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Abstract
If the trumps- the cards that were added to the regular playing deck in the fifteenth century to create the actual gaming deck of Tarot that became associated with fortune-telling and "occult" or esoteric practices in the eighteenth century and meditation and popular culture in the twentieth century- were treated by the Surrealists, that portion of their deck is not considered here. The strength of the collection as a whole indeed seems to be the authors' more or less common realization of correspondences, with or without other purported esoteric associations, as the basis of practices, conducted both inside and outside the contexts of ritual and secret societies, that are means of investing meaning in all aspects of the human experience - and also form the substance of art. In spite of the obvious seriousness and relative secretiveness invested in "authentic" esoteric practice, many people, whether or not they know anything, in the "academic" sense, about Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and so forth, are profoundly affected by representations in art and literature that convey ideas about the unquantifiable aspects of the universe and, on this level at least, are ever ready to be entertained by and to indulge in "esoteric" concepts. -