clairvoyante" and her "wicked pack" of tarots. Over the
years Eliot scholars have tended to lay more and more weight on
this passage. Indeed Grover Smith now attributesmajor organizing
functionsto Madame Sosostris's cards. "The plan was," he wrote in
1974, "'precisely, to use the Tarot pack to introduce a set of contemporary characters corresponding more or less to those figuring in
the Grail legend, and, through a recherche du temps perdu portrayingthem in cameo, to compose a fantasia of Eliot's emotional
life." Yet critics still seem surprisinglyvague, not merely about the
tarots,but about Eliot's knowledge and use of them.'
Despite the oft-repeated claim that the symbols of Madame
Sosostris's cards "had a mysterious significance in ancient Egyptian
vegetation ceremonies connected with the rise and fall of the waters of the Nile," there is no trace of an argument foran Egyptian
provenance for tarots earlier than the eighth volume of Court de
Gebelin's Monde Primitif, published in Paris in 1781. There de
Gebelin asserted, with no more convincing display of egyptological
knowledge than could be expected forty years before the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, that "La forme, la disposition,
l'arrangement de ce Jeu et les figures qu'il offresont si manifestement allegoriques, et ces allegories sont si conformes a la doctrine
civile, philosophique et religieuse des anciens Egyptiens, qu'on ne
peut s'empecher de le reconnoitre pour l'ouvrage de ce peuple des
Sages." These assertions were uncritically reproduced in Jessie
Weston's From Ritual to Romance.2
De Gebelin and Weston notwithstanding,however, historians of
playing cards assign the tarots an unequivocally western, late
medieval provenance. Some cards said to have been made for
Charles VI of France in 1392 are often cited as the earliest tarots;
but the first authenticated tarrochi (and the related minchiate
cards) appear in fifteenth-century
Italy. Tarots apparently produced
in
this
time
about
Venice seem to have been the chief source of the
French packs which, with exceedingly few exceptions, were the
only tarots available in England between the eighteenth and the
722
ELH
0013-8304/79/0464-722 $01.00

46
?

(1979) 722-733
1979 by The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

early twentieth century. During this period, while the cards were
used for fortune-tellingby some, they were employed by others,
notably Etteilla in the eighteenth century,and E1liphas Levi in the
nineteenth, in the construction of esoteric systems: and in consequence, by 1900, tarots had been elevated to "the Tarot,"' a symbolic pattern of mysterious significance indeed.3
Italian and French tarot packs consist of 78 cards, 56 of which
compose four suits of 14 cards: ace, 2-10, knave (or page), knight,
queen, and king. The pips of the suits are batons (or sceptres or
wands), cups, swords, and coins (or pentacles), but there is little to
suggest that these are much other than variants, more or less fanciful, on the traditions that give us clubs, hearts, spades and
diamonds. The court cards of the suits bear conventional pictorial
representations of their peculiar dignitaries. The number cards
have occasionally displayed emblematic designs, or even caricatures; but they have not, until the twentieth century, borne any
systematic symbolic or narrative pictorial elements. There are,
however, beside the suits, 22 atouts, "trumps,"' or "keys": highly
symbolic picture cards, 21 of which have numbers, and all of which
have titles.
Two major symbolic systems dominate the Franco-Venetian
atouts. Firstthere is a systemof symbols drawn fromChristianityand
the Bible: Le Pape (No. 5), L'Ermite (No. 9), Le Diable (No. 15),
and so on. Yet many of these symbols are apparently heterodox: La
Papesse (No. 2), for example, and Le Monde (No. 21), in which a
naked woman (or youth), holding a wand, dances within a garland
surrounded by the emblems of the four evangelists.
That the cards which bear such symbols do not belong to the
world of orthodox religion is confirmed by the openly divinatory
nature of the second, astrological, system of symbols offeredby the
atouts. This sytem is seen in the cards forthe planets, such as La
Lune (No. 18) and Le Soleil (No. 19). It is also seen in the use of
zodiacal signs, such as Libra (8. La Justice), Leo and Virgo (11. La
Force). Finally at least four and perhaps 10 of the 22 atouts reproduce the conventional symbols of the houses of the horoscope. For
example, card 10, La Roue de Fortune, reproduces the wheel of the
eleventh house (Benefacta). Card 1, Le Bateleur, which depicts a
man in a broad-brimmed hat, who holds a wand and stands before a
table covered with various objects, is very like the merchant beside
his laden table of the second house ofthe horoscope (Lucrum). And
the notorious card 12, Le Pendu, which depicts a man hanging from
Robert Currie

