The two leading researchers into the esoteric legacy of the tarot discuss the significance of their discoveries, which overturn the prevailing academic orthodoxy, and in doing so transform our understanding of the role of tarot in Western esotericism.

Two Esoteric Tarots is the record of a fascinating conversation between Peter Mark Adams and Christophe Poncet, convened and with a foreword by César Pedreros. They compare their journeys of discovery into two wildly contrasting tarot decks, the dark ritual landscape of the elite Sola-Busca tarocchi, as revealed in The Game of Saturn, and the luminous and popular Tarot de Marseille, the subject of the forthcoming Tarot of Marsilio. Scholarly research has firmly maintained that the tarot had no spiritual, esoteric or divinatory dimension before the mid-eighteenth century. However, working independently, Peter Mark Adams and Christophe Poncet have shattered that consensus with their original research, providing abundant evidence that pushes back the date of an esoteric tradition – concealed in plain sight – by almost three centuries. Readers of The Game of Saturn will find Peter Mark Adams’ most recent thinking here, as he decodes the ritual grammar of a performative theurgy which encompasses the grotesque, the abject and the antinomian in service of a draconian deity and Renaissance statecraft. Parallel to this, Christophe Poncet discovered Platonic philosophy embedded in the imagery and construction of the Tarot de Marseille. A revelation which propelled him into a profound investigation, unearthing connections between the Florentine aristocracy, the Medici family, Marsilio Ficino, Botticelli, and the heretical philosophical underpinnings of the Italian Renaissance. When brought into dialogue, Adams and Poncet’s insights converge, to illuminate and fundamentally change our understanding of the tarot, and the submerged currents of the Renaissance, both dark and light, which formed Western esotericism. A benchmark text for students of the tarot, symbolism, theurgy and performative ritual from two of the leading researchers into the hidden legacy of the tarot.