The Nigel Jackson Tarot

Jackson, Nigel

ISBN 10: 1567183654 ISBN 13: 9781567183658

Publisher: Llewellyn Publications, 2000

Synopsis

Here's your chance to get one of the most beautiful Tarot decks ever, as you relive the magic of times gone by, with The Nigel Jackson Tarot from internationally acclaimed artist and Tarot scholar, Nigel Jackson.

When you get this deck, the first thing you'll notice is that it comes in a slipcase and is made of two sections. The first part is a boxed set of 78 exquisitely illustrated cards. They reflect Jackson's research into classical, medieval, and Renaissance occult symbolism.

Also in the slipcase is a 160-page minibook that includes everything you need to know to use this beautiful deck:

·The history of the Tarot
·The groundbreaking new theory connecting Pythagorean numerology and the Tarot
·The Tarot and astrological magic
·The meaning of the symbolism on the Major Arcana
·Gnostic Narrative in the Tarot
·Divinatory meanings of the Major and Minor Arcana
·The Key of Hermes Layout
·The Pythagorean Method of Tarot divination
·The Combing Out the Fortune divinatory technique
·The Method of the Seventh Card
·The Royal Road Tarot spread
·The Eastern Cross layout
·Card combinations in Tarot readings
·Magical meditation and the Tarot

Together, this book and deck in a slipcase make up one of the most beautiful and most powerful Tarot sets ever. You will spend many hours finding new depth of meaning in the symbolic art. The minibook will show you the secrets of meditation and exactly how to give readings.

When you get The Nigel Jackson Tarot, you have it all in one elegant slipcase. Get your set today.

About this title

About the Author

Nigel Jackson, born in 1963, lives in Manchester, England and is a well-known artist and illustrator specializing in the symbolism of Western Esoteric Tradition: he is deeply immersed in the traditional Tarot of 15th century Italy, the magical teachings of medieval-renaissance astrological magicians such as Ficino, Agrippa and Bruno and in bringing to life the talismanic images inherited from ancient sources of arcane lore such as the Arabian grimoire The Picatrix. He has worked intensively in researching the magical system of the 28 Mansions of the Moon. Nigel has been involved for the last quarter of a century in pursuing the inner wisdom of the hermetic mysteries and in expressing the symbolic 'language of the gods' through his visual art which he views as a living  'alchemy of the imagination'.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1 -Historical Origin and Significance

It's said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That's of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it's said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance.
-Charles Williams, The Greater Trumps, 1932


For centuries the Tarot's mysterious emblems of power and prophecy have exercised an enduring fascination for many people, and their enigmatic appeal is just as strong today. In the course of the last 200 years, the curiously compelling images depicted on the cards have inspired intriguing and sometimes wild theories of origin, ranging from Court de Gebelin's eighteenth-century speculations concerning its status as a survival of the fabled "Book of Thoth," dating from ancient Egypt, to the conceits of Petrarchian love poetry and more recent opinions of Jesse Weston, positing the pre-Christian Celtic origin of the symbolism in the cycles of Grail literature. The truth about the development of the deck over the last 2,000 years, resulting in the formalized woodcut packs produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at Marseilles, Besancon, and elsewhere in Europe, reveals a much more complex, subtle, and intricate picture of diverse esoteric influences cross-fertilizing and cohering over many centuries around the now-familiar Greater and Lesser Trumps of Tarot. These symbols, once treasured in the courts of fifteenth-century Italian nobles and Florentine princes and carried through many lands in the painted caravans of Romany sorcerers and fortunetellers, have never lost their appeal to the imagination and speak as beguilingly today with their voice of enchantment as they ever did in times gone by. Once known they are quite unforgettable. This is because they resonate within us as a true "psychic language," epitomizing the original timeless archetypes within the Deep Mind. In order to gain understanding of the wisdom-traditions that converge so mysteriously in the patterns of Tarot symbolism, let us briefly examine the known historical and conceptual background of this "Mute Book."

Tarot Symbolism and Origins
The earliest extant examples of Tarot decks were illuminated with precious pigments on vellum with consummate artistry for courtly patrons in Renaissance Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including the deck allegedly designed by Jacquemin Gringonneur for France's King Charles VI in the year 1392. However, as early as March of 1377, play with cards had been officially proscribed in the city of Florence. The inventory of the Dukes of Orleans for 1408 records the purchase of Quartes de Lombardie, the Lombardy Tarocchi deck. The noble Milanese dynasty of the Viscontis commissioned the artist Marziona de Tartona to design a Tarocchi deck. Many of the so-called Lombardy Tarocchi decks were created as presents for aristocratic weddings such as that of Filipo Visconti and Maria of Savoy in 1428, for which the artist Bonifacio Bembo of Cremona executed a princely Tarot. The Visconti-Sforza deck dates from 1441 and celebrates the marriage of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. The cards feature many examples of their heraldic family crests. According to some accounts, Francesco Fibbia, the Prince of Pisa, was the first to combine the originally separate Greater and Lesser Arcana during his exile at Bologna. The court ledgers of the Este family at Ferrara for 1442 mention Carticelles da Trionfi, the Trumps or "Triumphs" of Tarot.

The Tarot we recognize today is based on the so-called Venetian-Piedmontese Tarocchi. The close trade links between Venice and Turkey under the Abuyyid and Mameluk rulers led to Saracenic adaptations of the Minor Arcana, leaving out both Major Trumps and pictorial court cards, both proscribed under Islamic law. The only such fifteenth-century Turkish deck to survive is brilliantly ornamented with Circassian-Egyptian style artistic motifs and is kept at the Topkapi Saray museum in Instanbul. The Tarocki decks of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia also preserve the ancient symbols in the context of gaming.

Looking further back into history, the most ancient essence of the Tarot can be seen to have passed down from the adepts of Gnostic mystery-cults and the doctrines of Hermetic-Neo-Pythagorean magicians, which flourished into the final centuries of the Roman world up to the reign of the last pagan Emperor, Julian the Apostate.

