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This article is about the structure, card imagery, and history and origin of tarot decks, which today are often used for spiritual, esoteric, psychological, occult and/or divinatory purposes. For the traditional European card game, see Tarot (game). For other uses, see Tarot (disambiguation).

Most modern Tarot sets consist of 78 cards with allegorical representations today used for divination, that first appeared in Medieval times. A typical Tarot deck consists of:

  • The major arcana, consisting of 22 trump cards including the Fool card;
  • The minor arcana consisting of 56 cards:
    • Ten cards numbered from Ace to 10 in four different suits; traditionally batons (wands), cups, swords and coins (pentacles) (40 cards in total); and
    • Four court cards, page, knight, queen and king in the same four suits (4 per suit, thus 16 court cards in total).

Origins

Tarot originally started out as a game in 15th century Italy, by adding to a normal deck of cards 21 trump cards, a fool, and 4 queens of each suit. Some early Tarot decks of North Italian origin, which date to the early to mid-15th century have remained. These were called carte da trionfi or "cards of the triumphs". Soon afterwards, the cards came to be known as Tarocchi. It is unknown when the tarot was first used for divination. As early as 1540, a book entitled The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forli shows a simple method of divining from the coin suit of a regular playing card deck. Manuscripts from 1735 (The Square of Sevens) and 1750 (Pratesi Cartomancer) show rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards of the tarot, as well as a system for laying out the cards. In 1765, Giacomo Casanova wrote in his diary that his Russian mistress frequently used a deck of playing cards for divination. In 1781 Antoine Court de Gébelin wrote a speculative history and a detailed system for using the tarot to fortell the future. From Gébelin's time forward, various explanations have been given for the origins of tarot, most of them of doubtful veracity. There is no evidence for any tarot cards prior to the hand-painted ones that were used by Italian nobles.

The Tarot Deck

File:Tarot-13-XIII Death.jpg
Death, the tarot card, from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck

The typical 78-card tarot deck is structured into two distinct parts. The first, called the Trump cards, consists of 21 cards without suits, plus a 22nd card, The Fool. The second, consists of 56 cards divided into four suits of 14 cards each. The traditional Italian suits are Swords, Batons, Coins and Cups. In modern tarot decks, the Batons suit is commonly called Wands, Rods or Staves, while the Coins suit is often called Pentacles or Disks.

Among those who use Tarot cards for divination purposes, the trumps are usually called Major Arcana, while the other cards are known as the Minor Arcana. (Arcana is the plural form of the Latin word arcanum, meaning "closed" or "secret".)

The 14 cards in each suit consist of an Ace, nine cards numbered 2 through 10, and four court cards (not dissimilar from the structure of 52-card bridge/poker playing card decks, except that bridge/poker playing card decks have three court cards rather than four).

The four court cards (or face cards) of the tarot deck traditionally consist of the King, the Queen, the Knight and the Page (or Knave). In bridge/poker decks, the court cards typically consist of the King, the Queen and the Jack. The Jack corresponds to the tarot deck's Page.

In the present-day Anglo-American world, the Tarot is usually seen either as a means of divination, the practice of ascertaining information from supernatural or other sources, or, in a more modern view, as a psychological tool for accessing the unconscious. However, early references such as a sermon refer only to the use of the cards for game-playing and gambling; and in some European countries such as France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, as Michael Dummett points out in Twelve Tarot Games (1980), Tarot games are still widely played.

History

Early Tarot decks

The relationship between Tarot cards and playing cards is well documented. Playing cards appeared quite suddenly in Christian Europe during the period 1375–1380, following several decades of use in Islamic Spain: see playing card history for discussion of its origins. Early European sources describe a deck with typically 52 cards, like a modern deck with no jokers [1]. The 78-card Tarot resulted from adding 21 Trumps and the Fool to an early 56-card variant (14 cards per suit). A greater distribution of playing cards in Europe can with some certainty be given for the year 1377 and the following years. Tarot cards only developed some 40 years later, and they are mentioned, possibly for the first time, in the surviving text of Martiano da Tortona (it can be found in translation on the Web) [2]. Initially, tarot cards were only known as "trionfi" (triumphs). Only later did the name "tarocchi" appear.

