Knapp-Hall

The Knapp-Hall Tarot carries two significant names: J. Augustus Knapp, the visionary illustrator, and Manly P. Hall, whose Secret Teachings of All Ages remains the great one-volume monument of esoteric synthesis. Hall commissioned Knapp's deck as part of that encyclopedic project, tarot as one room in his museum of the mysteries, and the cards carry the Philosophical Research Society lineage: traditional structure, esoteric symbolism assembled by a scholar who had read everything and an artist who could paint it. As a document it stands beside the era's other curriculum decks, B.O.T.A., Brotherhood of Light, each an American esoteric institution issuing its visual textbook; Hall's differs in being a synthesist's rather than an order's, eclectic where they are doctrinal. It suits readers of Hall's works, students of American esoterica's golden age, collectors of institutionally rooted decks, and historians of the tradition's Los Angeles chapter. Casual readers will find it stately; it was painted for a library, and shows it.