Each of the Greater Arcana of Tarot is termed a "Trump," deriving from Triumphus or Thriambos, meaning a Dionysiac hymn marking a stage or spiritual station in the drama of Initiation in the Orphic Mysteries. The core of the Trumps is the mystical scale of numbers unfolding from the One to the Twenty-One, which relate to the concept of numbers as the Eternal Types or Ideas in the Divine Mind (Nous). These concepts of Arithmancy or Mathesis as the supreme key were taught by Orphic, Pythagorean, and Hermetic-Neo-Platonic schools of magic operant in the late Roman Empire, when Middle Eastern Gnostic religions, including the Hermetic, Mithraic, and Isian faiths, seeped westward into the Mediterranean sphere. Among the principal sources drawn upon by these schools were the teachings of Pythagoras, Plato, Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Apollonius, and Plotinus, as well as Hellenized Egyptian, Chaldean, and Persian mystery-cults then spreading across the Empire. Numbers, as the purest and most abstract conceptions, belong to the most exalted realm of the Mind and ceaselessly project and condition the phenomenal world according to immutable laws. As the Alexandrian Hermetic text "Libellus IV, Discourse of Hermes to Tat: The Krater" says, God then, is like the unit of number. For the unit [One], being the source of all numbers, and the root of them all, contains every number within itself, and is contained by none of them: it generates every number, and is generated by no other number.

In fifteenth-century Italy, where the Tarot sequence crystallized, the great magus Pico Della Mirandola stated as one of his Conclusiones Magicae printed in 1486: "By Numbers, a way is had, to the searchyng out, and understandyng of every thyng, able to be known." To the Hermetic magus, the key of number opened up the ultimate secrets of the universal laws, the mysteries of creation, and of the immortal soul, in accordance with the dictum of Pythagoras that "Number is the Root of All Things."

The Greater Arcana are, in essence, founded upon ancient numerological teachings. This gives a clue as to the actual historical origin of the Tarot Trumps for around 530 b.c.e. Pythagoras left his native isle of Samos due to his distaste for the regime of its ruler, the tyrant Polycrates, and settled in the town of Crotona in "Magna Graecia" (southern Italy), where his esoteric Orphic-Pythagorean brotherhood was established throughout the Greek colonies there. As Cicero notes ". . . many centuries later so flourishing was the fame of the Pythagoreans that no others seemed to be learned men." The Pythagorean mystery-teachings concerning mystic numerology, reincarnation, and the immortality of the soul had a tremendous impact on the Stoic and Platonic circles in Rome for many centuries thereafter, being taught by such initiates as Posidonius in the first century b.c.e. This great revival of the mysticism of Pythagoras combined with the Stoic and Platonic doctrines was called Neo-Pythagoreanism and, according to W. K. C. Guthrie, it especially emphasized the "astral theology and number-mysticism," the magical side of earlier Orphic-Pythagoreanism. Its exponents over the next three centuries included Cronius, Numenius of Apamaea, Nigidius Figulus, and the great magus Apollonius of Tyana. It contributed greatly to the emerging Neo-Platonic philosophy of Plotinus, influenced the Jewish Cabala through the works of Philo of Alexandria, and early Christian philosophy via the writings of Clement of Alexandria. The mediaeval philosopher-mystics such as Nikolaus of Cusa kept the Pythagorean-Platonic tradition alive in Christian Europe.

Having surmised that the originals of the Venetian Tarocchi designs emerged from the number-mysticism of Neo-Pythagorean revival during the period 100 b.c.-a.d. 200, it is fascinating to speculate whether or not some prototype of the Greater Arcana may have been employed by the theurgists and magi of ancient Rome, perhaps painted on vellum or parchment for the use of initiates. The transmission of this Neo-Pythagorean Gnosis underlying the Tarot may have been effected within the ubiquitous mediaeval Guild system which regulated all crafts, arts, and industries in the world of the Middle Ages, including stonemasonry, stained-glass work, ironwork, weaving, and textile work among others. These Craft Guilds, from which speculative Freemasonry would later crystallize, preserved many secret symbols, concepts, and initiatory practices from the pre-Christian past and among stonemasons and others the figure of Pythagoras was especially revered. The Masonic Cooke Manuscript from 1430 relates how Pythagoras and Hermes discovered after the Flood three pillars on which the Elder Wisdom of Angels was inscribed. A. E. Waite remarks that Hermes and Pythagoras were regarded in the mediaeval Masonic mythos as "the saviours of the Ancient Wisdom," and says that "Pythagoras himself appears, but under the name of Peter Gower, as a prototypical Master of the Craft." More importantly to our theory, the manufacture of cards and the continuity and quality of their designs was the province of Master Card-Makers registered in the Guild system. For example, two Master Card-Makers are recorded in the Brabant Guild-Book of 1427 and others, including female card-painters at Nuremburg and other regions. It was doubtless that these Guild Card-Makers in the regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, and Venice preserved the Secret Tradition behind the Tarot and acted as the living link between Graeco-Roman esoteric lore and the mediaeval Tarot symbolism between a.d. 500-1300. It seems very plausible that mediaeval Master Card-Makers within the Craft Guilds preserved the ancient Orphic and Neo-Pythagorean Gnosis of the late Roman culture in the form of the early Italian Tarocchi deck. This would also explain why the earliest Tarot decks almost exclusively originate from the Italic-Roman regions, spreading throughout France, Germany, and Eastern Europe in later centuries. (It may be no accident either that the traditional Marseilles deck of France originates from the region of the early Greek colony of Marsilia in southern Gaul, where the Pythagorean Brotherhood was said to have had a significant presence). If we accept this Neo-Pythagorean origin in Italy around the first century before Christ, the Tarot trumps are seen to represent an astonishing survival of classical Graeco-Roman esotericism into the Middle Ages and an unbroken transmission of ancient pagan Wisdom into the world of today.

