TarotWhat is the Tarot?
The Tarot is a deck of cards commonly used to divine the futures of people and events. Divination using cards is called cartomancy. The deck consists of four numbered suits like a regular deck of playing cards, and twenty two picture cards numbered one through twenty-two (in some decks, zero through twenty-one). The twenty-two picture cards are called the Major Arcana (the suited cards are the Minor Arcana).
The Tarot was initially designed to play a game but by the 18th century mystics were describing its symbols with meaning and significance that went far beyond its use as a card game. Divination by Tarot is an art, it is a focus on human nature and destiny; a life guide allowing us to view the options and chose better paths. From the Tarot we can get advice, encouragement and warning of dangers; it can also connect us with higher orders of life.
The oldest known Tarot decks come from Italy dated circa 1420. The oldest surviving Tarot cards are from fifteen fragmented decks hand painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan. It should be understood that Tarot is not exclusively a divination system. It is also a family of card games which are enjoyed today mainly in Europe. It was only after the invention of the printing press that mass production of cards became possible. Decks survive from this era from various cities in France (the best known being a deck from the southern city of Marseilles and thus named the Tarot de Marseilles).
Tarot was not widely adopted by mystics, occultists and secret societies until the 18th and 19th centuries. The tradition began in 1781, when Antoine Court de Gébelin, who asserted that the symbolism of the Tarot de Marseille represented the mysteries of Isis and Thoth. Gébelin claimed that the name "tarot" came from the Egyptian words tar, meaning "royal", and ro, meaning "road", and that the Tarot therefore represented a "royal road" to wisdom. De Gébelin also asserted that the Gypsies, who were among the first to use cards for divination, were descendants of the Ancient Egyptians.
The idea of the cards as a mystical key was further developed by Eliphas Lévi and passed to the English-speaking world by The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Tarot divination became increasingly popular in the New World from 1910, with the publication of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck which still remains extremely popular in the English-speaking world today.
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Famous Tarot pioneers
Antoine Court de Gebelen (1725-84)
De Gebelen was a member of a secret society of occultists, and was greatly influenced by Egyptian thought. The story is that he saw the game of tarocchi being played and saw in the cards a vast amount of symbolism which he attributed to ancient Egyptian lore. The deck he saw at the time was the Marseilles type, which had evolved and changed from the Visconti-Sforza deck. It is thought that the changes in the cards occurred when members of a secret society put occult symbols and artwork into the cards. De Gebelen didn't realise that the cards he saw weren't the original cards, and so when he wrote his treatise, "Le Monde Primitif", which was the start of written works about the secret meanings of tarot cards, he was writing about the modified tarot. It is from his treatise that all the common misconceptions relating the tarot to Egypt stem from.
Eliphas Levi (1810-1875)
A Catholic Priest, writer, and teacher who created the basis for the most popular Tarot cards still in use today, although Levi was born and trained for the Catholic Priesthood, he studied many other religions and subjects as well. He studied the Jewish, Hindu, Polish and Masonic religions and Cabalism. Levi was also a student of astronomy, astrology, and the metaphysics. When he created his first Tarot deck, he incorporated his knowledge of religions, the elements in nature (fire, water, earth, air), and what were believed to be powerful astrological events and symbols (most of which are still popular today). There are even references to scriptures from The Bible shown in some of the cards. Levi claimed he created the cards as a tool to aid his students in the art of spiritual enlightenment, self improvement, and self awareness.
Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942)
Arthur Edward Waite is credited with the renaissance of the Tarot in the Twentieth Century. He commissioned artist Pamela Coleman Smith to create what he called the "rectified" Tarot. Created by a member of secret societies also known as a revered mystic, Waite's version has been widely accepted as the standard, and is by far the most popular deck of the century, rich in symbolism and easily understood due to the simple nature of the artwork. It wasn't until the late 1800's that A.E. Waite realized that the cards could be used to predict possible future events. Waite created the Rider-Waite deck based on the works of Eliphas Levi, and published the cards in 1896. The Rider-Waite Tarot deck is the most widely used version currently in existence.
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)
Crowley as A E Waite was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He is author of 'The Book of Thoth : A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians 'This book describes the philosophy and the use of Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot, a deck of Tarot cards designed by Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris. The Thoth Tarot has become one of the best-selling and most popular Tarot Decks in the world. By 1944, Crowley would match the pace in scholarship set by Waite in 1909 and at the same time, he would expand upon it by extending the field into Oriental philosophy, Middle Eastern practices and Western science including Relativity.
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Tarot Today
Uses for Tarot cards are varied. They can of course be used in a traditional fortune telling layout. But they can also be used as inspiration cards, affirmation tools, or for self-discovery and intuition building.
Hundreds of different Tarot decks now exist. Decks that downplay or remove the Christian symbolism are increasingly popular, and some feminist decks significantly downplay the male dominant roles found in traditional decks. Some decks have discarded the suit system altogether and are structured around different themes - for example, animals in a Native American inspired deck.
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Getting started with the Tarot
Go on admit it! The ancient Tarot has a fascination to us all and hard to resist. Many famous diviners have used the Tarot to predict events as have fairground gypsies over centuries. Now you can learn it both to help yourself and astonish your friends -and maybe become a professional yourself! Your teacher at the JCPF is Sheree Jones who teaches the Rider Waite pack, a highly respected set used widely by professional tarot readers. The course begins with an introduction to Tarot. What is Tarot and a Tarot primer to help you see that the Tarot is a system of divination and much more than a deck of cards. You will learn some history, psychology and symbolism. You will learn how to use the Tarot to know about yourself and what you see in the cards to help others. In this twelve week course you will learn what the cards mean, how to interpret and provide readings for others -just the start you need to feel you are getting somewhere.
Learning to be a good Tarot reader
Now that you have completed the introductory Tarot course -next is to put the polish on what you know and deepen that understanding. This course will be conducted on the same lines to the Beginners course but will be concentrating on the reverse meanings and interpretations of the cards. Below is just and idea of the order of cards but your teacher Sheree Jones may change this as the course run.
Looking at Major Arcana cards: The Fool; The Magician; The High Priestess; The Emperor; The Empress, The Hierophant; The Lovers; The Chariot; Strength, The Hermit; The Wheel of Fortune; Justice; The Hanged Man, Death; Temperance; Devil and Tower, The Star; The Moon; The Sun; Judgement and The World and then the minor Arcana, cups, wands, swords, etc. Finally in the finishing weeks you will give public readings -think you can't do it? Be surprised you will!
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Are you psychic enough to read and interpret the Tarot?
Likely you are but may not know it. The rational minds' developments begin very early even before we learn to walk but as you may have noticed (or maybe even remember) youngsters live in an immediate world much more so than us grown ups. A very young personality's' memory is short on specifics -they live in a momentary world in which their intuitive faculty dominates their expressions. As we get older we tend to push this capability to the back of our minds as we evolve in the physical world; objective realisations develop, patterns of behaviour are remembered and logical thinking becomes the order of the day.
But you will have your moments; unexplained hunches, prophetic dreams, inexplicable insights into other people and events. You may even experience a loud inner voice advising or defining; you may have flashes of clairvoyance -pictures that appear unasked for on the back plate of the mind. You may smell an odour or perfume not recognised by anyone else; you may have a déjà vu experience you cannot explain. A great many intuitional moments are not recognised at all -we thinking they are the product of our imaginative minds.
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