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The oldest known deck of Tarot cards is the Visconti-Sforza deck, which was
created around 1440 in Italy. It's generally believed that Tarot cards and the
game of Tarrochi were fairly well-known by that time, a belief that's supported
by a sermon published sometime between 1450 and 1470. The sermon denounced the
Tarot as a tool of the Devil, drawn by the Devil himself. In actuality, the
symbols used in the traditional Tarot decks are heavily medieval Christian,
which has led some historians to suggest that the spread of Tarot may be partially
attributed to traveling preachers (particularly preachers of various unapproved
heresies) who used the cards as a tool to help explain their dogma. There are many myths surrounding the origin of the Tarot, as might be expected.
It's claimed by some that the Tarot originated in ancient Egypt, where it served
as a sort of 'gateway to knowledge'. This theory was first expounded by Antoine
Court de Gebelin, a Frenchman, in 1781. It was repeated by a French card-maker
by the name of Jean-Baptiste Alliete. Using the name Etiella, he published the
first deck of Tarot cards that were created specifically for divinatory purposes.
In the accompanying instructions, he claimed that the Tarot held the ancient
occult knowledge of the Egyptian god, Thoth. Like many other 'mystic' systems, the Tarot has waxed and waned in popularity,
often riding a wave of interest in the occult. In the 19th century, Eliphas
Levi, a well-known occultist, linked the Tarot to the Kabbalah, using the twenty
two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and tying in numerological significance to
each card. Since that time, the Tarot has been linked to nearly every major
system of belief in one way or another. The late 1800s through early 1900s saw
another surge in popularity of the Tarot cards, as various mystical societies
created their own versions of the Tarot deck, many of them claiming to 'restore'
the original meanings of the cards. The drive for enlightenment of the 1960s,
and the New Age spirituality of the 1970s rekindled interest in the Tarot yet
again, and in the past 30 years, hundreds of new decks and interpretations have
been created and introduced. Despite the differences in style, artwork and interpretation,
all Tarot cards share the basic characteristics below. The Major Arcana is numbered 0 through 22, with each card also assigned a name.
That number has led many people to associate the Tarot with the mystic Kabala
and its 22 Hebrew letters. The twenty-two cards are often seen as representative
of the journey of a soul through the stages of enlightenment, and the Major
Arcana is sometimes called the Fool's Journey in recognition of that path. While many modern variations of the Tarot have renamed the suits to appeal
to a particular subject, the traditional four suits of the Tarot are Wands,
Cups, Swords and Pentacles. In most traditions, each suit aligns with one of
the four elements, and in divination each suit has a 'characteristic'. Those
alignments have also given rise to associations with other mystical systems,
including astrology, numerology and the Kabala. Tarot cards are generally read by being laid out in patterns called 'spreads'.
Each position in the pattern corresponds to a particular 'area' of life. These
may include the 'self', the 'future', 'advice', 'hopes', 'past' and 'world'.
By blending the meanings of the card that falls in a particular position with
the area covered by the position, as well as taking into account the other cards
in the reading, a skilled reader of Tarot cards can often touch on universal
truths that seem to resonate for the person being read.
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