27/04/2015 Foreword | Free Hermetic­Christian Study Center — www.fhab.org

https://www.readability.com/articles/lxvbnhda 1/3

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Foreword | Free Hermetic-Christian Study Center

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(From „Meditations on the Tarot“, Verlag Anton Hain,Meisenheim am Glan 1972, Translated into English from theGerman rendering by Gertrud von Hippel.)

These meditations on the Major Arcana of the Tarot are lettersaddressed to the unknown friend. Anyone who is prepared to readthem all and then out of the experience of a meditative study ofthem will have come to know what Christian Hermeticism isabout, can consider himself recipient of these letters. He willknow too, that the author of these letters will have divulged moreabout himself in the letters than he could have done in any otherway. He will have got to know the author himself better throughthese letters than he could have done from any other source.

These letters are written in French because in France a literatureconcerned with the Tarot has existed since the 18th century tothis day, i.e. the second half of the 20th century – a phenomenonone does not find anywhere else. Similarly there exists in Francean ongoing hermetic tradition – and it lives on persistently – thatcomprises the spirit of free research as well as devotion to thewritten record and living tradition. The contents of these letterswill therefore “incarnate” into this tradition, - i.e. become anorganic part of it as well as render a contribution to it.

27/04/2015 Foreword | Free Hermetic­Christian Study Center — www.fhab.org

https://www.readability.com/articles/lxvbnhda 2/3

As these letters are appointed to serve as support andcontribution to the Hermetic tradition, whose origins trail awayin historic distances that have long since become legendary as theepoch of Hermes Trismegistos, they are a tangible enunciation ofthe age old stream of Thought, Endeavour and Revelation.Their aim is not only to let the tradition revive in the 20thcentury, but also – and  preeminently - to let the reader, or ratherthe unknown friend, dive into this stream, - be it for a time, be itforever. Therefore the many quotations of modern and ancientauthors that you will find in these letters do neither serve literarypurposes nor purposes of erudition. They are invocations of themasters of the tradition to be present with their impulses givingimpetus to the striving and clarity of thought in the stream ofmeditative thought presented in these 22 letters on the MajorArcana of the Tarot. Fundamentally they are 22 spiritualexercises through which you, dear unknown friend, maysubmerge yourself in the stream of the living tradition and soenter the Community of Spirits that have served it and continueto serve it.

The quotations in question merely serve the purpose of lettingthis community stand out the more strongly. For the members ofthe chain of the tradition are not merely thoughts andendeavours, they are above all the living beings who thoughtthese thoughts and made these endeavours. The being of thetradition is no mere teaching. It is rather a community of spiritsfrom age to age.

Nothing remains to be said in this foreword to the meditation-letters on the Tarot, because all other questions concerning themwill find their answer in the letters themselves.

27/04/2015 Foreword | Free Hermetic­Christian Study Center — www.fhab.org

https://www.readability.com/articles/lxvbnhda 3/3

                     Your friend greets you, dear unknown friend, frombeyond the grave.

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Original URL:http://www.fhab.org/vorwort_meditation_Grossen-arcana_taro