The Tarot A History

The Tarot

A History

A Historical Awareness

t is not our desire at this introductory stage to give a lesson about the history of the Tarot. The following are just a few points about the basic elements that structure the Tarot.

here are actually hundreds of Tarot decks in the world, but in fact, the cards appeared officially in the Middle Ages. The oldest known Tarot cards are Italian from around the 1450s. They were Tarot decks used in the courts and were very expensive.

The first edits to the card games occurred around the 16th century. And before that ? Certain authors think the Tarot came from ancient Egypt. And why not ? Well, it is impossible, simply because the concepts drawn on the cards have their origins at most around the 12th century.

As an example let us observe the NO-NAME arcana:

We observe in this arcana a skeleton. It is only after the 12th century that the skeletal death on horseback with a sword or holding a scythe made its official appearance.

The skeleton’s birth follows the path of the Crusades. Many died wanting to free Christ’s tomb. Knights of fame, noblemen, and other prestigious people, saw their blood mixed with the desert’s sand. But, as tradition dictated, their bodies had to be returned to the soil of their ancestors, so they could rest in peace.

In those days refrigeration had not been invented. The only way to preserve the bodies was to use salt. But on the long road between Jerusalem and a fallen crusader’s birthplace, often thousands of kilometers away, the body decomposed. So it was decided to boil the cadaver, and retain the bones. Hence the bones became the symbol of immortality and the skeleton received its letters of nobility. The following century saw the spreading of epidemics and Europe discovered the horror of the black plague, the body that became fleshless, and the pain of the lost ones: death lost its sanctity. The myth of the grim reaper was born.

It is evident that the images reflect the atmosphere of the Middle Ages. Look at a Tarot deck. It has 78 cards divided into two categories: 22 major cards and 56 minor cards. At this stage, we might wonder why there are 22 major ones, especially since the notion of 22 is far older. Greek geometers used to draw a circle using the fraction of 22/7 instead of Pi 3,14, and 22 is the number of letters of numeral alphabets, like Hebrew, Carthaginian, and Phoenician. You could conclude that the game of the Tarot is quite old… but it isn’t ! 22/7 is just a practical fraction to measure or build a circle. There is nothing mysterious about it. The architects of the Middle Ages built cathedrals by drawing out geometrical shapes like circles, squares, and triangles, making obvious use of Christic numbers stemmed from Greek and Jewish cultures. Hence it is normal to find Jewish, Greek and Christian concepts in the Tarot cards. It is not a reason to take the Tarot back to Methuselah…

Yet, there are serious people who take the Tarot back to antiquity. Let us take the Egyptian legend. The honorable Antoine Court de Gebelin, later ridiculed by some, first mentioned it. He was a remarkable grammarian and linguist, respected by other thinkers such as Voltaire, Diderot and d’Alembert, by the genius Franklin, and King Louis XVI, who gave him the task of Royal Censor. In his book, « Monde Primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne », he talked about the hypothesis that the game of the Tarot was a sacred book which had escaped the famous fire of the library of Alexandria.

Here is what he says in his eighth volume, page 365 :

From the game of the Tarot, where its origin is discussed, where allegories are explained, and where is indicated that it is the source of our modern playing cards, etc. etc

SurpriIe que cauIerait la découverte d'un livre Egyptien.

Si l'on entendoit annoncer qu'il exifte encore de nos jours un ouvrage des anciens Egyptiens, un de leur livres échappé aux flammes qui dévorerent leurs fuperbes bibliothèques, & qui contient leur doctrine la plus pure fur des objets intéreffans, chacun fertoit, fans doute, empreffé de connoître un livre auffi précieux, auffi extraordinaire. Si on ajoutoit que ce livre eft très répandu dans une grande partie de l'Europe, que depuis nombre de fiècles il y eft entre les mains de tout le monde, la furprise iroit certainement en croiffant : ne feroit-elle pas à fon comble, fi l'on affuroit qu'on n'a jamais foupçonné qu'il fut Egyptien, qu'on le poffède comme ne le poffédant point, que perfonne n'a jamais cherché à en déchiffrer une feuille ; que le fruit d'une fageffe exquife eft regardé comme un amas de figures extravagantes qui ne fignifient rien par elles-même ? Ne croiroit-on pas qu'on veut s'amufer, fe jouer de la crédulité de fes auditeurs ?

A surprise caused by the discovery of an Egyptian book.

If we heard that a manuscript of the ancient Egyptians, had been found and that one of their books that escaped from the flames that gulped the superb libraries, and that it contained their purest doctrine concerning interesting subjects, everyone would be in a hurry to know such an extraordinary and precious book. If we added that it had spread through Europe and into the hands of many, the surprise would be even greater. Would it not be even more astounding if we affirmed that we never suspected its Egyptian origin, that we possess it without really possessing it, that no one ever tried to decipher a page, that the fruit of an exquisite wisdom might have been looked at as extravagant figures, without meaning anything by themselves ? Wouldn’t we finding ourselves amused by the gullibility of the readers ?

