A Taste of Bacon Sir? - The Secret of Shakespeare

[David Guyatt]

I understand your reservations, Steve. For you it's an academic study.

One possible problem that you might be encountering when trying to trace origins is that so much of the esoteric lore was transmitted as an oral tradition --- from mouth to ear --- and was not written down (and when written down was full of blinds impenetrable to the uninitiated. This oral tradition may create the impression that knowledge leapt whole from one period to another, and one place to another, without there being an apparent trail.

In regard to the the origin of the Tarot, Paul Foster Case states in his slim volume, The Esoteric Keys to Alchemy:

The Western literature of alchemy can be traced back to the days when Alexandria was the meeting place for the group of adepts of the Inner School who later transferred their activities to Fez, and from that city issued the earliest versions of the Tarot.

He adds that much of its doctrine was definitely Neo-Platonic, which in turn is tinged with ideas brought to Alexandria by wandering teachers from India, and that, therefore there is a mixture of Hindu thought, Egyptian Magic and Greek Philosophy in these Hermetic teachings that were set forth in alchemy and Tarot.

This might be of some help, I think.

Pythagoras was certainly in Egypt (538 BC), but before the Library was built, and then taken to Babylon by Cambyses II (525 BC), then, perhaps, traveled to India, after which he returned to Samos (517 BC), then moved to Croton in Magna Graecia in the south of the Italian peninsula where he founded his famous school (509 BC, the year the Roman Republic was founded at Rome). What I find suspicious is that both the tarot and many of Shakespeare's plays have deep roots in Italy, so it's fair to ask whether Marlowe might have moved to Italy because he was somehow associated with an organization that had its headquarters there. Keep in mind that Marlowe was suspected of having Catholic sympathies and, but for the intervention of the Privy Council, would therefore never have received his Masters Degree, so I wouldn't rule out an organization with Catholic aspects. Pythagorean Catholics? The idea isn't necessarily as strange as it sounds. Note the association of the tarot with Sister Manfreda of the Umiliata Order.

Waite could then have been involved in this same group and its British branch and received the true meaning of the tarot therefrom. Or, he could simply have decoded it the way I did. It's really not hidden all that well. It may not have been intentionally hidden at all.

If it's not hidden at all well, as you suggest, then what is the true meaning of the tarot? Just curious...