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The Egyptian Tarot

by Comte C. de Saint Germain. Notes by Stuart Kaplan.

The Egyptian Tarot
Price: $18.00

Number of cards in deck: 78

Measurements: 2.4 x 4.4 inches, or 61 x 112 mm.

Back of card: The same papyrus color as the front, the same brown ink as the front. Right-side up, and, below it, upside down, the famous funeral mask of Tutankhamun, "King Tut". May be inverted, but does not contrast well with the front.

Booklet included: Yes, 36 pages, 2.4 x 4.15 inches, or 60 x 105 mm. English only. The copy in the deck I worked from was crudely trimmed.

Publisher: US Games. Printed in Belgium.

Comments: This deck was originally illustrated in the pages of Practical Astrology (1901), by the Comte C. de Saint-Germain, a writer on astrology, palmistry & tarot active around the turn of the 20th century (eg, not the elusive Hungarian nobleman of the French Revolution of 1789). I am not sure if it has ever before been printed as a deck. It was the inspiration for C.C. Zain's Brotherhood of Light Tarot (c.1936), which closely resembles it.

Cards in this edition of Saint-German's Egyptian Tarot are numbered 1 - 78. (The Fool is number 22 & known as the Crocodile.) For some fortunate reason, I have a comb-bound copy of Practical Astrology on my shelves. In it, I see the original tarots had no labels or numbers. Absolute numbers, of course, tend to flatten the differences between majors, minors, face cards & pips, but this is, essentially, a Marseilles-type deck, with Egyptian motifs in the major arcanas & court cards. Court cards are Master, Mistress, Warrior & Slave.

The Major Arcana. Titles on the cards are as given in the book:
1. The Magus.
2. The Gate of the Sanctuary.
3. Iris-Urania.
4. The Cubic Stone.
5. The Master of the Arcanes.
6. The Two Ways.
7. The Chariot of Osiris.
8. The Balance & the Sword.
9. The Veiled Lamp.
10. The Sphinx.
11. The Tamed Lion.
12. The Sacrifice.
13. The Reaping Skeleton.
14. The Two Urns.
15. Typhon.
16. The Thunderstruck Tower.
17. The Star of the Magi.
18. The Twilight.
19. The Dazzling Light.
20. The Rising of the Dead.
21. The Crown of the Magi.
22. The Crocodile.

An interesting deck.

The Astrology Center of America

207 Victory Lane, Bel Air, MD 21014
Tel: 410-638-7761; Toll-free (orders only): 800-475-2272

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