Tarot: Its History and Use

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.