723

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

(or, as in Court de Gebelin's tarots,tethered to) a wooden frame,

readily suggests the man in the stocks of the 12th house (Carcer).4
These perhaps somewhat eclectic contents-heterodox-religious,
zodiacal and astrological-both enhance the intrinsic sortitivepossibilities of numbered cards and make of the tarotsan incomparable
instrument of revelation: a revelation which, in fact, has little if
anythingto do with Egypt, and a great deal to do with Christianity
and Christian culture. This would not necessarily be relevant to
Eliot's use of tarots in The Waste Land if, as Grover Smith claims,
"the card pack did come fromMiss Weston," and if Eliot knew no
more of tarots than could be learned from her book. On that assumption it would be safe to conclude that he was little and illadvised on the subject; and that he might well have employed
tarots in the simple belief that they were somehow Egyptian in
character. But that assumption is inadmissible: first,because The
Waste Land displays much more knowledge of tarots than does
From Ritual to Romance: and, secondly, because, given Eliot's
well-documented knowledge of this work, it is difficultnot to suspect that he might well have known of an altogether superior
source. For, in the course of Weston's brief remarks on tarots the
reader finds a footnotereference to "Mr. A. E. Waite, who has published a book on the subject."5
In 1910 Waite published both his book, The Key to the Tarot, and
a tarot pack of his own devising, designed by Pamela Colman
Smith,together with a manual summarizing the divinatorymaterial
presented in his book. A year later he reproduced Colman Smith's
designs in black and white in an illustrated version of his book,
called The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Waite was a rosicrucian
freemason, who had forsome years been active in the Order of the
Golden Dawn, where, consistently with the Christian symbolism of
his rosicrucianism, he bore the Christian motto Sacramentum
Regis. So faras The Waste Land is concerned, Waite's attempt at a
"complete and rectified Tarot" had three salient characteristics:
first,that he dismissed the Egyptian theory outright;secondly, that
as well as altering the details of the trumps or atouts he also turned
the number cards of the suits into picture cards; and, thirdly,thathe
interpreted the tarot pack as something like a visual sequence of
Christian poetry.6
Waite argued that "the Tarot" expressed "Secret Doctrine in
pictures": but he rejected any sectarian concept ofthat doctrine. On
the contrary,the Tarot was not "a derivative of any one school or
724

Eliot and Tarot

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

literatureof occultism," but, in "the most catholic" way, "the presentation of universal ideas by means of universal types." "I have
taken the cards on the high plane of their more direct significance
to man, who-in material life-is on the quest of eternal things," he
declared. In tracing that quest, Waite treated of "the Ancient of
Days," "the Fall of Man," "the sweet yoke and light burden of
Divine Law," "the Mystery of God," "the Light of the World,"
"rebirth in Christ," "the Secret Church," and "the confidence of
those whose strengthis God, who have found their refuge in Him."
Meanwhile, as Waite elevated the religious, he disparaged the astrological elements in the cards: reserving, for all species of divination, a wry disapproval not at all diminished by the pleasure
which he took in the poetical possibilities of the divinatoryarts. For
he insisted that the cards were to be understood poetically rather
than by means of a rigid occult or emblematic hermeneutic. The
Tarot, he argued, presents not emblems but symbols; and, he observed, "As poetry is the most beautiful expression of the things
that are of all the most beautiful, so is symbolism the most catholic
expression in concealment of things that are the most profound in
the sanctuary." Hence, Waite concluded, a fixed schema or "process" of understandingthe Tarot was less valuable than "individual
reflection"on the cards: for"the pictures are like doors which open
into unexpected chambers, or like a turn in the open road with a
wide prospect beyond."7
Had Eliot known Waite, he would have been much less sympathetic to the Egyptian theory of tarots than has commonly been
supposed; and, moreover,he would have used the tarotpack in The
Waste Land in ways not yet envisaged in the studyofthe poem. But
did Eliot know Waite? On the one hand, Grover Smith confesses, "I
have no idea whether Eliot knew this book"; on the other, David
Ward asserts-without evidence-that "Waite's was almost certainly the version of the Tarot which Eliot had seen."8
At firstsight Eliot's note on lines 43-55 of The Waste Land may
not suggest such knowledge. He wrote
I am not familiarwith the exact constitutionof the Tarot pack of

cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my convenience. The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack, fitsmy
purpose in two ways: because he is associated in my mind with
the Hanged God of Frazer, and because I associate him with the
hooded figure in the passage of the disciples to Emmaus in Part
V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later.... The

725

Robert Currie

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Man withThree Staves(an authenticmemberoftheTarotpack)I

associate,quite arbitrarily,
withthe Fisher Kinghimself.
Yet this note stronglysuggests thatEliot had read Waite. First,Eliot
departs fromthe exact constitutionof the tarotpack, to suit his own
(poetic) convenience: a curious libertyto take with documents already in the public domain, so to speak, were it not forthe example
of Waite, who had done just this a dozen years before the publication of The Waste Land. Secondly, Eliot speaks of "the traditional
pack," and of "an authentic member of the Tarot pack." The concept of the prevalent Franco-Venetian tarots as a traditional pack
could scarcely arise except by contrastwith an untraditional pack:
and such a pack did not exist until the appearance of the WaiteSmith tarots,which contained, according to Waite, precisely "4authentic" yet untraditional members. Waite freely acknowledged
that he had departed fromwhat he called "the traditional form"of
the cards; which, however, he claimed to have "rectified." For, by
following the "Secret Tradition concerning the Tarot," he believed
he could offer"the truth" previously concealed in "the wretched
products of colportage," namely the "traditional" Franco-Venetian
packs which alone had hithertobeen available in England. Thirdly,
despite the confidence with which Eliot manipulates the tarots,and
uses the highly technical notions of traditionaland authentic tarots,
he disclaims familiaritywith "the exact constitution of the Tarot
pack of cards." Justsuch a disclaimer would be in order had Eliot
known Waite, but not the older tarots.For the older tarotswere not
reproduced, either in the manual to the Waite-Smith pack, or in
Waite's book, which gave brief verbal descriptions of earlier designs, sufficientto indicate the extent of Waite's innovations, but
insufficientto assure the reader that he is apprised of the exact
details of the older packs.9
This point was not taken in an otherwise very closely argued, and
unfortunatelyneglected, article published by Gertrude Moakley a
quarter of a centuryago. Moakley escaped the Egyptian snares, set
to trap the commentatoron lines 43-55 of The Waste Land, by the
simple device ofstudyingMadame Sosotris's seven cards. They are
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
726

"the drownedPhoenicianSailor"
"Belladonna,the Lady ofthe Rocks"
"the manwiththreestaves"
"the Wheel"
"the one-eyedmerchant"
Eliot and Tarot

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

(f) "this card /Which is blank," and

(g) "The Hanged Man."
The fourth and seventh cards,
(d) "the Wheel," and
(g) "The Hanged Man,"
correspond to 10. La Roue de Fortune and 12. Le Pendu: the
"Wheel of Fortune" and "Hanged Man" in Waite's pack. Moreover,
(e) "the one-eyed merchant"
might be an exceedingly subtle allusion to 1. Le Bateleur ("The
Magician" in the Waite-Smith pack), were Eliot to have known, not
only the tarots, but their relationship to the horoscope. That would
seem unlikely on a superficial reading of Eliot's disclaimer. F. 0.
Matthiessen indeed, wrote that "I have never seen a Tarot pack
(and, if I had to bet, my money would say that neither had Eliot

