Philippe Camoin

Philippe Camoin devant le tableau d’un de ses ancêtres de la Maison Camoin

When Alexandre Jodorowsky and I met in Paris, the fact that we were going to collaborate on the construction of a major work imposed itself on our minds like an obvious truth. It was very quickly that we made the decision to work together, in order to restore the Tarot de Marseille to how it was originally. We have in our respective careers, studied Symbolism across a multitude of streams of thought during our entire lives. What superb synchronicity to meet, precisely at the moment when it would become a necessity… To be more explicit and go further, we could say that our entire lives had prepared us to work together, and that this meeting was not the result of random chance.

The two first years were used for collecting, gathering, consulting and sharing countless documents, as well as authenticating diverse sources; this approach allowed us to eliminate data that could not be corroborated. A laborious task!

The next two years we were then able to reconstruct to perfection, with a computer, the original lines and strokes with constant and meticulous care. The computer work proceeded in three major phases: the analysis of all the documents from the different periods, where we examined each card literally under a magnifying glass, enlarged enormously thanks to a zoom technique; the comparison by transparency of all the cards of the different periods so as to find the authentic features in an appropriate manner; and the drawing of the new restored traits. This work on the computer took around 5000 hours.

I attempted to reconstruct the Tarot de Marseille to how it was originally, the original deck no longer being available to the world. This reconstruction implemented a complex process of comparison of the symbols present in numerous European decks. This procedure was carried out in accord with the tradition of the Tarot de Marseille which was transmitted to me from the heirs of this legacy. It required an extremely precise initiatory logic that would be rather difficult to summarize here, this is one of the treasures that are revealed to my students at the various trainings and seminars that I give all over the world.

The original symbols had faded away over the successive generations of Master Cardmakers who followed each other in the reproduction of the Tarot de Marseille. I admit that we did not expect, in the beginning, to find so many details and to end up with such a result. The discovery of the egg of the eagle in card IIII was a decisive event, and it confirmed to us that an incredible number of forgotten symbols were hidden therein, waiting simply to be revealed. The other discoveries allowed us to understand and to be able to teach the logic with which the Tarot was constructed originally. Among the other restored symbols, in the range of the easiest to understand in general, there were the two serpents at the feet of Temperance, and the four elements in the Ace of Cups. Do not let the clarity of the result and the simplicity of the drawing lead you to believe that it was easy work! Sacred Art is an extremely complex Art, which can rival any of the modern sciences. Because if these symbols, "hidden" for more than three centuries, appear quite obvious today once they have been uncovered, it demonstrates that this knowledge was marvelously sealed and in a mysterious way. Today, the Tarot itself has chosen to be reborn among us and to reveal itself anew. The Tarot is a mute book, a cosmic computer whose goal in our time is to give a Planetary Initiation…