Date of Award
6-2000
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Comparative Religion
First Advisor
Dr. Brian C. Wilson
Second Advisor
Dr. Francis Gross
Third Advisor
Dr. Rudolf Siebert
Access Setting
Masters Thesis-Campus Only
Abstract
The present study is a textual analysis of Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism (1972), a significant work of twentieth-century Western esotericism written by the Russian-born, apostate Anthroposophist Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973). In his key work, Tomberg draws spiritual insights from a variety of Eastern and Western sources and fuses them into a larger Hermetic/Christian cosmology. However, three intellectual sources for Meditations on the Tarot are particularly salient. These influences are the nineteenth-century French occult tradition, epitomized in the work of the French tarot theorist Eliphas Levi (1810- 1875), Rudolf Steiner"s (1861-1925) esoteric movement of Anthroposophy, and a curious Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox/Russian mystical blend, which alternately conforms to and diverges_from standard Catholic doctrine. To highlight the connection between these sources and Tomberg's work, I have compared elements of Tomberg's cosmology with central ideas from each. This eclectic quality distinguishing Meditations on the Tarot simultaneously reflects modernity's religious and intellectual fragmentation and traditional esotericism's tendency towards syncretism.
Recommended Citation
Slagle, Amy A., "Modern Christian Esotericism: A Textual Analysis of Meditations on the Tarot" (2000). Masters Theses. 3769.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/3769