Today when we hear, or read the word Tarot it is very easy to conjure up thoughts and images relating to divination, fortune telling and the whole Mind, Body and Spirit movement. Even those against the use of Tarot cards, such as those involved in religious groups and organizations are still very aware of the word and all it pertains to.  However we need only go back a few years to see that it hasn’t always been such a popular, or indeed well known word in daily usage as it is now.

Giving a history of the Tarot is very difficult as it means turning to myths and legends in order to furnish what amounts to possibilities of where the cards themselves came from in the first place. There are tales of the Tarot itself being of Gypsy origin and stories tell of it coming with them from the east and even from Egypt. There are legends that the twenty two Tarot Trumps, or Major  Arana as it is known were tapestries, or paintings on the walls of Egyptian high priest initiation chambers. Still other myths put the cards as far back as four thousand years and link them with Solomon. There are even references to the Judaic leader and leading biblical figure of Moses as having brought the images out of the wilderness along with the ten commandments and perhaps the Kabbalah.

True facts in a physical sense are scant when looking at the cards from a historical point of view. What we do know for certain is that the cards appeared in Europe in Italy in the 14th century. The first deck mentioned by name was the Tarocco which was a card deck made for the Vicsconzi-Sforza family of Milan. At this time they appear to be simply a card game of chance, perhaps only containing the ordinary smaller minor deck. It was some three hundred more years before the Tarot once more emerged into the historical light of day. It was during the 1700’s that the most famous historical Tarot deck came into existence The Tarot of Marseilles. Where had the Tarot hidden during its lost period? No one seems to know the answer to this puzzle. Once again we are treated to conjecture and possibilities. The myths speak of secret societies keeping hidden knowledge away from the masses. Nothing can be proven, so we must let matters stay in legend. Little was spoken of the Tarot until the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a Victorian esoteric society was formed. The GD as it has become known was a group of society leading lights and radical free thinkers who wished to push the occult boundaries. They managed to unite Western occult practices with those of the East with great success and indeed their legacy is still felt today. One of the founding members of the order Arthur Edward Waite wrote and had published the first commercially available work on the Tarot, this was titled The Key To The Tarot 1910, republished a year later as The Pictorial Key To The Tarot. Since this time the market place has become flooded with not only works and courses on the cards themselves, but also with Tarot decks, which are now freely available in most large high street bookshops.

Understanding the Major and Minor Arcana

The word arcana means hidden or secret hidden knowledge. The standard Tarot deck consists of two decks in one comprising a total of 78 cards. These are divided into fifty six cards making up the minor arcana and twenty two which make up the major arcana. The major cards or trumps as they are often known can also be termed the God cards as they are to be viewed as events which herald change within the life of the client, or questioner. The minor cards can be seen as a tapestry of life and take the form of a journey. Each card tells part of a story and if laid out in linier fashion can be read as a picture book of the life of a person. In the story of the Tarot that person is the first card of the majors this card is titled The Fool in classic decks and has no number ranking and is classed as zero. The fool here is not to be confused with an idiot, no this fool is seen as a perfect innocent embarking on the journey of life and of occult initiation. At the other end of the major cards falls The World /Universe card number twenty two, this signifies all possibilities and like the Fool card is very open to a vast number of interpretations. The rest of the major cards carry a set of archetypes such as the Lovers, the Empress and Emperor. The Sun, Moon, Devil and the Death card. Each card with its own unique meaning to convey.

For example the Death card is not about foretelling actual physical death, but rather the death of something, which can be death of an old self. Seen in this way it is more a card of rebirth and fits neatly into thoughts and belief systems of pagan origins and reincarnation ideas. It concerns changes which may appear to be drastic, but which like the coming of Spring after a barren Winter can lead to much beauty and abundance. The Tower card is another which like Death speaks of destruction, but the destruction is more in the order of having to clear away the old in order to build a firm foundation on which to base our positive tomorrows. The minor deck is the landscape upon which the Fool makes his journey, his earth walk if you like. This deck is divided into four suits these correlate to the suits of an ordinary deck of playing cards and like playing cards have the four divisions. Playing cards have Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs. Tarot suits are in classic decks Cups, or Cauldrons, Swords, Pentacles, or Discs and Clubs, Rods, or Batons.

