Textual errors, or departures from the original, before the conclusion

Most of the gross translation errors are in the Conclusion. However there are a couple early on, ones so obvious they perhaps doesn’t count as errors as opposed to a choice. First, of course, is the title, “Imagiers” is not “Magicians”. It means “image-makers”, an appropriately broad term that includes sculptors, painters of frescoes, illuminators, perhaps even writers who describe a painting, imaginary or real. To put after “imagiers” the phrase “des moyen age” means that the tarot he is concerned with is that based on medieval images. Whether there was an earlier sequence of images corresponding to the tarot before the late Middle Ages is an issue he wishes to set aside.

Then very soon comes another error that is surely another choice. It is in the translation of Wirth’s “Papesse”, a French word he was careful to put at the bottom of his card, visible even in the English translation of his book. The translation of “Papesse” is not “Priestess”, but “Popess”. “Papesse” is a term that first occurs in connection to the tarot, first documented as “Papessa” in a late 15th century Italy list of the special cards. The corresponding English term, by analogy, is “Popess.”

One error the English translation does not fall into is an egregious one in the 1966 Tchou French edition and all subsequent French editions and reprints, or at least ones with the introduction by Roger Caillois—even as late as October 2014. The Tchou/Caillois switches the divinatory meanings for the Popess and the Pope. So the Popess, card 2, gets Gevurah and strictness, while the Pope, card 5, gets Hochmah and wisdom. Such a switch is manifestly absurd, given Wirth’s Kabbalistic framework, in which card 2 corresponds to sefira 2, card 5 to sefira 5, and so on for all the cards up to 10. It also contradicts what said in the chapter on each of these cards before the part on “divinatory meanings”, which is the chapter’s end and conclusion. In making the switch, however, Tchou failed to switch the footnotes, which are grouped by chapter. There is a footnote indication (the small “1”) in the Popess meanings but no such footnote for that page in the back of the book. Instead, the footnote is listed in the group for the Pope card, for the page with the divinatory meanings.

Here are the relevant pages: first, the Papesse divinatory meanings in the original edition:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifvzLAbLJ9uubQOYNgC0xaaEj4LgiAn4eAZEAbRei1-hCvBhtkVg5FaQKpiNtRF0x8XuCWbade1XwkEA1UIqlXCZ2rzturTDRbEsgJGe1K1lCGiiMd1fn_iqlv5P3eh2mYnWY7yRhYO6M/s1600/wirthPapesse1927.tif

And then in the Tchou edition (I used the 2014): https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8L3c-bhZi0ACXCjfCoMqGt7k0l84MiemSSIcHCzCp0qli0VCrksfgA43mMG4amOiNLm4YsvgqCVIGSGdQKvklDt1ZWRqGnAdwaSwSaeEp99OLiy2str72Ziea_P_i85k_F1sS0A76ryE/s1600/WirthPapessa2014.tif

You can see how it is Hochmah in the original and Geburah in the reprint.

And here is the divinatory meanings section of the reprint's "Pope" section (after which "L'Amoureux" follows. You can see how the Hochmah meanings ended up here: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrlZ9-07pmxD_-LDzdMlaFdQ32qVfzRbd-ZNZZ838d5hhcFnLazohGLLfKOBuHcjEFuYBtOS0lb2wg_vaoVeJ99bXARdeZ0Tk2WCC7iX3mrMYhvYEm4X-iD6MWzgHGmZ3iNRtBE6ZLI8Y/s1600/WirthPapa1.tif

It might be argued that the switch was inadvertent, owing to the fact that in both cases there is nothing on the reprint's page except the divinatory meanings, and there is no page number at the bottom of the page. Possibly, but the switch, which started in 1966, continues to this day. With no page numbers on the pages to be switched, it would be an easy error to fix.

There is one place where a discrepancy between versions is clearly deliberate rather than inadvertent, this time in the English translation rather than in the French editions. In the chapter on Temperance, in the part on divinatory meanings, the English translation reads “mysteries of water and fire”, whereas the original (repeated in the French editions) has “mystères de l’eau et du froid”, i.e. mysteries of water and cold. Did the French typesetter inadvertently introduce a word different from that in Wirth’s manuscript, or did Wirth really mean “cold”?

It might help to look at the context. The surrounding text has:

Transmutations d'ordre vital. Alchimie psychique. Régénération. Mystères de l'eau et du froid. Miracles. Fontaine de Jouvence.

The English translation, however, says:

Transmutation of a vital order. Psychic Alchemy. Regeneration. Mysteries of water and fire. Miracles. The fountain of youth.

There is no way that froid, which means "cold", can be translated as "fire". So which is right?

Earlier in the chapter, Wirth had given an alchemical analysis of the Temperance lady’s two jugs:

En Alchimie le sujet, noirci à souhait, donc mort et purifié, est soumis à l'ablution. Cette opération utilise les pluies successives provenant de la condensation des vapeurs, qui se dégagent du cadavre sous l'action d'un feu extérieur modéré, alternativement activé puis ralenti. De ces pluies réiterés résulte le lavage progressif de la matière, qui, du noir passe au gris et finalement au blanc.

And the published English translation:

In Alchemy the subject, blackened as much as he wishes, hence dead and purified, then undergoes ablution. This operation uses the constant waters formed through condensation of vapours which emanate from the corpse by means of moderate fire outside, which is, in turn, allowed to flare up and die down. From this repeated action of making water results the cleansing of the subject who turns from black to grey, then finally to white. 

There are some minor errors here, but nothing that the reader could not figure out by himself or herself: “blackened as much as he wishes” should be “blackened as much as wished”; “constant” should be “continual”; and the “who” in the last sentence should be “which”.

From this passage one would think that the “de l’eau et du froid” (“water and cold”) later should have been “de l’eau et du feu”, i.e. “water and fire”.

Earlier he had discussed the two jugs, the lower one of gold, the upper of silver. Gold is associated with the sun and the warmth of day, silver with the moon and the cold of night. In that case it could be “mysteries of hot and cold” or even “mysteries of fire and cold”, since fire is hot. Since the moon is associated with water as well as the cold of night, it could also be “mysteries of water and fire”. But not “mysteries of water and cold”.

I can find nothing at all in the preceding narrative that talks about “froid”, cold, specifically. There is one passage in which he says of the “angel” in relation to the flower that “it [the angel] waters it [the flower] or condenses the morning dew on it so as to allow it to resist the heat of the day”. But this is not about cold specifically; it is about the tendency of heat to dry out something.

I conclude that in this passage the English translation has correctly changed the meaning of Wirth’s printed text. I only wish that the translator had given a footnote explaining this choice.


There are a few errors in the translation of Wirth's alchemical terminology in chapter 5. On p. 46 of the 2012 English version (p. 50 of the earlier one),  Wirth distinguishes among three things, "Antimony", "Verdigris" and something called "Venus of Bronze." The French has "Vénus ou Cuivre", meaning "Venus or Copper". Venus is the goddess associated with the metal copper.

Later in the chapter (p.49 of the 2012, p. 52 of the 1985) there is mention of something called "Oil or Sulphur". It should be "Oil of Sulphur". Also, the usual name for the opposite of "dry" in English is "wet" rather than "humid" or "damp", even if the French has "humide".

In general the translation is really excellent, however--except in the Conclusion, which I will take up next.