Tarot

:This article is about the structure, card imagery, and history and origin of tarot decks, which are used for spiritual, esoteric, psychological, occult and/or divinatory purposes. See Tarot (game) for information about the traditional European card game.

Origin and History

The tarot deck

As an institution, the Roman Catholic Church and most civil governments did not routinely condemn tarot cards during tarot's early history. In fact, in some jurisdictions, tarot cards were specifically exempted from laws otherwise prohibiting regular playing cards. However, some sermons inveighing against the evil inherent in cards can be traced to the 14th century. No mention of playing cards in the context of gambling and other marks of dissolute life precede the sudden appearance of a barrage of hostility in the 1370s: a sermon by the Swiss Johannes von Rheinfelden, Tractus de moribus et disciplina humanae conversationis states that "the game of cards has come to us this year" (said to be 1377, in the 15th-century surviving manuscript) without inveighing against them, but prohibitions against cards were issued by John I of Castile and the cities of Florence and Basel that same year and by the city of Regensburg the following year and in the Duchy of Brabant in 1379 http://www.snopes.com/history/world/cardking.htm. Bernard of Siena gave a sermon reviling cards as the invention of the Devil in 1423. However, other sources praised cards as an educational tool.

Related Topics:
John I of Castile - Florence - Basel - Regensburg - Duchy of Brabant - Bernard of Siena

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In Pietro Aretino's witty 16th-century dialogue Le carte parlanti ("The talking cards: dialogue in which gaming is discussed in a congenial fashion") there are frequent references to tarot symbolism: "The temptation of the hermit is the devil," and some irony on their uses: "...They reveal the secrets of nature, the reason for things, and explain the causes why day is driven out by night and night by day." http://www.tarothermit.com/more.htm

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The oldest surviving Tarot cards are three early to mid-15th century sets, all made for members of the Visconti family, rulers of Milan. The oldest of these existing Tarot decks was perhaps painted to celebrate a mid-15th century wedding joining the ruling Visconti and Sforza families of Milan, probably painted by Bonifacio Bembo and other miniaturists of the Ferrara school. Of the original cards, 35 are in the Pierpont Morgan Library, 26 cards are at the Accademia Carrara, 13 are at the Casa Colleoni, 4 cards (the Devil, the Tower, the Three of Swords, and the Knight of Coins) being lost or possibly never made. This "Visconti-Sforza" deck, which has been widely reproduced in varying quality, combines the Minor Arcana (suits of Swords, Staves, Coins and Cups, and face cards King, Queen, Knight and Page) with Major Arcana that reflect conventional iconography of the time to a significant degree.

Related Topics:
Visconti - Sforza - Ferrara - Pierpont Morgan Library

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More simply drawn decks survive from various cities in France at various times (the best known in this context being the city of Marseille, in southern France) perhaps from the early 16th century, though actual surviving examples are no earlier than the 17th century.

Related Topics:
Marseille - France - 16th century - 17th century

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Much speculation surrounds early tarot cards, including the notions which follow. There is no reason to be confident that the surviving set of Major Arcana is complete. Of the four Classical Virtues, only Fortitude, Justice and Temperance remain. Can Prudence have always been missing? The Christian Virtues that would ordinarily complete them (i.e., Faith, Hope and Charity) are missing, however. The presence of the Fool and the Magician has often suggested a portable catechism for the illiterate, which survives in cartomancy. All the heavenly sources of Light, so important to Dualist heretics, are present in the Major Arcana, without any planets that would have been required for any meaning associated with astrology, the usual context for heavenly bodies. Indeed, of any possible signs of the Zodiac, only the dual-natured Twins are present. It is unlikely that their Zodiac context is being referred to, in which case all the others would have to have gone missing. Traces of medieval dualist heresy, such as the Bogomils taught, or the Cathars, whose centers were precisely where the earliest Tarot surfaced in Piedmont and Provence, can be also detected in the paired balance, not merely of Emperor with Empress, but, significantly, by Pope with Popess, with echoes of the Pope Joan myth and of the gnostic Pistis Sophia. The substitution of a more neutral "Hierophant" designation for the nameless high priest is a modern one. Steven Runciman, in The Medieval Manichee (1947), doubted the Catharist connection: "There seems to me to be a trace of Dualism in the pack, but it has since been overlaid with debased Kabalistic lore." He recognized the traditional interpretation of the Devil as the embodiment of the evil natural forces of this world, holding a naked man and woman in chains, and suggested in the Tower struck by lightning, a Cathar view of a Roman Catholic church. However, historians have found little evidence to substantiate many such speculations.

