|
Divination There are many different theories as to the true origin of the Tarot deck, but the first documented deck was painted in fifteenth century Italy.
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 attributing paganism to it 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").
Tarot cards eventually came to be associated with mysticism and magic. 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 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, Mademoiselle Marie-Anne Le Normand popularized divination and prophecy during the reign of Napoleon I. 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 for divination 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 Lévi 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 Lévi 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, some of Etteilla's divinatory meanings for Tarot are still used by some Tarot practitioners.
Tarot divination 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 Inc., the Rider-Waite-Smith deck has been extremely popular in the English-speaking world beginning in the 1970s. Despite their popularity, tarot cards are considered by some to be no more accurate than any other type of psychic reading.
Types of Tarot Reading Divination
Tarot reading revolves around the belief that the cards can be used to gain insight into the current and possible future situations of the subject (or querent). Some believe they are guided by a spiritual force, such as Gaia, while others believe the cards help them tap into a collective unconscious or their own creative, brainstorming subconscious.
Psychological
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. Since the cards represent this different types of people, ideas of the subject's self-perception can be gained by asking them to select a card that they 'identify with'. Equally, the subject can try and clarify the situation by imagining it in terms of the archetypal ideas associated with each card. For instance, someone rushing in heedlessly like the Knight of Swords, or blindly keeping the world at bay like the Rider-Waite-Smith Two of Swords.
More recently Dr Timothy Leary has suggested that the Tarot Trump cards are a pictorial representation of human development from a baby to a fully grown adult, The Fool symbolising the new born infant, The Magician symbolising the stage at which an infant starts to play with artifacts, etc. In addition to this, the Tarot Trumps to be a blue print for of the human race in the future.
Tarot as a mnemonic device
Some schools of occult thought or symbolic study, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, consider the tarot to function as a textbook and mnemonic device for their teachings. This may be one cause of the word arcana being used to describe the two sections of the tarot deck: arcana is the plural form of the Latin word arcanum, meaning "closed" or "secret."
Common Card Interpretations
Each card has a variety of symbolic meanings that have evolved over the years. Custom or themed tarot decks exist which have even more specific symbolism, although these are more prevalent in the English-speaking world. The minor arcana cards have astrological attributions that can be used as general indicators of timing in the year, based on the Octavian calendar, and the court cards may signify different people in a tarot reading, with each suit's "nature" providing hints about that person's physical and emotional characteristics.
Tarot has a complex and rich symbolism with a long history. In the past, many occult- or divination-oriented authors claimed that the symbolism's origins are lost in time and/or postulated or claimed as fact non-historical theories. Some authors such as Rachel Pollack have written that tarot origin myths have their own significance and value and that the reader can find a study of such myths enriching while at the same time being aware that they aren't factually true.
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 ancestor in the Tarot de Marseilles, the Strength trump shows a woman holding the jaws of a lion, but the Rider-Waite-Smith picture is far more elaborate. The woman's hat of the Marseilles card has been interpreted as a lemniscate: the sideways-figure-eight representing infinity, or, according to Waite, the Spirit of Life. 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.
Another example of the preservation of designs from one deck to another can be seen via the incorporation of the ribbon design found on the Deux de Deniéres in a Swiss-style deck originally published by Müller & Cie. of Schaffhouse into the of The Book of Thoth Tarot's Two of Disks.
There are numerous published books that discuss the usage of the tarot for divination. In many systems, the four suits are associated with the four elements: Swords with air, Wands with fire, Cups with water and Pentacles with earth. The numerology of the cards is also considered significant. The tarot is considered to correspond to various systems such as astrology, Pythagorean numerology, the Kabalah (where each of the major arcana represent a path on the tree of life), the I Ching, Christianity, Aura-Soma and others.