himself)."10

But the sixth card,

(f) "this card /Which is blank,"

suggests that Matthiessen would have lost his money. As Waite

recorded, The Platonist, a journal published not two hundred miles
from Eliot's birthplace, carried in August 1885 an article on "The
Taro," whose anonymous author remarked that
We have said that there are 78 cards, of which 22 are keys but
these are only the exoteric keys. It is known to adepts thatthere
should be 22 esoteric keys, which would make the total number
up to 100.... On this point an earnest English neophyte, who
has attained to a considerable degree of lucidity, suggests that
when the artist has arrived at a certain stage of perfection ... supernal intelligences themselves furnish the 22
esoteric keys, or impress their symbolic signature on 22 blank
cards prepared by the student.
Moakley thought that Eliot might have learned of the blank
card-which
had appeared nowhere else in the literature of
tarots-from Waite's bibliography: which discussed this article at
some length. This is, of course, possible; though it is a supposition
which scarcely accords with Moakley's own claim that Eliot "gave
Waite's book only superficial attention." In any event, had Eliot
read of blank tarots, he might have read of them in The Platonist
itself.1'

Robert Currie

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

727

Yet there is a distinctlyless complicated explanation of the sixth

card in The Waste Land. Waite's own tarotpack included 80 cards:
four suits of 14 cards; the 22 atouts; and two blank cards. Of these
last, unique items, his book said nothing. Thus Eliot might have
read either The Platonist or Waite, or both; he might have seen the
Waite-Smith set, with its blanks; and he might have seen another
pack with blanks. But on the evidence now available the second
hypothesis is the simplest, and thereforeto be preferred.And confirmationof any of these hypotheses would destroy the conventional picture of an Eliot who picked up a smatteringof tarot-lore
fromJessie Weston's version of Court de Gebelin.
Eliot provides his own evidence. His precise definition of what
Helen Gardner has called "the enigmatic 'man with three staves'"
as an authentic "member of the Tarot pack" establishes his knowledge of Waite-Smith. For there is, as Moakley concluded, only one
satisfactorysolution to the problem of this card. Since Eliot stated
that he associated
(c) "the man withthreestaves"
"quite arbitrarily,with the Fisher King," it is reasonable to assume
that he had in mind the three of wands in the Waite-Smith pack,
described by Waite as
A calm, statelypersonage,withhis back turned,lookingfroma
cliffsedge at shipspassingoverthesea. Three stavesare planted
in the ground,and he leans lightlyon one ofthem.
Eliot could not have been sure that the man with three staves was
an authentic member of the tarotpack unless he had seen this card.
For no such figurehas ever appeared, either among the tarotatouts,
or, until the Waite-Smith pack, among the number cards of the tarot
suits.12
The design and interpretation of the three of wands in the
Waite-Smith pack may, moreover, explain both Eliot's association
of this card with the Fisher King, and his recognition that the association was arbitrary.The Fisher King is rich, but languishing;
and his cure rests upon the hallows of Christ's crucifixion. Waite
described the personage depicted on the card as a "<merchant
prince"; and Pamela Colman Smith showed him (Figure One) with a
chaplet or circlet about his head. Though the merchant prince is
upright,he does hold, or lean on, a stave as if for support, such as
might be needed out of languishment, illness or injury. On this
728

Eliot and Tarot

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

card, as throughout the Waite-Smith suit of wands, the staves are

startinginto new leaf as if to suggest a renewal of life, or resurrection fromdeath. To strengthenthe Christian symbolism ofthis card,
there are of course three staves (or trees), each higher than the
merchant prince's head: as, indeed, there are three ships sailing by.
Justas these staves, planted on a cliffor height, suggest Calvary, so
it could be an indication of the Fisher King's problematical relationship to Christianitythat the merchant prince rests not on the
central but on the righthand stave. Thus the card reinforces both
the maritime and the grail themes in The Waste Land. Yet the
divinatorymeaning which Waite attached to the card-"established
strength,enterprise, effort,trade, commerce, discovery," or, if reversed, "the end of troubles, suspension
or cessation of
adversity" -are either irrelevant to, or too positive for,Eliot's own
symbolic intentions. Hence perhaps Eliot's admission that the association he wished to make was arbitrary.13