The likely date for da Tortona's text is between 1418 and 1425, since in 1418 the confirmed painter Michelino da Besozzo returned to Milan, and Martiano da Tortona died in 1425. It cannot be proven, of course, that Tarot cards did not exist earlier, but it seems improbable, because the date of the Martiano da Tortona text is at least 15 years earlier than other clear confirming documents. Da Tortona describes a deck similar to Tarot cards in specific points, but in other ways quite different. What he describes is more a predevelopment to Tarot than what we might think of as "real" Tarot cards. For instance, it has only 16 trumps; its motifs are not comparable to common Tarot cards (they are Greek gods); and the suits are not the common Italian suits, but four kinds of birds.

What makes da Tortona's deck similar to Tarot cards is that these 16 cards are obviously regarded as trump cards in a card game, and that, about 25 years later, a nearly contemporary speaker, Jacopo Antonio Marcello, called them a "ludus triumphorum" — a term that is regarded as a relatively certain indicator of Tarot-similar objects when it appears in relation to playing cards. The letter in which Marcello uses this term is documented and translated on the Web [3].

The next documents that seem to confirm the existence of objects similar to Tarot cards are two playing card decks from Milan (Brera-Brambrilla and Cary-Yale-Tarocchi) — extant, but fragmentary — and three documents, all from the court of Ferrara, Italy. The playing cards are naturally not precisely datable, but it is estimated that they were made circa 1440. The three documents are from 1 January 1441 to July 1442, with the term "trionfi" first documented in February 1442. All are documented on the Web [4]. The provenance of the document from January 1441, which used the term "Trionfi," might be regarded as insecure; this is discussed on the site. After 1442, a longer pause (seven years) occurred without any confirming material, which doesn't give any reason to assume a greater distribution of the game in these years.

Till this time all relevant early documents point to an origin of the Trionfi cards (later Tarocchi cards) in the upper class of the society in Italy, and specifically to the courts of Milan and Ferrara. At the time, these were the most exclusive courts of their time in Europe. The number of existing decks might have been quite small. The game seems to gain in importance in the year 1450 -- a Jubilee year in Italy, which saw many festivities and traffic of pilgrims. The following frequent documentary evidence of the decks in the period from 1450 to 1463 is documented on the Web at the same place.

In the given context, it's obvious that the special motifs on the trumps, which were added to normal playing cards with a usual 4x14-structure, were ideologically determined. They have been thought to show a specific system that could transport messages of different content; known early examples show philosophical, social, poetical, astronomical and heraldic ideas, for instance, as well as a group of old Roman/Greek/Babylonian heroes that could serve as content as in the case of the Sola-Busca-Tarocchi and the Boiardo Tarocchi poem. For example, the above-mentioned earliest-known deck, extant only in its description in Martiano's short book, was produced to show a Greek gods system (an ideological idea at a time when Greek content was taken in Italy with some enthusiasm). Very likely its production accompanied a triumphal festivity of the commissioner Filippo Maria Visconti, which means the deck had the concrete function of expressing and consolidating the political power in Milan (as common for the time also in other productions of art). The 4 suits showed birds, which appeared regularly in common Visconti-heraldic, and the used specific order of the gods gives reason to assume, that the deck partly should focus, that the Visconti identified themselves as descendants from Jupiter and Venus (which were - as in this time usual - seen not as gods, but as heroes, which were deified once).

This first known deck seems to have had the usual 10 number cards, but kings only and only 16 trumps — the later standard (4x14 + 22) wasn't settled and still in 1457 a document is known, which speaks of Trionfi decks with 70 cards only [5]. Till the Boiardo Tarocchi poem [6] (produced at an unknown date between 1461 and 1494) and the Sola Busca Tarocchi (1491)[7] any confirming evidence for the final standard form with totally 78 cards is missing.

Individual researchers' opinions formulate cause these facts in the current moment, that the Trionfi decks of the early time had mostly 5x14 cards [8] only and that the row of trumps and fool were simply considered as a 5th suit with predefined trump-function.

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 suits of Swords, Staves, Coins and Cups, and face cards King, Queen, Knight and Page with trumps that reflect conventional iconography of the time to a significant degree.

For a long time Tarot cards remained privileged to the upper class of society. 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.

Later Tarot decks

As the earliest Tarot cards were hand-painted, the number of the produced decks is considered to have been rather small. Only after the invention of the printing press mass production of cards became possible. Decks from this era 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. At around the same time, the name "Tarocchi" appeared.