Spreads
To perform a Tarot reading, the Tarot deck is typically shuffled by either the subject or a third-party reader, and is laid out in one of a variety of patterns, often called "spreads". They are then interpreted by the reader or a third-party performing the reading for the subject. These might include the subject's thoughts and desires (known or unknown) or past, present, and future events. Generally, each position in the spread is assigned a number, and the cards are turned over in that sequence, with each card being contemplated/interpreted before moving to the next. Each position is also associated with an interpretation, which indicates what aspect of the question the card in that position is referring to.
Celtic Cross tarot spread. Sometimes, rather than being dealt randomly, the initial card in a spread is intentionally chosen to represent the querent or the question being asked. This card is called the significator.
Some common spreads include:
Celtic Cross: This is probably the most common spread. Ten cards are used, with five arranged in a cross and four placed vertically beside the cross. Another card is placed horizontally across the central card of the cross. The central card of the cross is frequently the significator; the crossing card often represents an obstacle they must face, an aspect of the question they have not yet considered, etc.
Horse-shoe:
Another very common question asking spread. Seven cards are arranged in a semi-circle or 'V' shape. The cards, from left to right, represent the past, present, influences, obstacles, expectations (or hopes/fears), best course of action and likely outcomes. Some variations of this spread swap the expectations and inspiration cards around.
3-card spread:
Three cards are used, with the first representing the past, the second the present, the third the future.
Astrological spread:
Twelve cards are spread in a circle, to represent the twelve signs of the zodiac. A thirteenth card is placed in the middle; often the significator.
1-card spread: It should be noted that a single card can constitute a spread.
Tetractys:
Ten cards arranged in a four-rowed pyramid. Each row represents earth, air, fire or water and each card within the row has a very specific meaning. The single card in the top row is the significator.
There are numerous other spreads – essentially, the reader may use any card arrangement in which they find by experience to be useful.
Reversed cards
Some methods of interpreting the tarot consider cards to have different meanings depending on whether they appear upright or reversed. A reversed card is often interpreted to mean the opposite of its upright meaning. For instance, the Sun card upright may be associated with satisfaction, gratitude, health, happiness, strength, inspiration, and liberation; while in reverse, it may be interpreted to mean a lack of confidence and mild unhappiness. However, not all methods of card reading prescribe an opposite meaning to reversed cards. Some card readers will interpret a reversed card as either a more intense variation of the upright card, an undeveloped trait or an issue that requires greater attention.
Origins
Playing cards first entered Europe in the late 14th century with the Mamelukes of Egypt, with suits of Scimitars, Polo Sticks, Cups and Coins. These designs rapidly evolved into the basic 'Latin' suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins (also known as disks, and pentacles), which are still used in traditional Italian and Spanish decks. All evidence indicates that the first tarot decks were created between 1410 and 1430 in either Milan, Ferrara, or Bologna, in northern Italy, when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the more common four-suit decks that already existed. These new decks were originally called “carte da trionfi”, or "triumph cards." The first literary evidence of the existence of carte da trionfi is a written statement in the court records in Ferrara, in 1442. The oldest surviving Tarot cards are from 15 fragmented decks painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan.
When the tarot was first used for divination is not known, but no documented examples exist prior to the 18th century. However, divination using similar cards is in evidence as early as 1540; a book entitled The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forli shows a simple method of divination using the coin suit of a regular playing card deck. Manuscripts from 1735 (The Square of Sevens) and 1750 (Pratesi Cartomancer) document 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 tarot for divination. Since the publication of this history, 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, though some esoteric schools place tarot's origin in Ancient Egypt, or Ancient India.
The reason the origin of the tarot cards was supposed to be Egypt probably started with the mistaken belief that gypsies, among the first to use the cards for divinatory purposes, were descendants of ancient Egypt (hence the name "gypsies").
History
Although researchers have tried for years to pinpoint the true origin of the Tarot, they are still unsure who created the first deck. Some believe they were in use as long ago as the early 1300's in Italy.
