The History of Tarot
Tarot cards are said to have originated in northern Italy in either the late 14th or early 15th century. The oldest set, known as the Visconti-Sforza deck, is said to have been inspired by the costumed figures taking part in carnival parades at that time. The same carnival is mentioned in Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado.”
These illustrated playing cards came with imaginative themes and were used for a card game known as tarocchi, which was popular in Europe. Tarocchi then became Tarot in the south of France, and how it got its name. Although the cards carried fanciful, connotative imagery, they did not convey occult meanings until the 18th century.
In a series of French volumes known as “The Primeval World, Analyzed and Compared to the Modern World,” Antoine Court de Gébelin stated that the theory of tarot cards came from Egypt and had the secret wisdom of Thoth, the god of magic, writing, wisdom, and the moon. Around the same time, Jean-Baptiste Alliette, who wrote under the pseudonym Etteilla, soon popularized tarot divination. Eliphas Lévi, the author and a former Catholic priest, popularized the tarot symbols, which connected the Hebrew alphabet and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah.
Most of the tarot depictions today come from French occultists that linked Egypt and the Hebrew language to spiritualism.
In 1909, Arthur Edward Waite, a British poet, and writer of occult and esoteric matters called in Pamela Colman Smith to illustrate the popular Waite-Smith deck. It was known as the Rider-Waite deck because they were published by the Rider Company and is still widely used by tarot card practitioners today. Even for amateurs, it is a classic deck to have.
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