Breaking the Tarot Code:
The Tetraktys Key
The long-sought key that unlocks the secrets behind the sequence of Tarot Trumps is the ancient Pythagorean symbol called the Tetraktys. It is composed of ten points arranged in a triangular formation in a descending series (1 + 2 + 3 + 4). (See Figure 1.1.) Theon of Smyrna remarked that the Tetraktys was revered in the Pythagorean cult as a psycho-cosmic glyph embodying the "entire nature of the universe." Initiates called it the Perpetual Fountain of Nature, as it was held to contain the ratios of mathematical harmonies underlying the whole of creation and revealed the emanation of all things from the One and the involution back into that Unity through the Dekad. In the Pythagorean-Orphic Mysteries, initiates swore their oaths upon this sacred symbol that encapsulated their most secret doctrines concerning the soul's immortality, cyclical reincarnation, and the concepts of number underlying the laws of the cosmos. The mystic names and attributes given to the Dekad in ancient Graeco-Roman esotericism are as follows.
The Pythagorean Dekad:
The Tetraktys and the "Gods of Number"
1. Monad: Also termed Apollo, Sol, Zeus, Proteus, Chaos, and Eros as the original Unity and Primal Essence, the One; Taxia ("Order").
2. Dyad: Called Juno-Lucina, Luna, Rhea, and Diana, it is the principle of Duality, the first reflection of the Divine Mind; Analogia ("Equal Proportion").
3. Triad: Called Vesta, Latonia, Thetis, Tritogenia, it represents Harmony, Perfection, the threefold Goddess.
4. Tetrad: Known as Hercules, Bacchus, Bassarius, Pan, Cyllenius, who holds the key to the Four Elements of Nature.
5. Pentad: Called Pronoia ("Providence"), Athanaton ("the Immortal"), corresponding to the Heavenly World and Mercury as the Quintessence of Aether, the Fifth Element.
6. Hexad: Called Venus, Persaea, Amphitrite, Hygeia ("Health"), it is known as the Number of Wedlock, Marriage, and Generation, "the Reconciler."
7. Heptad: Sacred to Apollo, Minerva, and to Mars, titled Telesphoros "Far-Bearing," it represents the ethereal vehicle of the soul; Akropolis ("the Citadel").
8. Ogdoad: Called Dike ("Cosmic Justice"), Law, the Steadfast, and All-Harmonious; also holy to Saturn, the Fates, and Vulcan, it symbolizes perfect equilibrium and balanced equality.
9. Ennead: Called Prometheus, Proserpina, Oceanus, and Horos ("Horizon"), it is the holy number of the Spheres of the Nine Muses.
10. Dekad: Anangke ("Necessity"), Ouranos, and Mnemosyne ("Memory"); a number sacred to Janus, it symbolizes the Cosmic Cycle, the Wheel of Time, Fate, and Eternal Cyclicity (Anakuklosis) originating from and returning to the original source; the Number of Kosmos.

This number scale corresponds to the cards I-X of the Greater Arcana. Cards XI-XX represent the "doubling" of the Dekad, the cosmic cycles of outgoing evolution and ingoing return symbolized by the ancient Cosmic Lemniscate sign of Infinity. Plutarch actually remarks that "the Pythagorean World consisted of a double Quaternion [Tetraktys]," equating to the spiritual and phenomenal realms. In this way the cards are perhaps to be seen in pairs or "dyads," illustrating key concepts of the mystery-teachings.

0-The Fool/XXI-The World: Encompassing all is this primal dyad, symbolizing pure Spirit, "Perfect Mind" embracing "Perfect Wisdom," the Initiate-Fool, and the Mystery-Goddess.

I-The Juggler/XI-Fortitude: Mind as Sovereign over lower Nature; the Source of Magical Mastery.

II-The Popess/XII-The Hanged Man: Holy Wisdom attained by introversion and sacrifice.

III-The Empress/XIII-Death: The Womb and the Tomb; Incarnation/Discarnation; Birth/Death.

IV-The Emperor/XIV-Temperance: The elemental World receiving the numinous Influence.

V-The Pope/XV-The Devil: The Hierophantic Masters of the Heavenly and Chthonic Mysteries.

VI-The Lovers/XVI-The Tower: Synthesis/Breakdown; Love/Wrath; Generation and Destruction.

VII-The Chariot/XVII-The Star: Winged Chariot of the Soul; Aetheric Vehicle; the Sidereal Body.

VIII-Justice/XVIII-The Moon: Cosmic Justice ruling the sub-lunar realm; Permanence amidst Change.

IX-The Hermit/XIX-The Sun: Pilgrimage to the Midnight Sun; transmutation of Lead into Gold.

X-The Wheel of Fortune/XX-Judgement: The causal Cycles of History transfigured in Eternity, Time, and the End of Time.

This primal dyad is perhaps hinted at in the traditional ordering of the Trumps Major in which card 0 comes between XX-Judgement and XXI-The World, signifying that the last two cards are somehow different or to be considered "apart" from the first twenty Trumps, which are founded on the Dekadic symbol.

This is a necessarily brief sketch of a profound and vast subject but presents in a nutshell the "decoding" of the original Tarot sequence according to the pattern of the ancient Pythagorean Tetraktys.

Starry Wisdom: The Tarot Trumps and Astrological Magic Combining with this Pythagorean number mysticism we find a secondary internal scheme of Esoteric Astrology expressing the Essential Dignities, which are planetary rulerships and exaltations in the zodiacal signs, when the heavenly powers operate at their most heightened and pure level without any blockage or obstruction. This aspect of the Tarot as astrological images may have been influenced by lore brought into mediaeval Europe via Byzantium from the Arabian star-cultists and sorcerers of Harran, feeding into the Greater Trumps arrangement perhaps during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries within Hermetic circles in Renaissance Italy under the influence of Marsilio Ficino's revival of Orphic planetary magic. That Renaissance Hermetic magicians like Ludovico Lazzarelli knew the Tarot is indisputable-he took the magic name "Enoch" at his Hermetic initiation and illustrated one of his poems with engravings of the Mantegna Tarocchi images. There are very clear cross-connections between the Tarot Arcana and the star-images and planetary "seals" given in the Picatrix and the works of Agrippa von Nettesheim. The unfolding scale of mystical numbers expresses the mysteries of the emanation of the Cosmos from the Absolute and its eventual return to that source (as Dr. John Dee in the Elizabethan period says of God, "his Numbryng, then, was his Creatyng of all things"), while the astrological correspondences and the Four Alchemical Elements of the Wise represent the astral powers, which are the instruments and media of that process in the "golden chain" that links the highest and lowest realms of existence. The Tarot is a spiritual mirror of the pattern of the microcosm/macrocosm, a complete universe encapsulated in a magical-mnemonic system of planetary impresae (emblems) or telesmatic images for practical use in attaining Gnosis by interior contemplation, in creating links with the star-gods and celestial daimons for achievement of our magical desires and for prophetic divination by consulting the aspect of the stars in the "inner heavens" of the soul. It is a stupendous and elegant system which ultimately integrates mathematical, planetary, sidereal, alphabetic, musical, geometric, sonic, and color correspondences into a flawless and cohesive whole-a perfect Magical Cosmos.
For those who work with them, the Greater Arcana are the Keys of the Mysteries, opening the sealed gates of the Inner Temple wherein the Great Initiations of Isis-Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom, are bestowed upon the initiate soul. The cycle of the Greater Arcana present a psycho-cosmic blueprint of the "demortalization" of the mortal initiate in the Mysteries, the royal way to inner Godhead.