During the late 1700's and into the early 1800's Eliphas Levi, a Catholic Priest, writer, and teacher, created the basis for the most popular Tarot cards still in use today. Although Levi was born and trained for the Catholic Priesthood, he studied many other religions and subjects as well. He studied the Jewish, Hindu, Polish and Masonic religions and Cabalism. Levi was also a student of astronomy, astrology, and the metaphysics. When he created his first Tarot deck, he incorporated his knowledge of religions, the elements in nature (fire, water, earth, air), and what were believed to be powerful astrological events and symbols (most of which are still popular today). There are even references to scriptures from The Bible shown in some of the cards. Levi claimed he created the cards as a tool to aid his students in the art of spiritual enlightenment, self improvement, and self awareness.
It wasn't until the late 1800's that A.E. Waite realized that the cards could be used to predict possible future events. Waite created the Rider-Waite deck based on the works of Eliphas Levi, and published the cards in 1896. The Rider-Waite Tarot deck is the most widely used version currently in existence.
The Tarot was then introduced into the Western culture in the early 1900's, and were extremely popular during World War I.
In the 1990's more people are opening up to the idea of Tarot readers, Astrologers, and Psychics, yet there are still some who believe the cards are evil, or hold some kind of evil power. This is simply not true at all. The cards do not possess any mysterious powers, nor can they harm anyone if they are read in the proper perspective. The Tarot cards reflect thoughts and actions in our subconscious and conscious mind. Mind over matter to use the term loosely. They can and should be used only for positive reasons. As with anything else, if used with negative or malicious intent, the negativity (evil if you will) that is created will only come back on the invoker.
The Tarot are best suited for learning about oneself, and one's reactions to life's seemingly never ending struggles, to increase self awareness, and possibly to obtain a new point of view of life itself. They can help to clarify past events, understand why the events took place, and possibly give some insight into how to avoid making the same mistakes again, or even how to make the good events happen again. The cards can also predict possible future events. Sometimes, just knowing ahead of time an event may occur, is enough to change the person's path and future outcome.
The Tarot cards were not meant to be feared or evil; but it is human nature to fear the unknown or the unexplained. Today, Tarot readers have made themselves available almost everywhere in the United States as well as some other countries, and are helping millions of people every day to cope with life's uncertainties. Who are we to discount something that benefits so many people so often?
For those who believe that Tarot are evil, and that anyone who acknowledges the existence of Tarot will surely burn in hell: Almost every religion states in one fashion or another that if you do not believe in my God, you shall be rejected on your day of judgment (you'll go to hell). Doesn't anyone stop to think that we are all going to hell in someone else's eyes?
President Theodore Roosevelt once said, "The only limit to our realizations of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."
Decks
Early tarot decks
The relationship between tarot cards and playing cards is well documented. Playing cards first appeared in Christian Europe some time before 1367, the date of the first documented evidence of their existence, a ban on their use, in Bern, Switzerland. Before this, cards had been used for several decades in Islamic Al Andalus (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. The 78-card tarot resulted from adding the Fool and 21 trumps to an early 56-card variant (14 cards per suit).
A greater distribution of playing cards in Europe can, with some certainty, be given from 1377 onwards. Tarot cards appear to have been developed some 40 years later, and they are mentioned in the surviving text of Martiano da Tortona. Da Tortona's text is thought to have been written 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 that tarot cards did not exist earlier than this date, but it seems improbable as the Martiano da Tortona text was written at least 15 years earlier than other corroborating documents.
Da Tortona describes a deck similar to tarot cards in many specific ways. What he describes is more a precursor to tarot than what we might think of as "real" tarot cards. For instance, his deck has only 16 trumps, its motifs are not comparable to common tarot cards (they are Greek gods) and the suits are four kinds of birds, not the common Italian suits.
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; about 25 years later, a near-contemporary speaker, Jacopo Antonio Marcello, called them a ludus triumphorum, or "game winner". The letter in which Marcello uses this term has been documented and translated on the Internet.
