Written anonymously and published posthumously in 1980 at the wishes of its author, Meditations on the Tarot has been translated from the original French by writer and esotericist Robert Powell, who lives in Germany. Widely considered one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, the Swiss-born Hans Urs von Balthasar, who wrote the afterword in this new edition, was nominated by Pope John Paul II as a cardinal in 1988, and died in June of that year, two days before his inauguration.