A general farspread, now traditional, hypothesis stated, that the final form of the Tarot with a 4x14+22-structure was settled ca. 1450. This opinion is based on the suggestion, that the surviving 68 Bembo cards had in the "6 added trumps" only replacements for earlier "lost cards". An alternative view states that early Tarot decks would usually have 70 cards, and that the deck by Bonifacio Bembo only has two cards missing. Of worth for the situation of the development is the Tarot History Fact Sheet, which was composed on the base of the common ground of various researchers [9].

File:0-Mat-Fou.jpg
The Fool: the unnumbered card in the Tarot deck, from the Tarot of Marseille.

Esoteric views on the history of tarot

Since 1781, when Antoine Court de Gebelin published his "Le Monde Primatif", in which he claimed Tarot cards held the "secrets of the Egyptians", without producing any evidence to sustain his claims, Tarot cards have been written about by many esoterians who have advanced alternative views on the history of Tarot cards. From this mystical vantage-point, the origin and history of the Tarot is unclear and often idealized.

Many Hermetic traditions, such as the Order of the Golden Dawn, which have made claims that the Tarot system was derived from ancient mystery religions as a visually encoded framework of the archetypal concepts seminal to the journey of enlightenment, have blossomed after the freemasonic writer (Court de Gebelin([10] - with link to the online text in French) published his text about the Tarot, in which he incorporated some writing of the Comte de Mellet, in the year 1781. Naturally the playing card research conditions of the year 1781 were by far not comparable to the much better research situation of today, Gebelin's errors and partly wild speculations, which proved nonetheless as of some importance for the development of Western Esotericism, had been natural in his time cause of missing information. A good and informative timeline of the development short before and after Gebelin is given by the book author Mary Greer [11].

The Hermetics were quick to point out that in a qabalistic analysis, Tarot is equivalent to Rota (Wheel) or Tora (Law) indicating they were a representation of the 'Wheel of the Law'. (Note that this theory, which tries to explain the name "Tarot" loses its value, when one considers that "Tarot" is only the French variant on the original Italian name "tarocchi") In less obtuse terms, the Tarot would then be a series of metaphysical 'facts' after the manner of the Zen Ox Paintings. From the first to the last of the Major Arcana ( "Big Secrets" ) they are arranged as a series of lessons, or a parable of the passage of the soul. From the "Fool" 0, the tabula rasa, naive and artless child-mind, a quest is laid out which is meant for the spiritual edification of the student.

A number of scholars of the western Hermetic or Magical traditions have made such claims of the Tarot having ancient roots and lessons. Look to the works of Robert Fludd or Albertus Magnus for deeper inspections. Another school of thought believes that the Roma people, travelling through many cultures, picked up this pictorial wisdom, and being inventive by nature, created a form of divination (and perhaps of card games) from it. The idea is that they understood and kept the knowledge of the mystery-lessons of the picture-cards in private, while in public they used the cards for profit through divination and card games.

Use of tarot cards in divination

File:Rider-Waite-Smith deck.png
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck

Since the Egyptianizing ruminations in Le Monde primitif by Antoine Court de Gébelin (1781) which soon inspired the occultism of "Etteilla" (Jean-Babtiste Alliette), 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.

In fact, although much of Tarot 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.

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. 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.

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.

Although tarot cards were used for fortune-telling in Bologna, 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 and "Egyptian" motifs 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.

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.

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 Hermetic Order 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.

Tarot decks depict the archetypes of spiritual life, see iconography.[citation needed]

File:7-VII-Chariot.jpg
Le Chariot, from the Tarot of Marseille.

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.

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 of German origin. Such Tarot decks generally have 21 trumps with genre scenes from 19th-century life, a Fool, and have court and pip cards that closely resemble today's French playing cards.)

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.

File:VI The Lovers.jpg
The Lovers, Rider-Waite-Smith deck

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 original Rider-Waite-Smith decks were virtually unavoidable due to the limits of printing technology in the early 20th century.

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.

A widely-used esoteric Tarot deck is Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot (pronounced /təʊt/ or /θɒθ/). 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Symbolism

The Tarot has a complex and rich symbolism with a long history. Such history is not impenetrable. Contrary to what many popular authors claim, its origins are not lost in the mists of time. In fact, much of the fog around the symbolism can be dispelled if one studies sources other than occultists with a vested interest in the occult interpretation of Tarot. We will do some dispelling further on; in the meantime, the most important thing to note is that modern, occult readings of the cards often have little to do with their meaning in their original context.