Le Bateleur from the Tarot of Marseilles
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. It is not possible to put a precise date on the cards, but it is estimated that they were made circa 1440. The three documents date from 1 January 1441 to July 1442, with the term trionfi first documented in February 1442. The document from January 1441, which used the term trionfi, is regarded as unreliable; however, the fact that the same painter, Sagramoro, was commissioned by the same patron, Leonello d'Este, as in the February 1442 document, indicates that it is at least plausibly an example of the same type. After 1442 there is some seven years without any examples of similar material, which gives no reason to conclude a greater distribution of the game during these years. The game seemed to gain in importance in the year 1450, though, a Jubilee year in Italy, which saw many festivities and movement of pilgrims.
Until this time all relevant early documents point to the origin of the trionfi cards as being in the upper class of Italian society, specifically the courts of Milan and Ferrara. At the time, these were the most exclusive courts in Europe.
In the given context, it seems apparent that the special motifs on the trumps, which were added to regular playing cards with a "four suits of 14 cards" structure, were ideologically determined. They are thought to show a specific system of transporting 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, as in the case of the Sola-Busca-Tarocchi (1491) and the Boiardo Tarocchi poem (produced at an unknown date between 1461 and 1494). For example, the earliest-known deck, extant only in its description in Martiano's short book, was produced to show the system of Greek gods, a theme that was very fashionable in Italy at the time. Its production may well have accompanied a triumphal celebration of the commissioner Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milano, meaning that the purpose of the deck was to express and consolidate the political power in Milan (as was common for other artworks of the time). The four suits showed birds, motifs that appeared regularly in Visconti heraldry, and the specific order of the gods gives reason to assume that the deck was intended to imply that the Visconti identified themselves as descendants from Jupiter and Venus (which were seen not as gods but deified mortal heroes).
This first known deck seems to have had the standard ten numbered cards, but having kings as the only court card, and only 16 trumps. The later standard (four suits of 14 plus 22) took time to settle; trionfi decks with 70 cards only are still spoken of in 1457. No corroborating evidence for the final standard 78-card format exists prior to the Boiardo Tarocchi poem and the Sola Busca Tarocchi.
Individual researchers' opinions are that the trionfi decks of the early time primarily had five suits of fourteen cards only; the trumps and the fool were simply considered as a fifth 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. The first deck is the so called Cary-Yale Tarot (or Visconti-Modrone Tarot), was created in 1442-1447 by an anonymous painter for Filippo Maria Visconti. The cards (only 66) are today in the Yale University Library of New Haven. But the most famous of these early tarot decks was painted in the mid-15th century, to celebrate the conquest of the power in Milan by Francesco Sforza and his wife Bianca Maria Visconti, daughter of the duke Filippo Maria. Probably, these cards were painted by Bonifacio Bembo, but some cards were realized by miniaturists of another school. Of the original cards, 35 are in the Pierpont Morgan Library, 26 are at the Accademia Carrara, 13 are at the Casa Colleoni and two, the Devil and the Tower, are lost, or possibly were never made. This "Visconti-Sforza" deck, which has been widely reproduced, combines the suits of swords, batons, coins and cups and the court 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 a privilege for the upper class of society, and, although some sermons inveighing against the evil inherent in cards can be traced to the 14th century, 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 the playing of cards.
Later tarot decks
As the earliest tarot cards were hand-painted, the number of the decks produced is thought to have been rather small, and it was only after the invention of the printing press that mass production of cards became possible. Decks survive from this era from various cities in France (the best known being a deck from the southern city of Marseilles). At around the same time, the name tarocchi appeared.
Recently, the use of Tarot for divination, or as a store of symbolism, has inspired the creation of Oracle card decks. These are card decks for inspiration or divination containing images of angels, faeries, goddesses, Power Animals, etc. Although obviously influenced by Tarot, they do not follow the traditional structure of Tarot; they lack any suits of numbered cards, and the set of cards differs from the traditional major arcana.
Le Mat (The Fool) from the Tarot of Marseilles.
Modern deck designs
The modern, 78-card tarot deck has two distinct parts:
The Major Arcana ("greater secrets"), or trump cards, consists of 21 cards without suits, plus a 22nd card, The Fool, which is often given the value of zero: The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, and The World.
