Tarot Majors

This is a new English language translation of the G.O.M (Gregory Ottonovich Mebes) Tarot Majors course, orginally published in Russia in 1912. In the words of one tarot enthusiast "the world has been waiting!" for the work of Mebes to be made available in English and there is considerably excitment across various occult and esoteric communities about this publication.

A teacher of mathematics and physics at prestigious schools in St Petersburg, G.O.M (mystery name, Butator) was a highly respected leader of the Russian Martinist movement whose Encyclopaedia of the Occult (based largely on the teachings of Papus) was very popular in his home country, a land enthralled by the theory and practice of mysticism, magic and spirituality. G.O.M. and his wife, Maria Nesterova, were at the centre of several elite initiatory groups in St Petersburg until his arrest in 1926 by the Soviet secret police (the OGPU), in the infamous Case of the Leningrad Freemasons.

This book is intended to both honour the memory of the St Petersburg occultists and provide a resource for present day students of the Tarot and other Hermetic arts. Images of the Tarot Trumps created by Papus are included, alongside sketches based upon these that featured in the Russian publication of G.O.M's lecture series. We have also included explanatory notes and reflections from other important Tarot books and teachers, including the masterwork of Christian Hermeticism, Meditations on the Tarot and the occult writings of Eliphas Levi, P.D. Ouspensky and Paul Christian.

This new publication of the G.O. Mebes Tarot Majors course is presented against a backdrop of growing Western interest in Russian Spirituality, magic and history, as tantalising fragments from once-forgotten archives and notes salvaged from the literary purges of the Russian civil war gradually start coming to light.