Mysticism [modify] By the early 18th century Masonic writers and Protestant clerics had actually established the tarot trumps as authoritative sources of ancient hermetic wisdom and Christian gnosis, and as revelatory tools of magnificent cartomantic motivation, but they did not stop there. In 1870 Jean-Baptiste Pitois (much better referred to as Paul Christian) wrote a book entitled Historie de la magie, du monde surnaturel et de la fatalit travers les temps et le peuples.
Christian provides an extended analysis of ancient Egyptian initiation rites that involves Pyramids, 78 actions, and the initiatory revelation of tricks. Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett compose: At one phase in the initiation procedure, Christian tells postulant climbs down an iron ladder, with seventy-eight rungs, and goes into a hall on either side of which are twelve statues, and, in between each pair of statues, a painting.
Each corresponds to a "letter of the sacred language" and to a number, and each expresses a reality of the magnificent world, a reality of the intellectual world and a reality of the physical world. The secret significances of these twenty-two Arcana are then stated to him. Christian's efforts to provide authority to his analysis by wrongly attributing an account of ancient Egyptian initiation rites to Iamblichus, but it is clear that if there is any initiatory significance to the tarot defeats it is Christian who is the source of that info.
Papus (a. k.a. Dr. Grard Encausse). Subsequent to this activity the initiatory relevance of the tarot was strongly developed in the minds of occult practitioners. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sBY-NTk_Hg of the tarot as an initiatory work of art was coincident with, and in shape perfectly into, the flowering of initiatory esoteric orders and secret brotherhoods throughout the middle of the 19th century.
g. Dr Papus, Franois-Charles Barlet, and Josphin Pladin). These orders put terrific emphasis on secrets, advancing through the grades, and initiatory tests therefore it is not surprising that, already having the tarot to hand, they read into the tarot initiatory significance. Doing so not only lent an air of divine, mystical, and ancient authority to their practices but permitted them to continue to state on the wonderful, magical, significance of the probably ancient and hermetic tarot.