Seeing the World: Tarot Signposts on the Path to Perception is a major recent translation of Jean-Claude Flornoy’s Le pelerinage des bateleurs. The following is a pastiche of observations that I made during and after reading the book.
Part One blends fact and speculation in presenting the Legend and History of the Tarot. As far as origin stories or Tarot myths are concerned, this has to be my favorite so far. Flornoy’s basic thesis is that the Tarot is a repository of the traditional knowledge recorded in graphic form of the exiled craftsmen of the Compagnonnage. Essentially, they present a record on paper of the same knowledge that was recorded in stone within the architecture of the Cathedrals (as you can read about in Fulcanelli). As such, there is much in this book that may appeal to Freemasons and others interested in esoteric organizations. I was recently inspired to look more closely into Maître Jacques, the legendary founder of the Compagnonnage, based on the anecdotes on his website. One of the best sources in English that I encountered was Chapter V “The Companionage, or Les Compagnons du Tour de France” of Gould’s History of Freemasonry Throughout the World, Volume 1.
In Part Two Flornoy develops his idea that the Tarot was developed by a descendant of the Compagnonnage who assumed the personnnage of a Muslim and adopted the framework of the Jewish Kabbalah as a pattern to produce a series of Christian images. He believes that the Tarot bears a superficial structural relationship and aim to the Kabbalah but ultimately departs from it in methodology by communicating in images rather than words. This paragraph summarizes his views in this Chapter very nicely,
It seems that Flornoy consistently flirts with occultism and spirituality in his ideas regarding the Tarot but never quite reaches these domains, instead taking refuge in psychology as something of a more sober approach.The Tarot emerged out of the science of building construction. And it is the building of the inner man that it teaches, step-by-step. Its images depict the various states of energy as they circulate in the body, the vitality, the thirst to exist, the impulse to radiate. It is a philosophy of stages of action that communicates with the unconscious through images and the alchemy of color.
Ultimately, I had mixed feelings toward the book. In addition to much that is of value, he made occasional references to new age terms and subjects such as NDEs and rebirthing that I don’t find interesting. The further I read in his book, the more I was reminded of why I stopped reading occult books many years ago. Each promises to provide the secret key to untold riches but most of the time is spent wading through the mud looking for the occasional nugget of gold. Each tarot author seems to come equipped with his or her own vision of the key to the tarot that distorts the immediate experience of looking at the cards.
He also seemed to succumb to the problem of systematization. While the journey toward mastery possesses intrinsic interest as a conceptual framework, it was frequently employed to force interpretations that are not immediately evident in the images. A good example is the description provided of La Papesse when he stated that she “personifies the artisan and the farmer. Her element is earth.” It is possible to read this into the card if you have a destination already in mind, but I don’t think that some of these ideas are intrinsic to the images.
On the other hand, some of these approaches yield unexpected fruit as when he proposed a symbolic key to the colors of the Noblet in the traditional “jingle” of the Compagnons du Devoir. Although there may be some historical validity to the speculation that this poem was at the background of the mind of the traditional craftsman as he worked, I suspect that he was generalizing from his own personal experience, and it was moreso to his own mind that he was referring thereby disclosing some of the personal details of his creative process and inspiration.
When faced with such a prominently displayed image of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life in a work on the Tarot, my normal reaction is to promptly close the book and return it to the shelf, but I have such respect for Flornoy’s artistry that I suspended my normal judgements to give him a fair reading and I realized that each of these things has contributed in some way to his remarkable recreations.
The book is available from the Letarot Artisan’s Boutique. Most of the main points of the book are also included in the essays featured on the author’s website The Tarot of Marseilles and the French Tradition. Finally, complete scans of his carefully reconstructed Noblet, Dodal, and Vieville decks are available on the World Web Playing Cards Museum courtesy of the author.
) that yes, remove all the nonsense from the Tarot. Remove all those kabbalistic rectified stuff and the astrological fantasies, by all means let's remove the insanity that has taken hold in some cases, but please please don't forget that behind the Tarot is a great tradition. A tradition that has roots in Platonism, in early Christianity, in Eastern mysticism of the desert, in Hermeticism and the three-times-great. It abounds in mythology and symbolism. And the cathedral builders. 
felt point