Robert Curre'72

Robert Currie

729

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The identification of the man with three staves with the WaiteSmith three of wands opens the possibility of a very tentative identificationof the two cards that otherwise seem foreignto the entire
history of tarots.
(a) "the drownedPhoenician Sailor"
is not to be found in Waite-Smith. Yet Waite's ten of swords, "A
prostratefigure, pierced by all the swords belonging to the card,"
and lying beside the sea, has the divinatorymeanings, according to
Waite, of "Whatsoever is intimated by the design; also pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation," and may, as Moakley indicated,
have come closest to Eliot's intentions. Finally
(b) "Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks"
is also absent fromthe Waite-Smith pack. Moakley associated this
card with Waite's two of swords: "A hoodwinked figure balances
two swords upon her shoulders," as she sits under the moon before
a rocky sea. The card may have the divinatory meaning, according
to Waite, of "Imposture, falsehood, duplicity, disloyalty." Yet this
strikingicon suggests a "Lady of the Swords" very much more than
a "Lady of the Rocks," a title more appropriate to the queen of
wands in Waite's pack, a flower-crownedwoman, bearing wand and
sunflower,enthroned, with her black cat before her, among rocks or
mountains. Her divinatory meanings, according to Waite, include
"a dark woman," signifyingin certain circumstances, "opposition,
14
jealousy, even deceit and infidelity."
Land
The seven tarots of The Waste
may then be, under Waite's
English titles,
(a) ten of swords(?)
(b) queen ofwands (?)
(c) threeof wands
(d) 10. Wheel of Fortune
(e) 1. The Magician (?)
(f) a blank card
(g) 12. The Hanged Man.
Four cards only are to be identified with certainty. Moreover,
Eliot's claim to have "departed" fromthe exact constitution of the
tarotpack suggests that at least one card has no original; and, in any
event, unless Madame Sosostris employed otherwise unknown
methods, she would have turned up more cards than those cited.
Thus the tarot sequence in The Waste Land seems incomplete.
730

Eliot and Tarot

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Perhaps its most significant aspect is the absence of the Hanged

Man. (Figure Two). Of this card Waite wrote:
I will say very simply on my own part that it expresses the relation, in one of its aspects, between the Divine and the Universe.
He who can understand that the story of his higher nature is
imbedded in this symbolism will receive intimationsconcerning
a great awakening that is possible, and will know that afterthe
sacred Mysteryof Death there is a glorious Mysteryof Resurrection.

Had Eliot read Waite, the association of the Hanged Man with the

hooded figure on the road to Emmaus is scarcely surprising. And it

would have been scarcely surprising, too, for Madame Sosostris's
querent to have concluded, when this card did not turn up, that he
was in a waste land indeed.15

TIHEHI\NGEDAMyN.
A Waitean influence on Eliot would affect the interpretation of at
least thirteen lines of Eliot's poem. Yet even those few writers who

