A Tarot History

Tarot. What is it? Where did it come from? Today it has become super popular. Mainly because it offers mysticism and insight into yourself.

So where did it originate? Well it originated as a card game, kind of like bridge, in Italy! It came about in the 15th century. Which begs another question...Why is it steeped in the Occult life, and why does it feel so ancient!?

Let's start with the name, because these are a lot of questions that have come to my mind, as I have been delving into the Tarot. It has been an on going process, one part research, the other part intuition.

It's original game name was Tarocchi (Italian word), and then it lost it's popularity around the same time, because it was leading people towards excessive gambling. Then in the 16th & 17th centuries it became a popular game in parts of Europe, but mostly in France. And in France we have the word English speaking nations use, Tarot. It later died down, but had another jump in popularity in Europe in the 1970s, and is still popular today. There are even tournaments played with Tarot. But I digress...

While that was the case for the Elite of Europe, a Frenchman by the name of, Jean-Baptise Alliette, in the late 1700s, picked up the cards and published his own deck to use the tarot cards for divination, in Cartomancy. Now it began steeped in the Occult for sure. He gave meaning to his deck. Even made a step by step guidebook into the deck to do readings. He incorporated much symbolism from the Egyptian Book of Thoth. This is where it became inducted into the Occult world.

Later, like the resurgence in the game, Tarot got a revamp, in the Occult world too; by the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck, printed in 1910. This deck was created by Arthur Waite, published by William Rider, and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. Arthur Waite used a Kabbalistic symbolism in the production of the Tarot deck, so Pamela used Sola Busca artwork for inspiration when she did the illustrations of the deck. This gave it an awesome take on the illustrations that later inspired people to create their own decks.

Then there is the Thoth Deck of Tarot, that was created by Alestier Crowley, in 1943, illustrations by Lady Freida Harris. This deck was slightly different in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, in that it was rearranged in the astrological aspect and the numbering was different in accordance to his earlier book, the Book of Law. Which he got from Thoth himself.

Since these were published thousands of Tarot decks have been made, but they all have one thing in common. The Symbolism. Tarot will always be a powerful divination tool, and I hope to learn more! Below you will find a link to Scarlet Ravenswoods YouTube video on a brief history of Tarot. It is super informative and Scarlet is super knowledgeable! Enjoy!

Where does Tarot come From?


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