Some people find that modern Tarot decks are more interesting, expressive, and psychologically resonant than their ancestors. Interpretations have evolved together with the cards over the centuries: later decks have "clarified" the pictures in accordance with meanings assigned to the cards by their creators. In turn, the meanings come to be modified by the new pictures. Images and interpretations have been continually reshaped, in part, to help the Tarot live up to its mythic role as a powerful occult instrument and to respond to modern needs.

See, for example, the Rider-Waite-Smith Strength card. We can know more about the symbolic intentions of the designer here, since he conveniently wrote many books on the subject on occultism and symbolism and a handbook specifically for this deck titled The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). As with its Marseille-deck ancestor, the Strength trump shows a woman holding the jaws of a lion, but this picture is far more elaborate. The woman's hat of the Marseille card has frequently been interpreted as a lemniscate: the sideways-figure-eight representing infinity, or, according to Waite, the Spirit of Life. In the newer card, this symbol appears explicitly. Other symbols are included: a chain of roses symbolizing desire or passion, against a white robe symbolizing purity. The mountains in the background demonstrate another kind of strength. Even here there is room for interpretation: the card is sometimes considered as showing intellect triumphing over desire, sometimes as the equal union of intellect and passion, sometimes just as a symbol of mental strength or endurance.

The twenty-two cards in the major arcana are: Fool, Magician, High Priestess [or La Papessa/Popess], Empress, Emperor, Hierophant [or Pope], Lovers, Chariot, Strength, Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, Devil, Tower, Star, Moon, Sun, Judgement, World. Each card has its own large, complicated and disputed set of meanings. Altogether the major arcana are frequently said to represent the Fool's journey: a symbolic journey through life in which the Fool overcomes obstacles and gains wisdom. This idea was apparently first suggested by tarot author Eden Gray in the mid-20th century.

There is a vast body of writing on the significance of the Tarot. In many systems of interpretation based on that of the Golden Dawn, the four suits are associated with the four elements: Swords with air, Wands with fire, Cups with water and Pentacles with earth. The numerology is usually thought to be significant. The Tarot is often considered to correspond to various systems such as astrology, Pythagorean numerology, the Kabalah, the I Ching and others.

Psychology

Carl Jung was the first psychologist to attach importance to Tarot symbolism. He may have regarded the Tarot cards as representing archetypes: fundamental types of person or situation embedded in the subconscious of all human beings. The Emperor, for instance, represents the ultimate patriarch or father figure.

The theory of archetypes gives rise to several psychological uses. Some psychologists use Tarot cards to identify how a client views himself or herself, by asking the patient to select a card that he or she identifies with. Some try to get the client to clarify his ideas by imagining his situation or relationship in terms of Tarot images: Is someone rushing in heedlessly like the Knight of Swords perhaps, or blindly keeping the world at bay as in the Rider-Waite-Smith Two of Swords? The Tarot can be seen as a kind of algebra of the subconscious, allowing it to be analysed at the conscious level.

Interestingly, some people view the older decks such as the Visconti-Sforza and Marseille as crude and limited when compared to some modern ones. This may reflect their belief that Tarot symbolism has evolved, especially since the early 20th century, so that it has become increasingly universal.

Storytelling and Art

The Tarot has inspired writers as well as visual artists. Italo Calvino described the Tarot as a "machine for telling stories", writing the novel The Castle of Crossed Destinies with plots and characters constructed through the Tarot. T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land uses only superficial descriptions of Tarot cards, a few of which are genuine. Random selections of Tarot cards have also been used to construct stories for writing exercises and writing games.