The Minor Arcana ("lesser secrets") consists of 56 cards (traditionally referred to as pips and courts), divided into four suits of 14 cards each: ten numbered cards called pips and four court cards. The court cards are the page, knight, queen and king in each of the four tarot suits. The traditional Italian tarot suits are swords, batons, coins and cups; in modern tarot decks, however, the batons suit is often called wands, rods or staves, while the coins suit is often called pentacles or disks. The terms major arcana and minor arcana are only used in esoteric practice.
Differences among decks
Le Chariot, from the Tarot of Marseilles.
The Chariot from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck This is a recolored image of a card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck. The quality of colors may differ slightly from the US Games versions.A variety of styles of tarot decks and designs have existed and a number of typical regional patterns emerged. Historically, one of the most important designs is now usually known as the Tarot de Marseilles. This standard pattern was the one studied by Court de Gébelin, and cards based on this style illustrate his Le Monde primitif. The Tarot de Marseilles was also popularized in the 20th century by Paul Marteau. Some current editions of cards based on the Marseilles design go back to a deck of a particular Marseilles 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, or High Priestess and the Pope, or Hierophant. 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.
Older decks such as the Visconti-Sforza and Marseilles are less detailed than more modern decks. A Marseilles-type deck is usually distinguished by having repetitive motifs on the pip cards as opposed to full scenes found on "Rider-Waite" style decks.
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 "Marseilles" 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.)
Modern deck design in common use for French Tarot card gameAn 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, or decks using scenes on the pip cards as opposed to simple motif repetition.) (In contrast, in French-speaking countries as well as in Italy, the Marseilles deck enjoys the equivalent popularity.) The images were drawn by artist Pamela Colman-Smith, to the instructions of Christian mystic and occultist Arthur Edward 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 Marseilles-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.
The Magician, card number 1 in what cartomancers call the "major arcana".This is a recolored image of a card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck. The quality of colors may differ slightly from the US Games versions.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.
The Tower from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck This is a recolored image of a card in the Rider-Waite tarot deck. The quality of colors may differ slightly from the US Games versions.
The Tower from the Tarot of MarseillesA widely-used modernist esoteric Tarot deck is Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot. Crowley, at the height of a lifetime's work dedicated to occultism, engaged the artist Lady Frieda Harris to paint the cards for the deck, according to his specifications. It remains the most visually and symbolically sophisticated deck ever printed. His system of Tarot correspondences, published in The Book of Thoth & Liber 777, are an evolution and expansion upon that which he learnt in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and resolve certain issues of balance found in eariler designs.
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. Numerous other decks exist, including the Tree of Life Tarot whose cards are stark symbolic catalogs, the Cosmic Tarot, and The Alchemical Tarot that combines traditional alchemical symbols with tarot images.
The Marseilles-style Tarot decks generally feature numbered minor arcana cards that look very much like the pip cards of modern playing card decks. The Marseilles' 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/wands, cups, coins/pentacles) 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 replete with cats in every picture. The Tarot of the Witches and the Aquarian Tarot retain the conventional cards with varying designs.
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. Another tarot in recent years has been the Robin Wood Tarot. This deck retains the Rider-Waite theme while adding some very soft and colorful Pagan symbolism. As with other decks, the cards are available with a companion book written by Ms. Wood which details all of the symbolism and colors utilized in the Major and Minor Arcana.
Unconventionality is taken to an extreme by Morgan's Tarot, produced in 1970 by Morgan Robbins and illustrated by Darshan Chorpash Zenith. Morgan's Tarot has no suits, no card ranking and no explicit order of the cards. It has 88 cards rather than the more conventional 78, and its simple line drawings show a strong influence from the psychedelic era. Nevertheless, Robbins claims spiritual inspiration for the cards and cites the influence of Tibetan Buddhism in particular. Furthermore their effectiveness for divination - cited as early as 1975 in Bill Butler in The Definitive Tarot - may explain the enduring undercurrent of their popularity.
Webset & Graphics Created by and Maintained by GypsyLee
Copyright 2008 and beyond | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