The four suits of Tarot represent the four elements. Water being represented by the Cups/Cauldrons. Air being represented by the Swords. Earth being represented by Pentacles, or Discs and Fire being represented by Rods, or Batons. By using the four elements within the structured story a vast array of possibilities comes into existence and makes each reading truly unique.

The approach to using reversals

 Many people when performing Tarot readings use what is termed Reversals. This is in fact something of a personal choice and depends on literally what works for the reader themselves when using reversals, which is interpreting a card meaning differently if it appears upside down during a reading.

Existential, religious or philosophical views regarding the Tarot

There are many differing views regarding the validity of the Tarot. As with all things which come under the headings of occult, New Age and divination the dividing line between opposing views will always be very black and white in nature. People tend to be either for or against their use. You can break this down further and also look at the fact that there are even divisions within the Tarot reading communities as to how the cards themselves should be viewed. One camp will state that they are evil and negative another that they are positive and come only from a good source. Many including readers themselves are of the idea that when we read the cards, we are in fact tapping into the group consciousness which exists like a vast umbrella of human knowledge just waiting to be tapped into. Still others believe they are in reading accessing their own higher self, or super ego if you will in order to better understand the questions posed by the client. Another theory is that each person has a guide, this being an entity existing within a different vibrational field and speed of energy and it is this guiding force which supplies the reader with the needed information. Christianity has always been firmly against all kind of divination and cites references from the Bible to bolster the argument, the book in question is a dubious choice as it contains many instances of so called Christian church father’s using various methods of divination and foretelling of future events. However the church appears to prefer to cut its cloth according to its chosen defence, as opposed to other methods. I consider the Tarot a tool, a very useful tool, but a tool none the less. How they operate and why? Is something that I still argue about within my own mind and perhaps I will never find an answer to satisfy my own curiosity. This does not retard my use of the cards, as like any other tools such as a hammer, or saw, you do not have to believe for it to work for you. You can be a driver and yet not fully understand the way a car operates from a technical point of view, just so long as you can drive it. The Tarot is like that, as long as you can read the cards, then that is enough, regardless of your belief system, or point of view.

Correlation to other esoteric scientific and psychological viewpoints

Carl Jung the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical psychology postulated the now mostly accepted theory of Synchronicity. This is where two or more events occur and have obvious joining natures and so seemingly cannot be dismissed as pure coincidence and so must have a deeper meaning. This is now often seen where the Tarot is concerned. For in asking a question during the shuffling of the cards, cards will fall in a certain order. To accept that the order of cards is not random, is surely to accept some form of higher power, divine force, or other outside influence is involved.  Otherwise the cards would fall in a random order each time they were shuffled and dealt and this would negate all possibility of a reading pertinent to an individual.  So in accepting the validity of a card reading being possible, one must also accept direction by an outside entity, even if this outside force is deemed an expression of a higher self, or over-soul. If we look at the idea of a higher self, or id being involved perhaps this is either manifesting in some from of telekinetic energy being exerted over the cards during the reading rather like poltergeist activity, or is in some way influencing the readers choice of cards, how many times to shuffle and for how many seconds for example. This is not so far fetched a theory as scientific data has been collected on many ESP experiments where there have been noticeable changes caused to be made manifest by the power of the mind of an individual using just will. There are perhaps as many different viewpoints, ideas and self expressed thoughts as regards the Tarot as there are different Tarot decks. The conclusion here is that does it really matter how it works, as long as it does in fact work. For the Tarot to have lasted as long as it has appears to prove that it is a workable system for aiding the review and future possibilities as regards the lives and journeys of clients and so it as a divination tool can hold its head firmly up.