A Journey into Christian Hermeticism by Valentin Tomberg
It was first published posthumously and anonymously and was written in French by the Russian mystic and polymath Valentin Tomberg, and subsequently translated into English by Robert Powell.
Tomberg was born in St Petersburg . Although brought up a Lutheran, he was attracted to the Orthodox Church. In 1920 he fled with his family to Estonia, where his mother and pet dog were shot by Communists. He studied Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Kabbalism and Hermeticism and in time was considered the Heir-Apparent to Rudolph Steiner. In 1938 with his wife and son he moved to Amsterdam, where in the war he was active in Dutch anti-Nazi resistance by hiding allied pilots and parachutists. He received a Ph.D. in jurisprudence from the University of Cologne, where he had moved in 1944; and there in 1945 he was received into the Catholic Church.
After the war he moved England and worked for the BBC Russian monitoring service. During that time he wrote his magnum opus, The Meditations on the Tarot.
In my opinion it is one of the outstanding spiritual and religious works of the 20th Century.
Please click on the images to go to the Introduction and then to each of the 22 cards.
