Queen of Tarot

the ancient wisdom of the cards.

Buy my ebook, "A Concise Guide to the Tarot: In Vivid Color" for Amazon Kindle!

History

AstralgiAstralgiLike most forms of art, it is difficult to trace this one back to its beginnings, because of the nature of cards; they deteriorate, and are lost over time. This means that there are few surviving examples, and piecing together the truth takes a great deal of patience and time. I hope that more scholars will be brave enough to risk being tainted with the occult in order to discover the factual history of this fascinating custom.

What can we say, for certain, about the origins of the Tarot? Decks have been created by a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons, but based on the archaeological record it appears that the custom of playing and gambling with cards arrived from the east but was modified to suit Western sensibilities after its arrival. The creator of the Tarot, who almost certainly lived in Italy in the 14th century, saw these modified cards and combined them with a group of trump cards, which together represented his or her cosmology. Read about the appearance of cards in europe »

The tarot playing card deck pattern was created for the purpose of playing games that involve trick-taking (Such as those in our Games section). Its use across Europe was once far more widespread than it is today.

Just at the close of the Middle Ages, playing cards suddenly started popping up all over Europe. We know that mostly because the use of playing cards in Europe is followed very rapidly with bans and bulls and other admonishments from the authorities, not ranting about the danger of cartomancy, but rather warning of the dangers of gambling.

But of course, that’s not the interesting part of the Tarot’s history. The interesting part is, Why were the trumps added? Why are they filled with so many symbols foreign to the common man? What did the original artists of Tarot cards believe in? What were their hopes and fears? Tragically, these are the parts of the story which are currently lost to the sands of time. Only a concerted effort of practitioners, historical archaeologists, and art historians can answer these mysteries, because at the present time the data simply do not exist.

All too often, the human side of the history has been pushed aside in favor of the history of war. Unfortunately, I don’t have any historical archaeologists or art historians lying around, so I am faced with the task of presenting to you the current best information as faithfully as I can from the existing written record. Thankfully, due to our increased sense of nostalgia, we are now becoming more sensitive to the quirky, precocious side of our past, so scholars are beginning to recognize the artistic and cultural value of the Tarot.

Pages in this Section

Image Gallery

P223 1 Astralgi

Related Posts

Madame Le Normand

08/04/2012 at 11:50 AM

Tags tarot card meanings 1772 history cartomancy

Excerpt from E. S. Taylor's "The history of playing cards, with anecdotes of their use in conjuring, fortune-telling, and card-sharping":

The stormy period of the first Consulship of Napoleon and that of the Empire which followed it, was especially characterized by cartomantic practices in France. At this time, there lived in Paris a famous woman, whose renown as a prophetess will probably not soon pass away. This person was Mlle. Lenormand, whose influence with the empress Josephine, and even Napoleon himself, was said to be considerable.

Read More...

Arthur Edward Waite

08/04/2012 at 11:50 AM

Tags rider waite smith golden dawn 1857 history

Before the Rider-Waite deck was published in 1911, there was no modern deck that featured pictures for each of the 78 cards in the deck. Most decks had illustrations only for the Major Arcana, while the rest of the cards featured simply a pattern of easily recognizable pips. Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942) wanted to publish a complete, modern version of the tarot that featured pictures for each card in the deck, including the minor arcana.

Read More...

First Use of the Codex

08/04/2012 at 11:50 AM

Tags xylography rome history 0100

Kodeks IV NagHammadi
Kodeks IV NagHammadi100s CE, Rome: The codex format is used for the first time. A codex is the very earliest form of book that we had that looks like a book. Before the invention of the codex, all knowledge was written in scrolls or on tablets, or the walls of monuments. This was the first time we could leaf through information in such a convenient manner.

Read More...

The Game of Leaves

08/04/2012 at 11:50 AM

Tags chinese dice china history 0827 asian

The game was often referred to as "gold speckled leaves", which does make it sound quite a lot like early gold-leaf Tarot cards. Many scholars will tell you that playing cards were invented in 827 because they have conflated these two games. If there is any relationship between these games, which I doubt, it is this:

Read More...

Papus

08/04/2012 at 11:50 AM

Tags history the hermetic tradition 19th century kabbalah spanish french 1865

Papus (1865-1916)
Papus (1865-1916) Papus was a French doctor, hypnotist, and occultist, who founded the modern Martinist Order and helped to popularize occultism. He was born in Spain in 1865, but his family moved to Paris when he was four years old, and he received his education there. He wrote about the Tarot from a Kabbalistic perspective, and was an expert on the works of Éliphas Lévi.

Papus in a Martinist lodge
Papus in a Martinist lodge

Read More...

Antoine Court de Gébelin

08/04/2012 at 11:50 AM

Tags egyptian egypt book of thoth thoth french 18th century history 1719

Antoine Court de Gebelin (c. 1719-1784)
Antoine Court de Gebelin (c. 1719-1784)Antoine Court de Gébelin (c. 1719-1784) was a French pastor who initiated the rumor that the Tarot represented the remnants of the Book of Thoth, the wisdom of the ancient pharaohs. He was incorrect, but his theory gained widespread popularity and it has taken over two hundred years to truly dispense with his ideas. Even today, there are people who believe that the Tarot is the Book of Thoth.

Read More...

Gamblers caught printing cards in China

08/04/2012 at 11:50 AM

Tags chinese china playing cards asian 1294 history

On the twenty-third day of the sixth month in the thirty-first year of the zhiyuan period (17 July 1294), we caught Yan Sengzhu and Zheng Zhugou playing cards, and have also found wood blocks to print cards. Each person has admitted to the truth of the accusation. We have, according to the rules, passed judgement and punished correctly the organizer Lu Donger, accessory to gambling Zheng Zhugou, the owner of the premises Jiang Sier, and the block printer Ye Lin, and dispatched to the Ever-abundant Treasury for deposit the nine cards (zhipai) that were about to be destroyed, and...

Read More...