Tarot of the Bohemians, along with the
Pictoral Key to the Tarot,
constitute the core literature of 19th and early 20th century 'Tarotism'.
However, PTK is to the TOB as arithmetic is to differential calculus.
If you have no experience reading occult literature of this period,
you may find yourself profoundly lost after the first couple of pages,
staring at the abundant and profoundly esoteric
tables, charts and diagrams, trying to get a clue as to what Papus
is talking about.
Papus is after a 'Theory of Everything', and finds evidence for it
in the Tarot and a set of correspondences with everything from
the tetragrammaton to numerology and astrology.
His claim that the Tarot preserves ancient, profound knowledge by way of
the Romany/Gypsies (i.e. 'Bohemians') all the
way back to Egypt, India and Atlantis is unsubstantiated.
There is no evidence of any kind of playing or fortune-telling
cards prior to the thirteenth century, either in literature or folklore.
Note that playing cards could not have become popular until the
introduction of printing in Europe.
The Tarot is believed to have originated from an elaborate deck of cards
invented in Italy in the fourteenth century.
The Romany people probably started to use this deck for cartomancy
(fortune telling by cards) about a century thereafter.
As Papus notes, all of the early cards depict people dressed in the
costume of this period.
Late in the book, Papus condescends to pen a section, in his words,
'for the ladies' (cue Barry White music here),
which gives some basic instruction in cartomancy using the Tarot deck.
However, this is by far the weakest portion of this book.
Papus is at his best when he is spinning elaborate webs of
correspondence between the Tarot and the Macrocosm.
This book is hard work, but if you master it you will have a profound
grasp of the inner life of the Tarot deck.
