Wirth Oswald. The Tarot of the Magicians

Samuel Weiser, 1990. — 224 p. — ISBN13: 9780877286561.In 1889, the occultist Oswald Wirth completed a first set of designs for the twenty-two Major Arcana cards of the Tarot. Combining imagery and symbolism from Alchemy, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and from the magical heritage of Egypt and Chaldea, Wirth also added details—such as the ascription of each card to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet—taken from Éliphas Lévi and Stanislas de Guaita, Wirth's mentor.
The deck made an immediate impact on occult scholars of the time and influenced no less a person than A.E. Waite, whose famous Rider–Waite deck appeared in 1910. Seventeen years later, in 1927, Wirth issued a detailed, encyclopedic survey of the tarot, its symbolism and divinatory uses, under the title Tarot des imagiers du Moyen Age, which contained improved designs of the Major Arcana cards.
This important work is here translated into English for the first time, offering all tarot enthusiasts and students of the occult an in-depth and authoritative analysis of one of the most beautiful and evocative of all modern tarot decks.