The special imagery of the Tarot thus results from the original Roman system of magical Pythagorean numerology fusing by the late Middle Ages with a memory-system of planetary-zodiacal talisman images used by Hermetic magi. This core was filtered through a dense symbolic mesh of Christian and allegorical imagery along with native pre-Christian folk-symbolism current in fourteenth-century Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. The Christian elements in Tarot symbolism are decidedly heretical and unorthodox. The historian Sir Steven Runciman was of the opinion that the card-images retained traces of the neognostic doctrines of the Cathars or Albigensian heretics of mediaeval France and Italy. It may be noted that the regions associated with the classic Tarot of tradition-Lombardy and Marseilles-were veritable hotbeds of the Cathar heresy in the Middle Ages, including the great Italian Cathar Church, the Ecclesia Albanensis, which had communities at Milan, Verona, and Desenzano.

Tarot also became enriched with new occult nuances following its enthusiastic adoption by the wandering "Bohemians" or Gypsy tribes (whose first appearance at Luneburg in Germany is recorded in the year 1417) as the Romany divination technique par excellence. Early reference to divination by Tarot can be found in Theophile Folengo's Caos del Triperuno, printed in 1527, and Le Ingeniose Sorti composte per Francesco Marcolani da Forli, published in Venice in 1550. The Tarot of the Middle Ages is thus a very ancient stalactite upon which innumerable elements of mystical and magical lore have accreted over several thousand years and which survived largely due to its being cunningly disguised, or unwittingly adopted, as a "game of chance." Its original magical usages centered on working with the images as vinculae or "links" conjoining the higher and lower worlds, as links established within the mind of the magician by deeply imprinting the Arcana through contemplation upon the imagination, often in sync with specific planetary and astral aspects. When the magical enlinkment occurred within the consciousness, the magus would be filled with strange powers and having successfully "wedded earth to heaven" could work marvels and attain his or her ends by supernatural means. The mystics and magicians of mediaeval to sixteenth-century Europe, most notably perhaps Ramon Lully and Giordano Bruno, were preoccupied with employing memory-systems of images as links, realizing the universal pattern of microcosm and macrocosm within the mirror of the Mind and thus attaining a godlike state of cosmic omnipotence as the epitome of the highest level of the Hermetic Mysteries in which the "demortalized" initiate becomes Aion, Lord of Infinity, the Divine Human. Certainly we can regard the Tarot as one such system of "linking images" for magical meditation, for as Plotinus said, "In the Art of Magic all looks to this enlinkment: Prayer and its answer, Magic and its success, depend upon the sympathy of enchained forces."

The Tarot Trumps or Triumphs, understood as a classic arrangement of symbolic links when brought to life within the imagination, enable the realization of the Powers of the Magus, the original unfallen or paradaisal state of humanity. By such practices, the celestial (zodiacal-planetary) originals of the Tarot Trumps in the "outer heavens" above are perfectly reflected in the "inner heavens" of the operator in accord with the magical axiom "As Above, So Below," which underlies their use in divination, mnemonic meditation, and magic. The Great Teacher of these Mysteries is Hermes Trismegistus, the Lord of Arcane Wisdom and archetypal Magus.

Among the Gypsies, the cards were held to be sacred to Tro or Tehutio, the Romany Hermes-Mercury. The nineteenth-century writer J. A. Vaillant preserved some interesting traditions concerning the Tarot as the "sidereal Book of Enoch," which as the "Wheel" (Rota) is linked with the circling revolutions of the seven stars of the Great Bear constellation around the Pole Star as the dispenser of fates and destinies to the world below. This suggests that we may identify the Tarot, on the mythic level, with the Book of the Secret Wisdom delivered to Enoch by the Angels of Heaven as recounted in the Cabalistic text Sepher-ha-Zohar. Moreover, Enoch, a figure of deep import in the Western Mysteries and Masonic lore, was identified with Hermes Trismegistus by the Sabaean cultists of mediaeval Arabia. They regarded the Prophet Idris (Enoch) as synonymous with Hermes Trismegistus as did the Mandaean Gnostics of Iraq. Thirteenth-century alchemical texts equate Enoch as the Primal Instructor in the Mysteries with "Hermes Triplex," King of Egypt. In mediaeval Masonry, Hermes-Enoch was held to have inscribed the Heavenly Wisdom received from the Angels onto great obelisks, tablets, or pillars before the Flood to ensure its preservation and for the illumination of postdiluvian humankind. In a special sense, the Tarot might well be interpreted as this timeless revelation, the original hieroglyphs of the Heavenly Wisdom. No wonder then that orthodox churchmen from the Middle Ages to the Puritan Commonwealth maligned the Tarot as the "Devil's Picture-Book" and for centuries issued endless prohibitions upon card-play and cartomancy, for beneath the cryptic figures of the old card deck they rightly sensed the signs of hidden knowledge, reflecting as in a mirror the timeless essence of the Magical Art. This is the Art of Cartosophy, revealing the inner Wisdom of the cards.

Cartosophy: The Wisdom of the Cards
Magical Meanings of the Greater Trumps
0-The Fool: The Fool is the unnumbered card of the Greater Trumps and can be equally well placed at the beginning or the end as it represents Zero, the Divine Void, the radiant Emptiness at the heart of Reality. The Fool walking along a high precipice in the early morning brilliance with his cat at his heels, bearing a staff twined about with the vine and grapes of ecstasy and an air-filled bladder on a stick can be interpreted as the youthful Dionysus-Zagreus with his panther and thyrsus-wand, as "Green George" the mediaeval Woodwose or Wildman (representing unfallen, innocent humanity in ecclesiastical symbolism) and even as the mysterious "Green Wanderer" of Arab lore, Al-Khidir, whose mythos seeped into Europe after the Crusades. He is the Pure Spirit in the "Age of Gold," the transcendent paradaisal Aeon of Saturnus, which is the abundance of Divine Mind, the boundless Pleroma of the Gnostics. As Pure Spirit, the Fool is poised prior to his "fall" into the realm of experience. The Fool symbolizes the invisible, limitless, divine "breath" (Pneuma), the "Human of Spirit" (Pneumatikos), and corresponds with the "Air of the Wise."

