1st 2002 379pp Duckworth. Illustrated. Near fine in near fine dustwrapper.
 
A history of the tarot from 1870 - 1970. When the Tarot pack was invented in Italy in the early 15th century, it was simply a pack of cards, used for playing games. Esoteric interpretations of the pack date from late eighteenth-century France, and were confined to that country for a hundred years. Now the cards are used throughout the Western world and not only for fortune telling. For real believers, the cards are a key to secret knowledge of the meaning of life.
 
Practiced by secret groups such as the Order of the Golden Dawn, by magi such as Aleister Crowley - the ‘Great Beast’, and by psychics such as Dion Fortune, the occult interpretation of the Tarot pack is a worldwide phenomenon with countless devotees. The roots of the whole modern Tarot mystique lie in theories propagated by the occultists studied in this fascinating history.