  • The Greater Trumps (1932), a supernatural thriller by Charles Williams, involves a struggle over "the Original Deck," which has come into the hands of an English civil servant.
  • Tarot decks play a significant role in Roger Zelazny's Amber fantasy series, where most major characters carry a magical deck of Tarot cards whose Trumps represent other characters (and enable communication with them) or locations. A Tarot deck inspired by the Amber series has been published.
  • The strategy video game Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen features tarot cards, which can be put to various uses in battle (a Lovers can cause enemies to attack one another; an Emperor will give the allied team an extra round of attacks, etc.)
  • The idea of the Tarot cards are also present in the famed PC rpg game series Ultima. The avatar, main character of the game in all series, is definied by the player in the beginning of each game through a card set similar to the tarot, but concerning now the eight avatar's virtues.
  • Tarot cards also play a role in Stephen King's Dark Tower series. At the end of Book 1, The Gunslinger, Roland finally catches up to the Man in Black, who reads Roland's future with a deck of Tarot cards in a golgotha: "Death. Yet not for you." The deck used by the Man in Black is an adaptation of the canonical Tarot, featuring some cards invented by King.
  • From 1977 to 1980, Piers Anthony published the Planet of Tarot series, which included God of Tarot, Vision of Tarot and Faith of Tarot. On the planet Tarot, nightmares, visions and fantasies become real, and sometimes tangentially, sometimes on-target, the protagonist lives through myths and stories, e.g., the moment Jesus of Nazareth "dies" and accepts his spiritual journey as Christ the savior, related to Tarot cards.
  • In John Crowley's novel Little, Big (1981), characters use a Tarot deck with non-standard, somewhat whimsical arcana (the "Least Trumps") for divination.
  • Tim Powers' 1992 novel Last Call depicts Tarot decks used for magic beyond just divination, particularly in a variant of poker, and alludes repeatedly to "The Waste Land." The Fool card is also frequently featured in his novels.
  • In the James Bond movie Live and Let Die, James confronts Solitaire, a woman who possesses the power to read tarot cards to predict the future.
  • On the Canadian teen drama,Degrassi, a few of the characters try to settle a decision with a deck of Tarot cards in the episode "Cabaret."
  • In the 1999 movie The Red Violin, the journey of a perfect red violin is divined by a woman utilizing the Major Arcana cards of a Tarot deck. [13]
  • A story arc of the manga Yami no Matsuei features cards of the minor arcana.
  • Tarot also features prominently in Alan Moore's Promethea (1998–2005), forming one of the central motifs of the series. Alan Moore himself has been quoted[14] as claiming his single cleverest piece of work is Promethea #12, a playful, multi-level[15] rebus in which a set of Major Arcana of Moore's own design (in homage of Crowley's Thoth Tarot deck) is used to explain Life, the Universe and Everything to Sophie (Promethea).
  • Tarot is the main theme in the 1987 MS DOS computer game "The Fool's Errand" by Cliff Johnson.
  • The major arcana tarot cards are used in the puzzle game Bust-A-Move 4 for PlayStation, in a mini-game to give out love readings. The Puzzle Story Mode also focuses on the player repairing the flow of time by sealing away the arcana cards by clearing puzzle stages.
  • The Magical Drop series features characters based on the major arcana tarot cards. The World character is a popular hentai icon.
  • Tarot cards and imagery appear frequently in the comic book series The Invisibles, by Grant Morrison.
  • The video game RPG series Persona uses a tarot-based system to classify the Persona spirits and demons in the stories.
  • In Sang-Sun Park's manga, Tarot Cafe, the protagonist tells the fortune of various supernatural beings who visit her shop in each chapter. Through her readings, the being's stories are told.
  • John Sandford has written three fiction books, "Fool's Run", "The Empress File", and "The Devil's Code", wherein the protagonist Kidd uses Tarot as a "gaming system" to help him strategize his industrial espionage undertakings.

Divination

Divination, or fortune-telling, is by far the most popular and well-known use of the Tarot in the English-speaking world. This is sometimes seen as an extension of the psychological use mentioned above. Alternatively, it is sometimes seen as a less sophisticated use of tarot. It can be argued that we sometimes perceive the signs of future events subconsciously only. For instance, you might be subconsciously aware that a relationship or job is in trouble, before you admit it to yourself. In that sense, it might be said that the Tarot can give you insights into the future without having any supernatural or occult aspect at all. Meaning may emerge even from purely random patterns, as chance selections force you to consider concepts that you'd normally ignore, and the density of meaning is great enough that meanings can emerge from almost any selection of cards.

That point of view may be unusual among those who use Tarot for divination. Tarot card readers sometimes believe that Tarot cards allow them to exercise an innate psychic ability to see the future. Still others routinely follow the divinatory meanings assigned to each card by popular books and other authorities. Further, some individuals believe that the cards take on the "aura" or "vibrations" of someone who touches them. The cards are therefore sometimes "insulated" by wrapping them in silk or enclosing them in a box, and only touched by the reader and by the person for whom the reading is done (the "querent").