Related Topics:
Virtues - Cartomancy - Astrology - Zodiac - Bogomil - Cathar - Piedmont - Provence - Pope Joan - Gnostic - Pistis Sophia - Kabalistic

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Study of the iconography of the earliest tarots via standard comparative-historical methods suffices to pin the origin of the depiction of Death as after the Black Death, because the skeletal-death-with-a-scythe motif found on effectively all versions of Trump XIII does not predate the plagues. Before then, skulls in pictorial art were primarily symbols of scholarship and learning.

Related Topics:
Black Death - Skulls in pictorial art

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Use of tarot cards in divination

Since the Egyptianizing ruminations in Le Monde primitif by Antoine Court de Gébelin (1781) which soon inspired the occultism of "Etteilla," it has been believed by many that the Tarot is far older than this. Based on purported similarities of imagery and reinforced by the added numbering, some claim that Tarot originated in ancient Egypt, Hebrew mystic tradition of the Kabbalah, or a wide variety of other exotic places and times. Such ideas, however, are speculative.

Related Topics:
Antoine Court de Gébelin - Etteilla - Ancient Egypt - Hebrew - Kabbalah

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In fact, although much of imagery looks mysterious or exotic to modern users, nearly all of it reflects conventional symbolism popular in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Nearly all of it may easily be interpreted as a reflection of the dominant Christian values of the times. Thus, the earliest Tarots may have been depictions of the carnival parades that ushered in the Christian season of Lent or the related motif of hierarchical powers found in Petrarch's poem I Trionfi. These trionfi or triumphs were elaborate productions which layered then-fashionable Graeco-Roman symbolism over a Christian allegory of sin, grace, and redemption. Notably, the earliest versions of the World card show a conventional image known from period religious art to represent St. Augustine's "Heavenly City", and it is not coincidence that it often closely follows the Judgement card.

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Several other early Tarot-like sequences of portable art survive to place the Visconti deck in context. Later confusion about the symbolism stems, in part, from the occult decks, which began a process of steadily paganizing and universalizing the symbolism to the point where the underlying Christian allegory has been somewhat obscured (as, for example, when the Rider-Waite deck of the early Twentieth Century changed "The Pope" to "The Hierophant" and "The Popess" to "The High Priestess"). It is notable that between 1450 and 1500 the Tarot was actually recommended for the instruction of the young by Church moralists (reference is urgently needed here); not until fifty years after the Visconti deck did it become associated with gambling, and not until the 18th century and Gébelin and Etteilla with occultism.

Related Topics:
Rider-Waite - Twentieth Century

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The Tarot cards eventually came to be associated with mysticism and magic. This was actually a late rather than early development, as we can tell from period sources on card divination and magic. The Tarot was not widely adopted by mystics, occultists and secret societies until the 18th and 19th century. The tradition began in 1781, when Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Swiss clergyman and Freemason, published Le Monde Primitif, a speculative study which included religious symbolism and its survivals in the modern world. De Gébelin first asserted that symbolism of the Tarot de Marseille asserted represented the mysteries of Isis and Thoth. Gébelin further claimed that the name "tarot" came from the Egyptian words tar, meaning "royal", and ro, meaning "road", and that the Tarot therefore represented a "royal road" to wisdom. Gébelin asserted these and similar views dogmatically; he presented no clear factual evidence to substantiate his claims. In addition, Gébelin wrote before Champollion had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs. Later Egyptologists found nothing in the Egyptian language that supports de Gébelin's fanciful etymologies, but these findings came too late; by the time authentic Egyptian texts were available, the identification of the Tarot cards with the Egyptian "Book of Thoth" was already firmly established in occult practice.

Related Topics:
Mysticism - Magic - 18th - 19th century - 1781 - Antoine Court de Gébelin - Swiss - Clergy - Freemason - Symbolism - Mysteries - Isis - Thoth - Egyptian - Champollion - Egyptian hieroglyph - Egyptologists - Etymologies

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Although tarot cards were used for fortune-telling in Italy in the 1700s, they were first widely publicized as a divination method by Alliette, also called "Etteilla", a French occultist who reversed the letters of his name and worked as a seer and card diviner shortly before the French Revolution. Etteilla designed the first esoteric Tarot deck, adding astrological attributions to various cards, altering many of them from the Marseille designs, and adding divinatory meanings in text on the cards. Etteilla decks, although now eclipsed by Smith and Waite's fully-illustrated deck and Aleister Crowley's "Thoth" deck, remain available. Later Marie-Anne Le Normand popularized divination and prophecy during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. This was due, in part, to the influence she wielded over Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife. However, she did not typically use Tarot.

