The Greater Trumps (Paperback) (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

Williams had a genius for choosing strange themes, making them believable & suggestive of spiritual truths. The Tarot, the ancestor of all playing cards, is 1st mentioned in history in 1393. The origin of the deck is unknown. Tradition has it that the gypsies brought it from Egypt & that it was used for fortune telling. The deck was thought of as having magical properties. The most powerful of the cards were the Magic Arcana or Greater Trumps, 22 symbolic pictures whose mysteries have been interpreted & reinterpreted not only by occultists, but also by religious thinkers, psychoanalysts & literary anthropologists. Perhaps the most exquisite of these interpretations is the one contained in this extraordinary novel. In Williams' universe, sorcery can kill & the supernatural must be fought by the supernatural. But beneath the this imaginative surface is concealed a meticulously thought-out Christian message.
Williams-novelist, poet, critic, dramatist & biographer-died in his native England in 5/1945. He had a lively, devoted following there & achieved considerable reputation as a lecturer on the faculty of Oxford University. T.S. Eliot, Dorothy Sayers & C.S. Lewis were among his distinguished friends & literary sponsors.