I-The Juggler: The first card bears the symbol of the Juggler, who is a great mountebank, a trickster, and a magician, causing things to appear, disappear, and reappear by sleight of hand and magic cunning-one of Shakespeare's "nimble jugglers that deceive the eye." He is Hermes Logios and swift-winged speech and thought are his gifts. The number One was called the "One Beginning and End" by Pythagorean mystics for it stands for the divine Unity, the One Mind (Gk. Nous) behind everything, which brings the magic show of the worlds into existence and sustains it in motion like a cosmic juggler. In his broad hat the Juggler sports the feather of a magpie, a bird sacred to Gemini. The number One was anciently ascribed to Eros, Sol, and to Proteus, fabled for his ability to take many shapes, just as the one divine essence, though unchanging, appears to become all things. The Juggler is the emblem of mental agility and eloquence, knowledge and communication, and is the image of Mercury in the airy sign of Gemini.

II-The Popess: The figure of the Popess is that of the legendary Pope Joan, herself a Christianized form of the classical goddess Juno-Lucina. The "Juno" in classical lore was the feminine equivalent of the "Genius" or guardian-spirit of an individual and is thus a source of magical intuition and inner knowledge. The sacred peacock of Juno-Lucina is shown standing at the feet of the Popess, who can be identified also with the old Moon-Ladies of Europe, including Diana, Hera-Domina, and Herodias, the Goddess of the Witches, known in Italy as the "Good Abbess." She is Sophia ("Wisdom"), Ennoia ("Thought"), and Epinoia (the "First Thought" or feminine reflection of Divine Mind), Unity reflecting into Duality. The ancients called the number Two Luna, Rhea, Minerva, and "Juno's Deuce." As the feminine dyad, the Popess represents the "Bride of God," Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), secret potentiality, memory, and hidden Gnosis, and is an image of the Moon, Dame Luna herself, in the sign of Taurus.

III-The Empress: The Empress is the Rose-Queen, Dame Venus, and behind her is depicted Venus Mountain (Mons Veneris), which is the entrance to the magical Other World, the Womb of the Great Mother, Dame Nature, the "Garden of Venus" into which descended such questing initiates such as the knight-troubadour Tannhauser of mediaeval German legend. As Dame Venus or Dame Habundia with her "Good Ladies," she is the green-robed goddess of fecundity, love, beauty, and the bountiful earth, as well as being the Mistress of that which lies "beneath" or "behind" Nature-the magic Other World and its wonders. The Mystical Rose is her emblem and represents the Secret Mysteries of Our Lady and her magical Graal-Chalice, which is the all-fruitful vulva of the Magna Mater. The ancient Theurgists called the number Three the "Number of Perfection" and held it sacred to Vesta, Latonia, and the Three Graces. The Empress is the image of the planet Venus in the fertile earth sign of Taurus.

IV-The Emperor: The fourth card bears the stern image of the Emperor, to the mediaeval mind the "Horned Alexander," Caesar, or Holy Roman Emperor in whom the martial authority of the Sceptre and Orb of earthly dominion was vested by divine right. The Emperor represents the paternal-phallic power in action, God the Father and his sovereignty in the world of the four elements, the active fiery virility and dynamism extended to establish the four-square kingdom symbolized by the Cubic Stone for he is the founder and ruler of a worldly empire. The Emperor stands for the dominion of the mortal elements. The number Four was anciently termed "The Key-Keeper of Nature," "The Good" (Agathon), and "Harmony," and was equated with Hercules. The Emperor is the image of Mars in the sign of the Golden Ram, Aries.

V-The Pope: The fifth card bears the image of the Pontiff, clad in episcopal purple, giving the sign of benediction, with the Crossed Keys of the spiritual world upon his breast, as the Supreme Vicar of God, the Pontifex Maximus. As the mysterious "High Priest of God," Melchizedek of Jewish Gnosticism, the Flamen Dialis, the priest of Jupiter in ancient Rome or as the Mithraic Hierophant, the Pope is the epitome of spiritual authority. The ancient Theurgists called the number Five the "Pentad," "Providence," and "Athanaton"-the "Immortal," an epithet of Jupiter-Zeus. This is resumed in the Pentangle upon the Pope's robe, symbolizing the fifth principle, the heavenly Quintessence-Spirit, governing and binding the four mortal elements, the Aether of the ancients emblemized by the lightning flash. The Pope is the revealer of the mystery-teaching, embodiment of ecclesiastical power, religious teaching, inspiration, and spiritual genius. This Trump is the astrological image of Jupiter in Pisces, the sign of the fish (the "Ichthus" symbol of the Christ).

VI-The Lovers: The Lovers is the sixth card, the "Alchemical Wedding" of Male and Feminine Principles, conjoined in a harmonious "Sacred Marriage" of opposites. Over the amorous couple on a cloud hovers Cupid, mischievous Love-God, firing his golden-tipped arrows of infatuation into mortal hearts. In Neo-Platonic lore, Eros, as Divine Love, leads Psyche, the Soul, through many trials to the heights of divine bliss and immortality, to a heavenly wedlock consecrated by the gods. The child of Eros and Psyche was called "Pleasure." Ancient writers on magic called Six the "Number of Marriage and Generation," also "Venus," "Health," and "Amphitrite." In ancient Roman gaming, the six of the dice was called the "Cast of Venus." The Gnostics called the Sixth Day of Creation "Aphrodite," and Iamblichus wrote that the sixth day of the month was devoted to sacrifices to Venus. This card is the image of the planet Venus in Pisces.