Related Topics:
Astrological - Aleister Crowley - Marie-Anne Le Normand - Napoleon Bonaparte - Joséphine de Beauharnais

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Interest in Tarot by other occultists came later, during the Hermetic Revival of the 1840s in which (among others) Victor Hugo was involved. The idea of the cards as a mystical key was further developed by Eliphas Levi and passed to the English-speaking world by The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Lévi, not Etteilla, is considered by some to be the true founder of most contemporary schools of Tarot; his 1854 Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (English title: Transcendental Magic)introduced an interpretation of the cards which related them to Cabala. While Levi accepted Court de Gébelin's claims about an Egyptian origin of the deck symbols, he rejected Etteilla's innovations and his altered deck, and devised instead a system which related the Tarot, especially the Tarot de Marseille, to the Kabbalah and the four elements of alchemy. On the other hand, to this day some of Etteilla's divinatory meanings for Tarot are still used by some Tarot practitioners.

Related Topics:
1840s - Victor Hugo - Eliphas Levi - Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - 1854 - Kabbalah - Four elements - Alchemy

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Tarot became increasingly popular beginning in 1910, with the publication of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, which took the step of including symbolic images related to divinatory meanings on the numeric cards. (Arthur Edward Waite had been an early member of the Golden Dawn). In the 20th century, a huge number of different decks were created, some traditional, some vastly different. Thanks, in part, to marketing by the publisher U.S. Games Systems, the Rider-Waite-Smith deck has been extremely popular in the English-speaking world beginning in the 1970s.

Related Topics:
1910 - Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot - Arthur Edward Waite - Golden Dawn

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Tarot decks depict the archetypes of spiritual life, see iconography.

Related Topics:
Archetypes - Iconography

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Differences among decks

Tarot cards serve many purposes, and this leads to a variety of Tarot deck styles. Traditionally, a variety of styles of Tarot decks and designs have existed. A number of tyical regional patterns emerged. Historically, one of the most important design is now usually known as the Tarot of Marseille (French: Tarot de Marseille). This standard pattern was the one studied by Court de Gébelin, and cards based on this style illustrate his Le Monde primitif. The Tarot of Marseille was also popularized in the 20th century by Paul Marteau. Some current editions of cards based on the Marseille design go back to a deck of a particular Marseille design that was printed by Nicolas Conver in 1760. Other regional styles include the "Swiss" Tarot; this one substitutes Juno and Jupiter for the Papess and the Pope. In Florence an expanded deck called Minchiate was used; this deck of 96 cards includes astrological symbols and the four elements, as well as traditional Tarot cards.

Related Topics:
Tarot of Marseille - Paul Marteau - Nicolas Conver - 1760 - Swiss - Juno - Jupiter - Florence - Minchiate - Astrological

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Some decks exist primarily as artwork; and such "art decks" sometimes contain only the 22 cards of the Major Arcana. Esoteric decks are often used in conjunction with the study of the Hermetic Qabala; in these decks the Major Arcana are illustrated in accordance with Qabalistic principles while the numbered suit cards (2 through 10) sometimes bear only stylized renderings of the suit symbol. However, under the influence of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, decks used in the English-speaking world for divination often bear illustrated scenes on the numeric cards to facilitate divination. The more simply illustrated "Marseille" style decks are nevertheless used esoterically, for divination, and previously for game play. (Note that the French card game of tarot is now generally played using a relatively modern 19th-century design. Such Tarot decks generally have 22 trumps with genre scenes from 19th-century life, a Fool, and have minor arcana that closely resemble today's French playing cards.)

