There is still no consensus on what it is: the superstition of the ignorant, the trick of manipulators, or a subtle tool of soothsayers, but people have been turning to the Tarot deck for half a millennium to get important advice, find out the past, and guess the future.
The first mention of the Tarot dates back to 1450. There is at least one known tarot game, it is still popular in France, but most of these cards were used for fortune telling. The etymology of the term tarocco is not well understood. It probably comes from the Arabic word taraka, which means to throw.
Routes of Destiny
A typical tarot deck consists of 78 cards and is divided into two large groups: the major and minor arcana. The word "lasso" comes from the Latin word arcanum, which means "closed", "secret".
Minor arcana usually consist of 56 cards of four suits: wands, swords, cups and denarii (they are also called pentacles or coins). Each suit includes ace, two, three, and so on up to ten. Next are the "courtiers" or "curly" cards: page (jack), knight (rider), queen and king. The position of the ace is determined individually, either at the beginning or at the end of the sequence.
Major arcana (trump cards) usually include 22 cards, each of which has an original drawing and name: a fool is a man in a buffoon's attire, a hermit is an old man with a burning lantern, a high priestess is a woman in a papal tiara, a hanged man (gallows) is a man hanging down head with crossed legs; moon, tower, stars, devil … The order of cards and their names in different decks may differ.
Having received a question from the customer, the tarot reader lays out a certain number of cards according to a certain scheme and in the required sequence, and then interprets them, outlining the client's life, his future and pressing problems, as well as possible ways of solving them.
Promotional video:
In the practice of Tarot, there are a huge number of layouts, simple and complex: layouts for love, for work, for money, for the future or the past, layouts in the form of a fan, a star, a cross.
A single card can participate in the layout, or all 78 sheets of the deck can participate. The tarot reader can choose one of the classic layouts for one occasion or another, or he can improvise.
The interpretation of the dropped cards is also a very creative process. It is customary to use two methods, or their synthesis. With the systemic method, the fortuneteller carefully studies all possible meanings of all cards, in the correct or inverted position, as well as the meanings of various combinations. In the end, he can only summarize the interpretation and voice the forecast to the client. Another principle is called meditative. The tarot reader delves into the images on the dropped cards, passes the pictures through his subconscious, the images born in the brain are ordered and clothed in the form of prediction. The most productive way of interpretation is considered to be a hybrid approach, when the fortuneteller acts as a medium, immersing himself in the visual images of the pictures, but corrects his conclusions based on standard interpretations based on numerology, symbolism, and the psychotype of specific arcana.
It is believed that the most successful tarot fortuneteller was Maria Lenormand. She predicted the death of Pushkin, the execution of Marie Antoinette, the murder of Marat and Robespierre, the marriage of Josephine to Napoleon, and then the exile and death of the emperor.
Kings for kings
There are several legends regarding the origin of divination cards. One by one, the images of the senior arcana came to us from Egypt. Another legend attributes the invention of the Tarot to nomadic gypsies, who so saved ancient knowledge from the Romans. India, China, Iran, and even Atlantis, which had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, were declared the homeland of the Tarot.
Playing cards really came to Europe from the Middle East. In the XIN-XIV centuries, they came to Spain and Italy, immediately becoming a popular entertainment. The Arabian deck "Mameluk", with which they quickly began to make copies, consisted of 52 cards of four suits: swords, coins, bowls and polo clubs, which Europeans mistakenly dubbed wands. In addition to numbered cards, each suit included three "figured cards": one malik (emir) and two of his ministers. But there were no major arcana in either the Mameluk cards, or the Indian ones, with their twelve suits, or the Chinese ones.
Today it is believed that the Tarot cards were invented in Europe in the first half of the 15th century. The oldest known tarot decks are "Visconti-Sforza cards". In fact, the name is collective. It is used to denote scattered sheets of 15 decks, at different times made by orders of the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti and his son-in-law Francesco Sforza. These extraordinarily expensive tarots were painted in tempera on primed cardboard, which was covered with gold and silver leaf.
The deck, ordered in 1392 for the French king Charles VI, has long been considered the oldest tarot deck, but in reality it is just a set of playing cards.
Raphael Esotericism
Another amazing property of the Tarot is that the style of the deck chosen for fortune telling, the peculiarities of the drawing and design of the sheets, affects the prediction process no less than, say, the order of laying out the arcana. Pictures should have an emotional contact with the master fortuneteller, awaken his imagination, help to go into a kind of meditation. Therefore, the design of the cards is extremely important.
Tarot cards have been used to guess for centuries. Many occultists and artists have addressed this topic. Experts identify several major stylistic trends that have received their own names. The occultist Kana-Batista Pitua is considered the father of the Egyptian tarot. Tarot "Visconti-Sforza" is a luxurious stylization of the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century. The Marseilles Tarot imitates French cards of the 17th century, and the Etteilla Tarot is filled with Masonic symbols. The Ryder-Waite Tarot since 1910 remains one of the most popular iconography, which has spawned many clones. In 1944, a deck was released, created by the occultist Aleister Crowley and the artist Frida Harris.
These are perhaps the most famous of the classic styles, but in the first half of the 20th century, there were so many new designs for the Tarot deck that now it is difficult to even name their exact number. As striking examples, one can name the erotic Tarot Manara or the Tarot of the Elves by McElroy and Korea, Tarot simply created on popular themes: Tarot of Flowers, Tarot of Vampires, Samurai Tarot, Tarot Inquisition.
Kabbalah vs. Pope
Someone associates the mystical essence of Tarot cards with astrology or numerology, someone, like Jung, with the archetypes of psychological science, someone speaks about the secret knowledge of disappeared cults. One of the attempts to understand the miraculous power of the Tarot associates the cards with the Knights Templar.
The Order of the Knights Templar was founded in the Holy Land in 1119 by a small group of knights led by Hugh de Payne. In 1312, the order was destroyed by the Roman Catholic Church. Its members, accused of heresy, were arrested, tortured, and executed.
What does the card have to do with it? And the cards have something to do with it …
A careful study of the Tarot cards leads to curious thoughts. The lasso, depicting the high priestess (pope), almost directly points to Mary Magdalene. The first Christians believed that it was she, and not Saint Peter, who received spiritual authority from Jesus and became the first pope. The Pope, as well as the other lasso - "High Priest", sits between two columns resembling
There are two main types of the deck named after Maria Lenormand. The first is the so-called Astromythological, the second is the Gypsy columns at the entrance to the Jerusalem Temple. Later, such columns will decorate modern Masonic temples. In addition, the "High Priest" lasso has another name - "The Grand Master", and this suggests that the map depicts not the head of the Roman Catholic Church, but the master of the Templar Order. As many as two arcana: "The Emperor" and "The Hanging Man" - are depicted with crossed legs. It was in this position that it was customary to bury members of the order. And most importantly, the Major Arcana clearly rests on the Sephiroth tree - a diagram that is at the heart of the Kabbalistic teachings associated with Jehovah. The diagram represents 10 circles (sefirot), symbolizing various archetypes (primordial images), they are lined up in three pillars,they are connected by 22 lines, which exactly corresponds to the number of major arcana.
Anticipating repression, the Templars encrypted esoteric knowledge. The order disappeared, but the cards that predicted the fate remained. Perhaps this explains the ambivalence of the Catholic Church towards them. It was enough to slander neighbors, birthmarks or sores on the body to get on the fire of the Inquisition, but Taro is not mentioned in any sentences. Perhaps this is another riddle waiting to be solved?
Magazine: Mysteries of History No. 35. Author: Eduard Shaurov