VII-The Chariot: The seventh card shows a knightly, armored man bearing a halberd and steering the horsedrawn "Triumphal Chariot." He is the Victor, Mars the Conqueror, and his chariot equates with such cosmic vehicles as the Chariot of Helios and the prehistoric Solar Wagon. Old English folklore states, "Seven are the Seven Stars in the Sky, the Shining Stars are Seven-Oh," referring to "Charles' Wain" or "Our Lord's Wain," old names for the constellation Ursa Major (shown on the front of the chariot). Ancient Theurgists held the number Seven sacred to Apollo and Mars and called it Telesphoros ("Far-Bearer"). Seven was termed the "Vehicle of Human Life," referring to the Pythagorean-Platonic doctrine of the stellar "Aetherial Body" or Winged Chariot of the self-moving Soul. An emblem of Man the Microcosm, this card was called Parvus Mundus, the "Lesser World" in fifteenth-century Italy. It is the image of Mars in the sign of Capricorn.

VIII-Justice: The eighth card is the Trump of "Justice" and shows the goddess with her Scales and Sword, balancing all things against truth and regulating cosmic order. In classical lore, she is the Roman Iustitia, the Titaness Themis, Goddess of Justice, Truth, and Wise Counsel, who delivers the verdicts of the gods. She epitomizes the sacred Balance of the Eight Spheres (the eight concentric spheres of the planets and fixed stars ranged around the earth), thus "Eight is All." Ancient Theurgists termed the number Eight "the Mystery of Justice," "Law," "the Steadfast," and the "All-Harmonious" and held it to be holy to Rhea, Saturn, and the Three Fates. This card is the emblem of the first of the four Cardinal Virtues taught in Stoic philosophy, namely Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance. As the card of exact Justice, which no one violates with impunity, this is the image of the planet Saturn in Libra, the sign of the Scales.

IX-The Hermit: The ninth card bears the emblem of the Hermit, a wandering mendicant-sage, Old Father Time himself, faring by the beams of the lantern on his lonely pathway above the world of men, staff in hand, through the high and lonely places. The Hermit embodies the Saturnian qualities of detachment, independence, and mystical solitude, the stored-up wisdom of age, longevity, and profound contemplation. The ancients called the number Nine the "Ennead of Perfection" and linked it with the Nine Muses and, therefore, with the secret inspiration of the contemplative Mind. The Hermit wanders at the edge of the known world, just as Saturn's orbit guards the outer threshold to the sphere of the fixed stars, for the old magicians also called the number Nine Horos or "the Horizon." In Gnostic teachings, the Horos is the great boundary between this material realm and the Heavenly World, which the initiate must cross. Of the cardinal virtues, the Hermit represents Prudence, and he is the silent spirit of inward meditation.

The Hermit is the image of the planet Saturn in Aquarius.

X-The Wheel of Fortune: The tenth card is the Wheel of Fortune, the circle of destinies revolved by the Goddess Fortuna-Tyche, Lady Luck herself, shown blindfolded to show her impartiality. The Latin inscriptions on her Wheel run, "I shall reign-I reign-I have reigned-I am without reign." The ass-eared figures are caught up in the vanity of transient worldly ambitions and lust for ascendancy, goals which pass away and are illusory, for the Wheel is always turning; it in fact signifies the karmic cycles within the Circle of Anangke (Necessity) or transmigratory Wheel of Rebirth (Kuklos Geneseon) of the Orphic doctrines, in which souls reincarnate. Ancient writers termed Ten "Fate" and "Necessity." Proclus stated that "All Things by the number Ten make a Round" (multiples of ten are still called a round figure). Ten was sacred to Janus, god of the gateway between cycles. This is an auspicious card of a benign turn of luck, the image of Jupiter, the "Greater Fortune," in Cancer.

XI-Fortitude: Eleventh in the Tarot Trump sequence comes Fortitude, in which a maiden is shown mastering a lion, an image derived from the myth of the nymph-huntress Cyrene, who was seen by the sun-god Apollo overpowering a fierce lion on the slopes of Mount Pelion. According to the mediaeval grimoire Secretum Secretorum, a magic ring bestowing the power of dominion contained the image of "a naked girl, tall and strong, riding on a lion, and six men worshipping her, and it is made . . . at the conjunction of Leo and Sol." Another mediaeval spell ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus for the same purpose advises the making of a belt of lion skin with a pure gold buckle in the shape of a lion when Sol is in Leo. Third-century Kushan coins from Iranian Central Asia show the goddess NANAIA riding on a lion. As a syncretic deity she combined the qualities of the Assyrian Ishtar and the Persian Anahita. The mystic significance of Fortitude is that of spiritual strength taming brute power, of subtlety subduing might, of the higher self dominating the lower, a card of sovereign strength and magical kingship. The number Eleven signified supernatural force overruling the natural cycle of life, numinous power to which animal-conditioned nature must yield and submit. Fortitude is the image of the Sun in the sign of Leo.

XII-The Hanged Man: According to tradition the twelfth Trump, the Hanged Man, is Judas Iscariot, suspended by his ankle from an elder tree, thirty pieces of silver cascading from his moneybag. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that in fifteenth-century Italy, political traitors were depicted thus, hanging upside down. Judas was an especially significant figure to the ancient Gnostics. The Hanged Man represents one who has undergone a great reversal, who has renounced his allegiance to the normal world and thus the falling coins signify nonattachment to earthly wealth. It is the emblem of mystical self-sacrifice and represents the total inversion of worldly values, the ordeal of initiation. This card, equating with the Water of the Wise, is one of the four elemental Trumps, and represents the misty river-waters between the worlds, through which the initiate must pass. The number Twelve here stands for the "Dodecameron" or "Twelve Nights," that liminal midwinter period, in between time past and time to be, when the world is turned mystically "upside-down" and all boundaries dissolve.

XIII-Death: The thirteenth card is the Grim Reaper himself with his scythe, drum, and spade. The bony, skeletal Master of the Graveyard, Coffin-Road, and Ossuary, instantly recognizable as the leader of the mediaeval "Dance of Death," the Danse Macabre or Totentanz, a gleeful procession of skeleton dancers once painted on the enclosing walls of cemeteries in the Middle Ages. The "Dance of Death" is itself only a late version of the Wild Hunt led by the God of Death. This is Hades, Thanatos, the Grim Reaper, and Bonesman, the very image of Death, cutting away all surface appearances, stripping the world down to the bones prior to regeneration and resurrection. The symbol resumes the Caput Mortuum-the Mortificatio or Death's Head stage in the alchemical work. In Mithraic numerology, Thirteen is the number of Noxa or Nex, "Destruction," the dissolution of the Ego, and all transient illusions. The realized Orphic initiate was titled Biothanatos, "Living in Death," meaning one who was dead to this mortal realm of illusion. Sic transit gloria mundi. Death is the emblem of Mars the Destroyer in the sign of the Scorpion, deadly house of decay and dissolution, but "Death is the Gate of Life."