Related Topics:
Esoteric - Qabala - Marseille

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An influential deck in English-speaking countries is the Rider-Waite deck (sometimes called simply the Rider deck). (See also discussion of the general expression "Rider-Waite-Smith" below, to indicate a category of decks that includes the "Rider-Waite" deck as well as decks which use the line drawings of the Rider-Waite deck, such as the Universal Waite deck.) (In contrast, in French-speaking countries, the Marseille deck enjoys the equivalent popularity.) The images were drawn by artist Pamela Colman Smith, to the instructions of Christian mystic and occultist Arthur Waite, and originally published by the Rider Company in 1910. While the deck is sometimes known as a simple, user-friendly one, its imagery, especially in the Trumps, is complex and replete with occult symbolism. The subjects of the trumps are based on those of the earliest decks, but have been significantly modified to reflect Waite and Smith's view of Tarot. An important difference from 'Marseille'-style decks is that Smith drew scenes on the numeric cards to depict divinatory meanings; those divinatory meanings derive, in great part, from traditional cartomantic divinatory meanings (e.g., Etteilla and others) and from divinatory meanings first espoused by The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of which both Waite and Smith were members. However, it isn't the first deck to include completely illustrated numeric cards. The first to do so was the 15th-century Sola-Busca deck; however, in this case, the illustrations apparently were not made to facilitate divination.

Related Topics:
Pamela Colman Smith - Arthur Waite

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Some individuals object to the Rider-Waite deck due to its relatively small selection of colors and "flat" appearance. However, several decks, such as the Universal Waite, copy the Smith's line drawings, but add more subtle coloring and three dimensional modeling. The limited number of colors and "flat" appearance in the orignal Rider-Waite-Smith decks were virtually unavoidable due to the limits of printing technology in the early 20th century.

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In Internet tarot discussion groups, the Rider-Waite deck and very similar decks, e.g., the Universal Waite, are sometimes referred to by the collective term "Rider-Waite-Smith", "RWS" or "Waite-Colman-Smith" (or similar expressions). Numerous other decks that are loosely based on Rider-Waite (as noted below)have been published from the mid-20th century through today. They are sometimes called Rider-Waite-Smith clones; however, the term is misleading. They are not exact copies as the term clone would imply. Instead, they are variations.

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A widely-used esoteric Tarot deck is Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot (pronounced "tote" or "thoth"). Crowley engaged the artist Lady Frieda Harris to paint the cards for the deck. The Thoth deck is distinctly different from the Rider-Waite deck. That said, many consider the Rider-Waite deck and the Tarot de Marseille also to be 'esoteric' decks.

Related Topics:
Thoth Tarot - Lady Frieda Harris

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In contrast to the Thoth deck's colourfulness, the illustrations on Paul Foster Case's B.O.T.A. Tarot deck are black line drawings on white cards; this is an unlaminated deck intended to be coloured by its owner. Other esoteric decks include the Golden Dawn Tarot, which is apparently based on a deck by SL MacGregor Mathers and clearly based on the teachings of the Golden Dawn. Numerous other decks exist, including the Tree of Life Tarot whose cards are stark symbolic catalogs, and the Cosmic Tarot.

Related Topics:
Paul Foster Case - B.O.T.A. Tarot - Golden Dawn Tarot - SL MacGregor Mathers - Tree of Life Tarot - Cosmic Tarot

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The Marseille style Tarot decks generally feature numbered minor arcana cards that look very much like the pip cards of modern playing card decks. The Marseille numbered minor arcana cards do not have scenes depicted on them; rather, they sport a geometric arrangement of the number of suit symbols (e.g., swords, rods, cups, coins) corresponding to the number of the card (accompanied by botanical and other non-scenic flourishes), while the court cards are often illustrated with flat, two-dimensional drawings.

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Other modern decks created since the time of the first publishing of the Rider-Waite deck in 1909 vary in their card imagery. The variety is almost endless, and grows yearly. For instance, cat-lovers may have the Tarot of the Cat People, a deck complete with cats in every picture. The Tarot of the Witches and the Aquarian Tarot retain the conventional cards with varying designs. The Tarot of the Witches deck became famous/notorious in the 1970s for its use in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die.

Related Topics:
Tarot of the Cat People - Aquarian Tarot - 1970s - James Bond - Live and Let Die

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These modern decks change the cards to varying degrees. For example, the Motherpeace Tarot is notable for its circular cards and feminist angle: the mainly male characters have been replaced by females. The Tarot of Baseball has suits of bats, mitts, balls and bases; "coaches" and "MVPs" instead of Queens and Kings; and major arcana cards like "The Catcher", "The Rule Book" and "Batting a Thousand". In the Silicon Valley Tarot, major arcana cards include The Hacker, Flame War, The Layoff and The Garage; the suits are Networks, Cubicles, Disks and Hosts; the court cards CIO, Salesman, Marketeer and New Hire.

Related Topics:
Motherpeace Tarot - Tarot of Baseball - Silicon Valley Tarot

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