The Illuminati Tarot: Keys of Secret Societies
Casey DuHamel, illustrated by Bob Greyvenstein · Schiffer · ISBN 9780764352706
Casey DuHamel is a former member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and an initiate of AMORC, the Rosicrucian order. The 176-page guidebook is a history book with a deck attached, written by someone who worked in the system personally.
What you get
- 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana, 56 Minor Arcana with full courts
- 176-page companion guidebook
- Rigid presentation box, 9¼ × 6 × 1¾ inches
- Weight: 1.93 lbs
- Complete and ready to read out of the box
About the deck and the art
Each division of the deck belongs to a different fraternity. The Major Arcana go to the Priory of Sion. Cups go to the Rosicrucians, Swords to the Freemasons, Coins to the Martinists, and Wands to the Golden Dawn. Every card gets historical background, imagery notes, an in-depth meaning, and keywords in the guidebook.
Bob Greyvenstein is a South African illustrator and graphic designer, and his work here runs saturated and theatrical, with deep jewel colors, dramatic light, and robed figures in painted interiors. The card titles use Roman numerals in the older continental style, and the underlying structure follows Rider-Waite-Smith closely enough that no relearning is required.
Provenance and tradition
Four of the five fraternities in this deck are documented history. Rosicrucianism enters the record with the manifestos published in Germany from 1614. Freemasonry has continuous lodge records, with the first Grand Lodge organized in London in 1717. Martinism descends from Martinez de Pasqually and Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin in eighteenth-century France. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded in London in 1888 and shaped nearly everything in modern Western ceremonial practice, including the tarot correspondences most readers use without knowing where they came from.
The Priory of Sion belongs to a different category. It was registered as a small French association by Pierre Plantard in 1956, and the medieval pedigree attached to it was constructed afterward, including forged documents deposited in the Bibliothèque nationale. Plantard acknowledged the fabrication under oath in 1993. The story reached a wide audience through The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and later The Da Vinci Code.
The Bavarian Illuminati was a real organization, founded by Adam Weishaupt at Ingolstadt in 1776 and suppressed by Bavarian edict within a decade. It is not one of the five societies in this deck.
Who this is for
Students of Western esotericism who want the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucian, and Masonic material in one place with pictures. Readers in initiatory traditions, since the degree structures, oath forms, and ritual grammar of modern witchcraft came largely out of these lodges, and this guidebook is a readable way into that lineage. Collectors of history-driven decks.
