Xul Solar and the Tarot

I’m Esther Levy. I’m a Curatorial Assistant at the Morgan Library & Museum. 

Argentine visionary artist, Xul Solar, had a longstanding interest in the occult that predated the creation of his 1954 tarot deck, on view in this vitrine. Around 1914, during a trip to England, Solar was first exposed to the teachings of Aleister Crowley, and, according to some scholars, he potentially met Crowley and Austin Osman Spare on this visit. He went on to read books such as Crowley’s The Vision and the Voice, as well as Arthur E. Waite’s Key to the Tarot, which he continued to consult until his death in 1963. 

While the circumstances around their introduction are uncertain, we know that Crowley and Solar met in 1924. At that time, Solar was initiated into one of Crowley’s magical organizations, the Astrum Argentum, and was assigned by Crowley to meditate on the hexagrams of the IChing – a classical Chinese divinatory text – and to record his visions in both writing and drawing. These works would later be dubbed the San Signos (or literally “Holy Signs”) by Solar’s close friend, the renowned writer Jorge Luis Borges. 

Crowley regarded Solar as an exceptionally talented visionary artist, and his writings on the tarot likely influenced Solar's highly symbolic 1954 tarot deck. Compared to his earlier 1918 deck – which follows the Marseille model – this later work is remarkably original and blends astrology with Neo-Criollo, a hybrid language Solar invented.