The modern market for "mystical" services is replete with offers of various fortune-telling: on playing cards, runes, wax, on the hand and so on. Especially popular among the current "sorcerers" are predictions of the future using a deck of Tarot cards. However, is the Tarot limited only by predictions?
Maps - symbol system
To answer this question, it will be interesting to delve into history a little and talk about the semantic content of the Tarot cards - a system of symbols, a deck of 78 cards. They are divided into Major Arcana - trump cards, usually 22 cards, and Minor Arcana - four suits, usually 56 cards. The word "lasso" comes from the Latin arcanus, meaning "secret", "unknown", "sacrament".
In the classic, most common version, the Major Arcana cards include the Fool (Fool), Magician, Priestess, Empress, Emperor, Hierophant (High Priest), Lovers (Choice ")," Chariot "," Justice "(" Justice ")," Hermit "," Wheel of Fortune "," Power "," Hanged Man "," Death "," Temperance "(" Time ")," Devil ", "Tower", "Star", "Moon", "Sun", "Last Judgment" ("Judgment"), "World".
Minor Arcana: wands (sticks, staves, sceptres); swords; bowls, cups; discs, coins (pentacles, denarii). Thus, in the Minor Arcana there are 14 cards of each suit. Of these, four cards are figured, or "court cards" ("courtiers"). They depict people: king (pharaoh); queen (lady, sibyl); prince (knight, cavalier, horseman); page (princess, jack, messenger). The remaining 10 cards of the suit are spectacled, from one point to 10. One-point cards are aces.
A bit of history
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In Europe, tarot cards trace their history from the XIV-XV centuries. So, it is known that in 1450 a similar deck was invented in Milan by the Visconti and Sforza families. The surviving fragments of these cards served as the prototype for a modern deck. Tarot cards of those times that have come down to us are luxurious handmade pictures made for the aristocracy.
In 1465, the Tarocchi Mantegna deck appeared, the structure of which is based on the kabbalistic division of the universe known as the 50 Gates of Bina. There are 50 cards in a deck: five series or suits (The firmament, Fundamentals and virtues, Science, Muses, Social status), 10 cards each. Some images on modern Tarot cards (Major and Minor Arcana) were borrowed from the Tarocchi deck.
Sometimes they try to start the history of the Tarot from 1392, since there is a record dated that year, according to which a deck of cards was ordered from the artist Jacquine Gringonier for the French king Charles VI the Mad. It is believed that some of the maps from it are still kept in the Paris National Library. However, these handmade maps of the Northern Italian type were produced at the end of the 15th century. Therefore, it is possible that Gringonier ordered not tarot cards for the king, but an ordinary deck for card games.
Temples, priests, sects, legends …
Popular at the beginning of the 20th century, the French theoretician and practitioner of occultism Papus in his "Key to the Occult Sciences" claims that the Tarot system was developed by the Egyptian priests. When the Egyptian kingdom was threatened with destruction, they encrypted their secret knowledge in the Tarot for their revival in future centuries. The English interpreter of the Tarot P. Scott Holler believes that the word "Tarot" itself comes from the Egyptian words tar - "way" and ros - "regal", that is, "royal way of life."
There is a legend that a temple with 22 rooms was built in Ancient Egypt, where symbolic paintings flaunted on the walls, from which the Elder Arkans of Taro originated. This legend confirms the version that the Tarot cards originated from the vignettes of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Drawings from it were actually applied to the walls of sacred structures - tombs.
There is another wonderful legend. As if many years ago people of high consciousness discovered that the world began to flood with those who are unable to perceive integrity, that is, do not feel love for the Earth and its nature. There is a danger that the omnipotent forces, creating the common good, can change their purpose and destroy the planet, so that secret knowledge does not fall to the unworthy. Therefore, the higher minds, guided by their wisdom, encrypted all this knowledge and great techniques in the images of 78 cards. The wise men gave the cards to the gypsy wanderers who were unaware of the great ancient secrets hidden in the Tarot.
Some researchers believe that the tarot cards are a record of the secret teachings of various underground religious groups. One such group was the Gnostics, a late antique sect with a reputation as heretical due to the spiritual beliefs of its adherents. In order to avoid persecution, the Gnostics were forced to keep their faith in secret.
Simple fortune telling?
The famous Russian traveler, theosophist and historian of the unknown Elena Petrovna Blavatskaya, drawing parallels between Hinduism, Buddhism, Kabbalah and Tarot, came to the conclusion that the 22 Major Arcana Tarot is actually a figurative form of the Universal Tree of Life, that is, the foundation of many ancient religious systems. Another classic of the occult, Eliphas Levi, wrote: “A student deprived of books, if he had Tarot cards and knew how to read them, could surpass science in a few years and talk about all possible subjects with incomparable art and indefatigable eloquence” (E. Levi. “Dogma and Ritual of Higher Magic ).
According to him, the Tarot cards contain Hermetic, Gnostic and Kabbalistic symbolism, since the early Italian Renaissance, which gave birth to the Tarot, was a time of great intellectual activity. Therefore, Hermeticism, astrology, Neoplatonism, Pythagorean philosophy, and unorthodox Christian thought, flourishing then, could leave their mark on the symbolism of the Tarot. Eliphas Levi became the first person to correlate 22 trump cards with Hebrew letters. They, according to the Hermetic tradition, in turn correlated with astrological, alchemical and other mystical symbols. This gave impetus to the formation of the Tarot not only as a method of divination, but also as a powerful tool for the development of magical rituals in general.
Aleister Crowley, one of the most famous occultists of the 19th and 20th centuries, made a significant contribution to the study of this area. Crowley is the author of The Book of Thoth, a fundamental work on the symbolism of the Tarot and their kabbalistic and astrological correspondences. The Tarot Tota Deck, created by Crowley in 1944 in collaboration with artist Frida Harris, is preferred by thousands of professional tarot readers, amateurs and collectors around the world.
According to the American Tarot Association, among professional tarot readers, the Tarot Tota deck ranks second in popularity after the Ryder-Waite Tarot.
Tarot cards are of interest not only within the framework of esotericism, but also within the framework of traditional practical psychology. After the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (a student of Freud) noticed in his works that the Tarot symbolism coincides with the system of psychological archetypes developed by him, many psychoanalysts began to use the Tarot deck to interpret the mental states of their clients.
Self-knowledge tool
Tarot deck Visconti-Sforza
Tarot cards are an invaluable tool for solving any problems and awakening a person's creative abilities. Sometimes we are not able to see reasonable alternatives to the circumstances of our own lives, because we are too deeply immersed in troubles and troubles and in thinking about them. But a simple layout (one or three cards) helps us to abstract from both external influences and from excessive self-examination and concentrate entirely on the existing issue.
Tarot cards allow us to find a more rational way out of the situation, which we did not even suspect before, show us the situation in a completely different light, thanks to which we begin to see it from an unexpected side. Tarot cards reveal the secret meaning of events and suggest extraordinary actions leading to victory over fate.
Thus, we can conclude that divination with Tarot cards is just a by-product of working with them. With its rich esoteric, philosophical, astrological and psychological congruences, the Tarot deck serves as a powerful tool for self-knowledge and spiritual development.
Evgeny NESTERENKO