Robert Currie

731

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

recognize the links between Eliot and Waite seem to regret them.
Moakley asserted that Eliot "evidently had no reason to go deeply
into the subject," on the incorrect assumption that Waite and Weston closely agreed. Moreover, she concluded that what she
strangely claimed to be Eliot's assumption that Waite's was "the
traditional tarot," together with his disclaimer of familiaritywith
the tarot pack, "implies that he gave Waite's book only superficial
attention." A closer reading of Eliot's note shows, on the contrary,
that Eliot was alive precisely to Waite's categories of "traditional"
and "authentic" tarots; and that Eliot's disclaimer was a discreet
acknowledgement of his own awareness that he knew the "traditional" tarots solely through the medium of Waite's "authenticity":
from which, however, the poet derived, in the man with three
staves, a visual symbol of no less a person than the Fisher King. If
this is so, then Eliot cannot have treated Waite superficially.'6
Ward seems to think that Eliot treated Waite, not simply superficially, but with contempt. "Eliot didn't take the Tarot seriously in
the same sense as Yeats (who was wise and silly in differentways
fromEliot) or ArthurWaite, a member of the Order of the Golden
Dawn (which gave Yeats and its other members the opportunityto
indulge their tastes for mumbo-jumbo)," wrote Ward: who added
that Eliot "doesn't wish to be pinned down to the level of Arthur
Edward Waite." Since Ward himself claimed that the tarot section
of The Waste Land "forecasts the action in a real way," this seems a
little churlish to poor Waite, who apparently provided the material
for that section. It also seems to rest on a misapprehension of
Waite's work. For Waite was not simply a scholarly and literary
writer on recondite myths; he was above all a man who attempted
to give a Christian cast to the late Victorian occult arcana: and this
is seen especially in his "rectification" of the tarots.17
Now, much in The Waste Land goes to strengthen Lyndall Gordon's argument thatthe poem is the "spiritual autobiography" of its
author, who, at least in this period of his life, stood in a profoundly
problematical relationship to a Christian faiththathe glimpsed, still
darkly, in the hazy glass of metaphysics and mysticism. Waite's
"Tarot" is none other than a poetic, metaphysical and mystical,
Christian revision of the tarotcards: and it might be that this is the
Tarot of The Waste Land.18
Wadham College, Oxford

732

Eliot and Tarot

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

FOOTNOTES
1 T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (London:

1970), pp. 64ff; Grover Smith,

T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays, A Study in Sources and Meaning (2nd edn.; Chicago:
1974), p. 307.
2 A. J.Wilks, A Critical Commentary on T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (London:
1971), p. 36; A. Court de Gebelin, Monde Primitif, Analyse et Compare avec le
Monde Moderne, VIII (Paris: 1781), pp. 366-67, 387-88, 405; Jessie L. Weston, From
Ritual to Romance (Cambridge: 1920), pp. 74-76.
3 Arthur Edward
Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Being Fragments of a
Secret Tradition under the Veil of Divination (London: 1911), passim; Catherine
Perry Hargrave,A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming (Boston and New York: 1930), passim.
4 Hargrave, pp. 32, 228; Robert Eisler, The Royal Art ofAstrology (London:
1946),
p. 39.
5 Grover Smith, p. 307; Weston, p. 74.
6 Ellic Howe, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn, A Documentary History of a
Magical Order, 1887-1923 (London: 1972), p. 296; ArthurEdward Waite, The Key to
the Tarot, Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition under the Veil of Divination
(London, 1910); Waite, Pictorial Key, p. vii.
7 Waite, Pictorial Key . . . , pp. vii-viii, 42, 62, 68, 75, 76, 95, 103, 104, 124, 135, 160,
169.
8 Grover Smith, p. 326; David Ward, T. S. Eliot between Two Worlds, A Reading of
T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays (London and Boston: 1973), p. 86.
9 Waite, Pictorial Key . . ., vii, 24, 67-69.
10 F. 0. Matthiessen, The Achievement of T. S. Eliot, An Essay on the Nature of
Poetry (New York and London: 1958), p. 50; Gertrude Moakley, "The Waite-Smith
'Tarot,' A Footnote to The Waste Land", Bulletin of the New York Public Library,
58 (1954), 471ff.
" Moakley, p. 475; "The Taro," The Platonist, 2 (1885), 127.
12 Helen
Gardner, "The Waste Land" 1972 (Manchester: 1972), p. 10; Brooks, p.
143; Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays, A Study in Sources and Meaning
(Chicago: 1956), pp. 77, 87-88; Waite, Pictorial Key . . ., p. 192.
13 The Waite-Smith tarots are reproduced by permission of U.S. Games Systems,
Inc., New York 10016.
14 Moakley, p. 472; Waite, pp. 172, 234, 250.
5 Waite,

16
17

18

pp. 116, 119.

Moakley, pp. 475.

Ward, pp. 86, 105.

Lyndall Gordon, Eliot's Early Years (Oxford and New York: 1977), p. 118.

Robert Currie

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:54:27 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

733