There are many variations, but in many readings the querent shuffles the cards, then the reader lays out the cards in a pattern called a "layout" or "spread". A well-known spread is the Celtic Cross. The cards are then analysed according to their positions, their individual divinatory meanings, their relationships, and whether the cards are upside-down ("reversed"). If the reader uses the interpretation technique of reversals, a reversed card has its own set of modified meanings and/or modified energies; a reversed card's meaning may sometimes be the opposite of the upright card meaning, sometimes weakened, sometimes twisted.

Divination may be seen as magical in itself, but the word "magic" often refers to the use of Tarot cards in a magical ritual designed to achieve some end. This is probably much less common than simple divination.

Layouts or spreads

In Tarot divination, results can be achieved with analysis of just one card, but, for more thoroughness, combinations of several cards in set patterns are usually used. These patterns are called spreads or layouts. There are many different spreads, although the Celtic Cross is one of the best known, and is often taught to beginners as their first spread, despite the complexity of it and the availability of simpler, more easily manageable spreads. More experienced practitioners will sometimes use their own spreads, assigning their own meanings to the relevant positions represented.

The Great Cross ("Celtic Cross") Layout

This layout generally consists of 10 cards, or 10 cards plus an optional, 11th card (as a significator card). The significator card represents the person or the situation. The first 6 of the 10 cards are laid out in the shape of a cross. (If there is a significator card, the first card of the 10 is placed atop the significator card.) The final 4 of the 10 cards are placed in a column to the right. [16]

The Celtic Cross was possibly used by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn for outer-order members of the Order and was later made popular because of its description by A. E. Waite in his book, A Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Note that, for tarot layouts for its inner-order members, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn used a more complex system which included The Opening of the Key spread [17].

The Five Card Spread

This spread uses cards from the major arcana only and is arranged in a specific order. There are five cards arranged in front of the querent. Cards can be right-side up or upside down, as long as the meanings are readable. The first card represents what is behind the querent or their past. The second card represents their present state. The third card represents what can happen in their future whether it be bad or good. The fourth card symbolizes what can stop or prevent the previous card from happening. The fifth card, also known as the final result, is what will happen if the fourth element is avoided or never played. This spread can use the minor arcana as well, but the fortunes that it tells are more powerful and persuading with the major arcana and it can allow more creativity and abstraction in the fortunes.

The Romany Draw Layout (or Past/Present/Future Layout)

The card-reader shuffles the deck, then spreads out all of the cards, asking the querent [the person for whom the cards are being read] to pick three cards, one at a time. The card-reader then flips the cards over, the one on the left telling of the past, the middle one telling current events, and the one on the right telling the future.

"Crowley's" Thoth Deck

The Thoth Tarot deck was created by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris. Those who buy the deck are instructed as follows. The deck is shuffled by the querent. The querent concentrates on the question and then returns the deck to the reader. The reader lays out the cards in five categories. The center category (three cards) represents the motivations of the querent. The top right hand category (three cards) represents things that will happen in the near or most likely future. The top left hand category (three cards) represent what will happen in the distant or less likely future. The bottom left hand category (three cards) represents forces that help the querent. The bottom right hand category (three cards) represents forces beyond the querent's control. Many readers avoid the Thoth deck because of Crowley's alleged affinity for black magic

This layout does not in fact have anything to do with the way Crowley read the deck he designed. In any case, this spread was invented by the publisher of the small book accompanying the U.S. Games Systems version of the deck. Crowley used the Opening of the Key spread developed by the Golden Dawn which consists of five stages.

The reader invokes Iao, then Hru, then traces the unicursal hexagram upon the deck, before shuffling and handing it to the querent. The querent "asks" the deck a question, then cuts it into four piles. These four piles represent the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, or, if you will, the four elements. The reader turns these piles over and gets a general feel for the situation.

The reader looks through the piles to see which pile the querent's significator is in. This is determined by their birthday, and would correspond to a Queen, Knight, or Prince card. When the reader finds the significator, tell the querent for what s/he has come, and continue. If it is not what the querent has come for, abandon the reading for now, or try in a little while after focusing on the issue some more. If in the fire pile, the matter concerns energy, quarelling, and force. If in the water, the matter has to do with pleasure, enjoyment, and emotions, etc. If in the air pile, the matter concerns communications, problems, thinking, and tact. If in the earth pile, the matter deals with possessions, material objects, money, and the like.