XIV-Temperance: The fourteenth card bears the picture of a great Angel wreathed and crowned with white and red rose blossoms and pouring water from one vessel into another. This Trump symbolizes the stoic cardinal virtue of Temperance, a tempering of the lower personality with pure spiritual influx, a mingling of the waters of the higher self into the waters of the lower, for the winged figure shown tempering the waters of life is the Divine Genius, Holy Angel or "Good Daimon," set over each person. In the words of the Psalms, "He shall set his Angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." The card of Temperance reveals the angelic influence acting upon us, protecting and perfecting the individual, informing us with its presence, guiding our lives toward perfection, pouring the clarifying waters of spirit into our troubled earthly existence. Temperance thus represents the alchemical synthesis of immortal and mortal, spiritual transmutation, the supreme combination of opposites. It is the image of subtle Mercury in Virgo.

XV-The Devil: The fifteenth trump bears the traditional image of the goat-horned Devil, clasping his trident. The background to this image lies in the classical cults of the great satyr-god Pan/Faunus and the horned Dionysus-Zagreus, the "One of the Black Goatskin," whose mystic drama forms the heart of the Orphic Mysteries. As a mask of the Horned God, he lived on in Elizabethan England as Robin Goodfellow and Puck (which is an old term for a goat), the Horned God of the Witch-Sabbath, which was customarily celebrated on the fifteenth night (the full Moon) of the lunar month. In Jewish biblical lore, he is the scapegoat, Azazel, chief of the apostate angels who, through pride, arrogance, and lust, turned away from the Supernal Light and fell into matter. He is Samael, whom the Sethian Gnostics called Yaldabaoth and whom they regarded as the Demiurge, who enslaves the world by material ignorance. He is the dark god of time, Aion, or Deo Arimanio of the Mithraic cult. This card is the image of Saturn, the Ancient One, in the goatish sign of Capricorn.

XVI-The Tower: The sixteenth card bears the emblem of the lightning-struck Tower, which to the mediaeval mind signified the biblical Tower of Babel raised by Nimrod, whose titanic ambition to scale the heights of heaven provoked divine retribution. According to some accounts, Nimrod attempted to shoot an arrow from its summit into the "eye of god" and this hubris brought about his downfall (in some early decks this card is titled La Sagitta, "The Archer"). In the original Orphic cultus, it probably represented the blazing "star-flung thunderbolt" of Jupiter-Zeus destroying the Titans who had killed and devoured the infant Iacchos or Zagreus. From the ashes of the lightning-struck Titans, humankind arose and from his heart, which survived, the Divine Infant was resurrected by the gods. Thus the Tower is symbolic of divine justice and destruction preceding Rebirth, the Palingenesis of the Orphic mystery-initiate. This card is the image of the High Thunderer, Jupiter in the sign of Sagittarius.

XVII-The Star: This design depicts the symbol of the "Evening Star," Hesperus Aster (the planet Venus), regarded in the ancient world as "the most splendid Star that shines in the firmament." Sparkling in the western sky after sunset as the harbinger of night's onset, it was called Noctifer, "Nightbringer." In the Mysteries of Mithras, the initiate declared, "Silence! I am a Star, wandering about with thee and shining forth out of the Deep." This represents the descent into the deepest caverns of the netherworld. The seventeenth card shows the naked goddess Venus-Astarte, the maiden Al-Zuhara of Arabic astrology, pouring forth the waters of the stars at her feet to vivify the earth, the spiritual waters of purification and psychic renewal. In Orphic terms the Evening Star represents the descent of the Mystery-God, Iacchos-Dionysus or Zagreus, into the chthonic regions of the underworld, but it signals the sure hope of his regeneration as the Morning Star, Phosphorus Aster, or Lucifer. The Star is the image of the planet Venus in the sign of Libra.

XVIII-The Moon: In the eighteenth Trump, night has fallen and the rising Moon casts ghostly rays over the sinister Gate-Towers of Hades, guarded by ever-watchful Hounds, the Openers of the Way who howl at the pale orb above. This is the dark face of Dame Luna as the "Queen of Phantoms," ancient Hecate-Triformis or Lilith of wild Jewish legendry, Mistress of Night. Hecate was worshipped by the Witches of Thessaly as she "who rejoicest in the baying of hounds and spilt blood, who wanderest in the midst of shades among the tombs, who longest for blood and bringest terror to mortals" and invoked as "Gorgo, Mormo, Thousand-Faced Moon." Gorgo, meaning "Fearful," refers to the serpent-tressed Medusa, whose fanged face is shown in the lunar disc, known by the Orphics as the "Gorgoneion," terrifying those who rashly approach the Underworld and its Mysteries. Here is the realm of Lamiae and Strigae, of vampires, ghouls, and werewolves. Below, a crustacean-creature of the deep emerges from the waters of the unconscious for this is the image of the Moon in Cancer.

XIX-The Sun: The nineteenth card bears the emblem of the Sun, the Heavenly Master, Apollo-Sol, Hyperion or Helios-Mithras, the Celestial King of the Stars, Central Divine Fire, and visible image of God. In a mediaeval Christian context, it is the Light of the World, the Sun of Righteousness. In the Mysteries, it is the revelation of "the Sun shining at Midnight," in which the initiate, mystically identified with "Deus Sol Invictus," is "arrayed like the Sun and set up like an image of the God," as Apuleius tells us. The initiates of Atys joyfully hailed the rebirth of the god with the call "Hail Bridegroom! Hail New Light!" In the walled Garden of the Sun, a youthful couple pay ecstatic homage to the glorious Solar Orb, kneeling by a fire altar decorated with carven ram's heads. Hermetic sages taught that "the Sun is Laughter, for by him laugh all mortal minds and the boundless universe." Nineteen, holy to Hyperborean Apollo, is the number of years in the Metonic Cycle, which aligns lunar phases within the Sun-cycle. This card is the image of the Sun in Aries.