Ce livre Egyptien exiIte.

Le fait eft cependant très vrai : ce livre Égyptien, feul refle de leurs fuperbes bibliothèques, exifte de nos jours ; il eft même fi commun, qu'aucun favant n'a daigné s'en occuper, perfonne avant nous n'ayant jamais foupçonné fon illustre origine. Ce livre eft composé de LXXVII feuillets ou tableaux, même de LXXVIII, divifés en V claffes, qui offrent chacune des objets auffi variés qu'amufant & instructifs : ce livre eft, en un mot, le JEU DES TAROTS, jeu inconnu, il eft vrai, à Paris, mais très connu en Italie, en Allemagne, même en Provence, & auffi bizarre par les figures qu'offre chacune de fes cartes, que par leur multitude.

This Egyptian book exists

The fact is nevertheless true: this Egyptian book, the single only remaining piece of their superb library exists today. It is even so common that no scholar took the time to consider, and no one suspected its illustrious origin. This book is composed of LXXVII pages or tables, even of LXXVIII, divided in V classes, which offer objects as amusing as they are instructive: this book is in one word, THE GAME OF THE TAROT, unknown game, it is true in Paris, but well known in Italy, Germany, even in Provence, and is strange because of the images on each card as by their multitude.

The subject of the debate is a hypothesis - that the cards came from Egypt – which is equal to all the other hypotheses which say the cards come from China, India, Persia, from the Arabs, and so on. As to its divinatory aspect, the strangest was that it was not elaborated by Antoine Court de Gebelin, but by the Count de Mellet. Indeed, by giving it its place in his book, he supported it. In fact, the use of the Tarot to read the future is the work of the wigmaker Alliette, alias Etteilla, who in 1781 launched the trend of divination by the Tarot.

Let us return to the 12th century, a period of transition between antiquity and the modern world. By the time of the great Mongol and Arab invasions, Europe had opened up to all the cultures of the time. And Europe became the crossroad to all the cultures of the world known at that time, from the Orient to the Occident, north to south, without forgetting the Celtic culture. Although this would not be the right place to talk about its epic, but there were people who ensured its synthesis and its transmission in different languages: the famous Hebrew translators. Let us remember that the religious West was interested in leaving the Old Testament, to focus on the New, and consequently, the Jewish understanding became the fuel of the spiritual quest of the time.

Religious figures found in

The Tarot, such as angels and the devil...

or the symbol of the 4 evangelists:
The Angel (St Matthew)
The Eagle (St John)
The Lion (St Mark)
The Bull (St Luke)

… Some concepts of the Old Testament are found as well: « God made the two great lights, the greatest one to preside over the day, and the smaller one to preside over night; he also made the stars. God placed them in the Universe, to lighten earth, to rule the day and the night, and to separate darkness from daylight. God saw that it was good. […] » (Genesis 1, 16-18)

The large and the small luminaries with the stars to illuminate Earth

These religious concepts are, in fact, the foundation of mystic knowledge of the Middle Ages, and we can confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt that the profound concepts of kabalistic knowledge which flourished at the time, necessarily colored the Tarot.

This presentation would be trivial if we did not include it with the fact that the Tarot belonged to the school of thought called « courteous love ». To understand it, it is enough to remind ourselves that the Fin’amor flourished with the invention of the lyrical songs of the troubadours. But who other than the jongleurs took the poetry of the troubadours from castle to castle ! The latter had existed since Antiquity, but it was only in the 12th century that their profession became noble and respected. It was the quality of those who knew how to tell a story and converse… they personalized the art of the verb! They were indeed the spokespersons of these troubadours who sang of their quest for a Lady. For a troubadour, to find a Dame was to find his Soul !

The Juggler and his Lady

These jugglers later became swashbucklers of fairs, the jongleurs of public squares. But it removes nothing from the fact that the Tarot tells, with a lot of poetry, how to reach one’s soul, thanks to the happy knowing and the crazy love, the way Lancelot looked for the love of Guinever and did all he could to be worthy of it ! The Tarot is the inner quest of the Self.

By relating it to history, we get closer to the art of divination: as long as an arcana does not become alive to the eyes of a Tarot reader, it will not be able to speak to him. And to understand an arcana is to enter a dialog with it.

We said earlier that it is around this time that Kabbalah flourished, and indeed, the Tarot is structured according to it. But be careful ! It does not mean that the Tarot’s origin is Jewish. In the Middle Ages the greatest scholars of the time used Kabbalah to reflect upon God and the universe. Hence you will not be surprised to learn that King Francois the First, on his death bed, wanted to know if they had found a book on the Kabbalah, or that Gilles de Viterbe, a hermit at St Augustine, wrote his Scechina, dedicated to Clement VII and to Charles Quint, explaining the mysteries of the Kabbalah.