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“ The science of will, the beginning of all wisdom and source of all power, is contained in twenty-two Arcana, or symbolical hieroglyphs, of which each attribute veils a sense, and of which the whole composes an absolute Doctrine, which is summed up in the memory by its correspondence with the letters of the sacred language and with the numbers which appertain to those letters. ”

“ The student will therefore perceive that it is an astrological system. In fact, the science of astrology is a part of the Taro, and was taken from it, in all probability, and is therefore not so perfect as the system of which it forms only a portion.
It is a well known saying in India that an Astrologer without clairvoyance is like a wife without a husband. So it is with the Taro. In order to use it with complete success, the artist must have attained to lucidity. ”

“ This race had gradually discovered that to gain knowledge by the external senses only, as even the lower animals do, was a very slow process, and that the life of man was too short to enable him, however great his natural genius might be, to achieve more than a very limited and uncertain result having only some remote relationship to the great truths of the universe. ”

“ By ordinary men, whose reasoning powers are ruled,—rather should we say, are thrown into disuse, warped, or even obliterated by the mists of prejudice, the extreme antiquity of this book would be sufficient to cause them to consider it merely as a venerable toy played with in the infancy of the world, and not to be seriously considered in this highly enlightened nineteenth century. The true occultist, divesting himself of'every prejudice, as of a garment which would impede him in the race he has to run, investigates all things ”

“ This so-called primitive epoch was in reality a time of the greatest intellectual activity in a race of men who had for many generations been in the ascending scale of civilization, scientific culture, and attainment of knowledge. ”

“ In Paris, an elaborate pack of Taro cards may be bought for eight francs with a book. of instructions by the notorious and illiterate whilom barber, Etteilla, entitled, “Art de tirer les Cartes.” It is used by ladies and others “pour dire la bonne fortune.” It is a mere fortune-telling affair, of little or no use to the student of true occultism. It is almost needless to say that the French and Italian Taros, as now made, are very imperfect. The Italian was once made properly in Marseilles with the right colours, which is a very important part, but we are told that this manufacture has ceased. ”

“ The importance of the colours will be better understood by a short reference to the Chinese Taro.
The Chinese do nothing like other people, and, as might be expected, their Taro is peculiar to themselves, though the same correspondence with nature’s law is its principle. It is composed of straight lines distinguished by different colours, instead of hieroglyphical coloured forms as in the Indian and Egyptian. ”

“ The six sub-results or forms are therefore combinations of the first primary form or unity, only that each three must be an imperfectly balanced entity when taken by itself—some of them containing two masculine and only one feminine principle, and vice versa, but if we associate them in pairs, thus putting
we get divine attributes 3 red and three blue in each pair. The three pairs forming a sub-perfectly balanced trinity, in so far as they contain (as just said) an equally associated group of the divine principles, each pair being perfect in itself. ”

“ Each arcanum, made visible and tangible by one of these pictures, is a formula of the law and of a human activity in its relation with the spiritual forces and the material forces the combination of which produces the phenomena of life. ”

“ Tt has been sedulously inculcated recently that we Westerns have not the natural qualities for success in occultism, and that the natives of the East are the only possessors of these natural gifts. It is quite true that they did once possess them in perfection, but to any one calmly considering the history of India, it is evident they have lost them, have not for generations made proper use of the stupendous secrets contained in their own sacred books, the Vedas, and have fallen into a state of physical and moral degradation. ”

“ They knew that nothing whatever happens by chance, and that if, under certain conditions, man’s imagination and will are concentrated upon any subject he wishes to know, what may appear as a fortuitous disposition of the leaves of the Taro, becomes to the seer an open book in which he may read an answer to the question seriously occupying his mind. The leaves or cards are placed in the form of a circle, which consists of four trines. 4x3=12, or the 12 signs of the zodiac, or 12 houses of heaven. In the center are placed the four modes of conceiving creative unity or the four aces. ”

“ It is known to adepts that there should be 22 esoteric keys, which would make the total number up to 100. We have not ourselves yet seen these 22 esoteric keys, and we know of no one possessing them. 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, these supernal intelligences themselves furnish the 22 esoteric keys, or impress their symbolic signature on 22 blank cards prepared by the student. ”

“ Even in this its mutilated and imperfect condition, in many villages even in England, there are still elderly women who by it do foretell, accurately enough, small events about to happen in the lives of simple village folk. These small predictions are of vast importance to them. The only explanation of this is, that these women by constantly contemplating the cards and concentrating their attention on a certain class of subjects do become clairvoyantes sufficiently to foresee some small events, aided by what remains in this imperfect Taro, of what may be called its once divine origin. ”