The Origins of Tarot
Even though symbols used in tarot cards may have come to us from the ancient cultures of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and China, the origins of the Tarot deck and its use in divination are much more recent. According to the International Tarot Society, Tarot comes from northern Italy, where it was introduced sometime between 1420 and 1440. At first, the Tarot was just a new type of card game, similar to bridge, which was played by the upper class in Italy and France.
The tarot cards were handcrafted and elaborately illustrated. As the game became more popular and spread, each artist would add to or change the illustrations according to his cultural interests. Today, early tarot decks are highly prized by collectors because these works of art are windows through which you can view the history of the time period when the cards were made.
Tarot and the Occult
Although a witchcraft trial in Venice in 1589 may be seen as an indication that Tarot was used in divination, it wasn't until the 1700s that these cards generally became associated with occultism. Antoine Court de Gébelin (1725–1784), a Swiss pastor who became involved in matters of the occult, came to believe that the roots of Tarot extended all the way back to ancient Egypt and that the tarot symbols contained secret knowledge that had long since been forgotten. Gébelin's ideas were embraced by Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738–1791), who maintained that the cards were somehow connected to mystical ideas found in the Book of Thoth.
What is the Book of Thoth?
The Book of Thoth is a mystical book attributed to the Egyptian god Thoth, the inventor of writing, who was believed to have known the secrets of the Universe. It is said that forty-two of his books are still buried in the Hall of Records, physically located somewhere under the Sphinx.
Another hundred years passed, and in the 1850s French occultist Alphouse Louis Constant, writing under the name of Eliphas Levi, linked tarot cards to the teachings of Jewish mysticism, or the Kaballah. Constant, who was a priest and a Rosicrucian, believed that Tarot was also related to the Bible.
Then in 1909, the Order of the Golden Dawn, a hermetic society that studied divination and magic, commissioned A. E. Waite to create a tarot deck using Golden Dawn's special symbolism. That deck, now known as the Waite-Smith set, has continued to be the most widely used in the United States, although there are many different styles on the market as well. (This chapter will refer to the Waite-Smith set. If you would like to use an alternate set, the interpretations for each card may not apply.)
A. E. Waite standardized the tarot deck to include seventy-eight cards, divided into the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana is comprised of twenty-two thematic trump cards that represent archetypal forces in your life. With the exception of the Fool, each card in the Major Arcana is assigned a number. The Minor Arcana includes fifty-six cards subdivided into four suits: cups, swords, wands, and pentacles (originally, wands were polo sticks and pentacles were coins). Each of the suits contains ace through ten, plus page, knight, queen, and king. The cards of the Minor Arcana can help you focus on your direction in your life journey.