The reader spreads the pile containing the significator in a horse-shoe formation upon the table, from right to left. Then s/he looks for patterns: two or three of a kind indicates certain things, and majority of an element indicates certain things. Three 3s indicates deceit, for instance, while 4 Kings indicates authority and influence. Starting from the significator, the reader card-counts.

All card-counting strings start from a significator, which must be a court card. In the Crowley deck, the courts are Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. Count in the direction the card faces (usually left for Princes and Knights, usually right for Queens and Princesses) until a card is hit twice.

Count: 12 for Zodiacal trumps 5 or 11 for Aces 9 for planetary trumps 7 for Princesses 4 for Knights, Queens and Princes 3 for Elemental trumps

With this string, you can tell a story. All the while, pay attention to elemental dignities. A card will be well or ill dignified by the cards surrounding it. Each card can be attributed to one of the four (sometimes five) elements. Fire and water weaken each other. Air and Earth weaken each other. Other elemental combinations are friendly.

Court cards can also be attributed to elements, but personal preference usually has variability in this.

Kings usually represent mutable signs (usually air), queens fixed signs (usually water), and princes cardinal signs (usually fire). Elements are fairly constant, so when applied there are double elements involved which gives depth to the reading. For example, the king of cups would be mutable water which is Pisces. Since it is a king of a water suit, this is 'air of water'. Similary, a knight of swords would be cardinal air, which would be Libra. It is fire of air. They can act as a buffer if it is next to a suit in which part of it is ill dignified, but the other is neutral. If one is well dignified and the other ill dignified, this is somewhat of a dichotomy, and is usually frustrating in action because it works in different ways.


Opposition

Because of the association of Tarot cards with fortune telling, some Christian groups, mainly fundamentalist, such as The 700 Club and Focus on the Family oppose the use of Tarot cards as Satanic. In Western societies, Some Christians believe that the use of cards for divination purposes is forbidden by God (based on Bible verses such as Deuteronomy 18:10 and the incident in Acts 16:16-18); by extension, these Christians believe that no one should own Tarot cards. Use of Tarot cards is thought by some to be a means of demonic possession of those who use or even consult the cards. In Asian countries such as Japan, however, the Tarot is often seen as a Christian artifact from the West. [citation needed]

The opposing end of this is a belief that one may cast lots to determine God's will, and that Tarot divination is a form of casting lots. This theory, however, is not theologically consistent with mainstream Bible interpretation.

A number of Tarot/Tarock game players have also opposed the wide spread marketing of Tarot cards for exclusive use in fortune telling activities, as they feel the Tarot card game has been misrepresented to the public at large.

Secular skeptics of the paranormal also express objections to "Tarot card readings" along with objections to psychics, astrology, and other claims of the supernatural, or claim that tarot readers commit fraud by cold reading.

See also

References

  • A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack : the Game of Triumphs by Michael Dummett and John McLeod (2004, 2 vols. ISBN 0-7734-6447-6 (v.1), ISBN 0-7734-6449-2 (v.2)), supercedes Dummett's earlier out-of-print The Game of Tarot ISBN 0-71-561014-7 - a history of the Tarot and a compilation of Tarot card games (see also Dummett's Twelve Tarot Games ISBN 0-71-561485-1, ISBN 0-71-561488-6)
  • A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot by Ronald Decker, Thierry de Paulis, and Michael Dummett ISBN 0-312-16294-4 - a history of the French origin of the occult Tarot, focusing on Etteilla, Le Normand, and Lévi.
  • A History of the Occult Tarot by Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, ISBN 0-7156-3122-5, continuing the story of the occult Tarot through the Golden Dawn tradition and its reception in the English-speaking world.
  • Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack - comprehensive, covering and the minor as well as the major arcana; and taking several angles on the Tarot.
  • Complete Guide to the Tarot by Eden Grey - concentrates on classical divination, but has some information on the more spiritual aspects.
  • The Qabalistic Tarot by Robert Wang - a comprehensive and highly regarded, but frequently challenging, reference to the esoteric aspects of Tarot in the Golden Dawn tradition.
  • The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Stuart Kaplan, 3 volumes - repertory of illustrations and history. In 2005, the fourth volume was published.
  • "The Tarot Court Cards," Kate Warwick-Smith - indepth analysis of the court cards. Shows different levels of each card.
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