XX-The Judgement: The twentieth card depicts the classic Christian symbology of the Last Day and Resurrection. A mighty angel blows upon the trumpet, which bears the red cross on its pennant, from a sky filled with cosmic flame. This angel is said to be Michael, Arch-Priest of Heaven, who is shown in Chartres Cathedral weighing souls upon the Day of Judgement. Stoic Theurgists taught that at the close of the Platonic Year the cosmos was periodically consumed by fire in the Ekpyrosis. In alchemical terms it is the final purification in the furnace of God. As Basil Valentine wrote, "At the end of the world, the world shall be judged by fire and all those things which God made from nothing shall be . . . reduced to ashes, from which ashes the Phoenix is to produce her young." This is the Fire of Transcendent Wisdom, which burns up time, mortality, and illusion. Purified by Divine Flame, the initiate emerges in the imperishable "Glorified Body" resembling "crystal stone." Twenty represents the "consummation of cycles," and this card corresponds with the Fire of the Wise.

XXI-The World: The final Trump is the World, after the conflagration a "New Heaven and a New Earth" are beheld. Here the design depicts a goddess dancing amidst starry space, bearing a laurel crown in her hand, and framed by a mandorla-wreath in whose corners stand the Angelic "Holy Living Creatures," the beasts of the Four Evangelists, who are the original Assyrian Divine Guardians of the four Fixed Signs of the Zodiac. The dancer is naked as the symbol of release, spiritual freedom, and ultimate reality, liberated from all veils, she is the divine Anima Mundi, the redeemed Wisdom-Goddess who embodies the Arcana Mundi, the "Secret of the World." She can be identified as the Graeco-Persian goddess Anaitis (Anahita) whom Plutarch called Sophia and who later became the feminine Earth-Archangel Armaiti-Zamyat. This card represents the paradaisal perfection of the universe, the realization of pure Truth, the end of all desire. Thus the World is synonymous with the alchemical "Philosopher's Stone," with the Graal-Stone of mediaeval courtly legends. It is the Revelation of Isis-Sophia in which the "demortalized" initiate gains the "Crown of the Magi." Twenty-one signifies "the Microcosm Perfected," and this card corresponds to the Earth of the Wise, the "Earth of Eternity" or World of Light. As a Gnostic hymn says, "To the Universe belongs the Dancer."

The Legend of the Soul: Gnostic Narrative in the Tarot
The race of men is divine
...when, having divested thyself of thy mortal body thou arrivest at the most pure Aether, thou shalt be a God, immortal, incorruptible and death shall have no more dominion over thee.

-Golden Verses of Pythagoras
The sequence of the Greater Arcana in the traditional order unfolds the Gnostic myth of the Spirit's original paradaisal state, its "fall into incarnation," and its ordeals along the Way of the Mysteries until final redemption and release is attained through Knowledge of the Divine Self. Many Gnostic elements have here constellated around the old drama of the Orphic Mysteries and the Neo-Pythagorean teachings. These are the real Arcana, the "Secrets" within the Tarot, encapsulating the ancestry and future destiny of the Soul, opening a royal pathway to perfection and Godhead.

The Pure Spirit (0-The Fool), invisible, boundless, and self-luminous, existed before time in the blissful Pleroma of the "Golden Age." The Divine Mind or Nous began to conceive the archetypal ideas (I-The Juggler) and reflecting itself in the feminine "Sophia" or "First Thought" (II-The Popess) brought the world of duality into being. Attracted by its own reflection, the Soul descended into the Garden of Venus, the womb of the Magna Mater (III-The Empress) and was born into the materially embodied state under the dominion of the mortal elements (IV-The Emperor). The Soul is instructed concerning that which transcends and governs the mortal world, learning of its own Immortal nature in the mystery-revelation (V-The Pope). The grace of Eros, divine love, draws the Soul upward to the vision of higher reality (VI-The Lovers) glimpsed through the human beloved. Realizing its own nature as the ruling power of the microcosm, the Soul harnesses its lower energies (VII-The Chariot) traveling in accordance with cosmic Law (VIII-Justice) toward the highest goal and leaves the world of men behind to seek inner solitude and detachment (IX-The Hermit); contemplating the "sorrowful, weary circle" of life, death, and rebirth (X-The Wheel of Fortune) with all its vicissitudes and suffering, the Soul frees itself from the bonds of fate by sublimating the lower animal nature (XI-Fortitude) by spiritual discipline and going "against the grain," renouncing and reversing all usual worldly values (XII-The Hanged Man) in a great sacrifice by which he "passes the river," crossing over the Styx at the "time between the times" to become one of the "Dead," those who have "died" to their mortal nature (XIII-Death). The Angel-Daimon (XIV-Temperance) tempers the Soul with the numinous influence and leads the way to the dark Guardian of the Threshold, the dread Saturnian Master of the Outer Circle (XV-The Devil) who must be passed. Then the last structure of the profane ego is destroyed by the Thunderbolt of enlightenment (XVI-The Tower) utterly obliterating material-centered ignorance. The Evening Star shines as a guide into the darkness which must be penetrated and a sign of hope and renewal, refreshing the pilgrim-soul with the Waters of Memory as the proclamation is made, "I am a Child of Earth and Starry Heaven but my origin is of Heaven alone" (XVII-The Star). Now the deepest night has fallen and the consciousness-principle travels through an eerie chthonic landscape, through the twilight of spectres and terrors, mirages, and night-fears; here the world is seen as a realm of illusion (XVIII-The Moon) until finally after the darkest hour the glorious vision of the Midnight Sun greets the Soul and light floods the world in a miraculous blaze of joy and triumph (XIX-The Sun). The old fallen world and mortal persona are consumed to ashes in the fire of higher consciousness and from the furnace comes forth the imperishable gold, the resurrection into the glorified state (XX-Judgement) like the phoenix from the flame. The final Mystery is the realization of the Pure Reality by the perfected consciousness, the Demortalization or Apathanatismos has occurred, the Release or Apolytrosis of the deified initiate in an ecstatic Regeneration. Sophia, the Wisdom-Goddess, is redeemed and dances in rapture (XXI-The World); the Fool has gained the Crown of Gnosis, the Mortal has become Divine.

Edition details

• Publisher: Llewellyn Publications
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1567183654
• ISBN 13: 9781567183658
• Binding: Cards
• Number of pages: 160