My partner Casey O’Donnell and I are working on a paper about the history of the Tarot as it relates to the history of games. Here is some of what we have found so far….
Some History:
Tarot was first known as Tarocco in Italy, where the first playing card decks were made with wood blocks and hand painted cards and were used to play card games much like what we call Uno or Bridge today.
The Tarot deck is made of up 22 major enigmas (arcana) and 57 minor images (arcana) with 14 figures in 4 suits—gold (or pentacles, coins, shekels or diamonds) symbolizing the material forces; clubs (or scepters, batons, maces, wands) symbolizing the power of command and creativity; goblets (hearts or cups) symbolizing the emotional life or sacrifice; and swords (spades or blades) symbolizing mental discernment and the meting out of justice.
a cup, coins, a knife, and a wand in his hand.
Though many people associate the Tarot with European culture, it originated from the original playing cards brought to Europe by Islamic soldiers invading northern Italy and Spain in the 1300s. The playing cards were called Mamluk, the game played na’ib, the “game of lieutenants.” These are the origin of all Western card games, from bridge to poker to the tarot.
The calligraphic texts along the top and bottom of the Mamluk cards consist of rhyming aphorisms which are often very enchanting, sometimes strange, but always interesting:
“Oh thou who hast possessions, remain happy and though shalt have a pleasant life” and “Rejoice in the happiness that returns, as a bird that sings its joy.”
Once introduced into Italy, Italian noble families co-opted the cards and added the “trump” cards known today as the Major Arcana, for a game called “carte de trionfi” or cards of triumph, an early form of the card game bridge.
The cards were also used for a game called “tarocchi appropriati” or appropriated Tarot, where cards from the Major Arcana were dealt randomly or intentionally by another player and the game consisted of writing poems from the cards dealt to make inside jokes, flattery, or associate themes with someone. It was a game of creativity, verse, wit and flattery.
In parallel to this people began to consult the cards for divination, which was then more systematized and professionalized in the 17th century in France by occultists. This is what the Tarot is most known for today in English speaking countries, but the Tarot deck is still widely used to play games across Europe today.
Occultism:
The tarot belongs to that form of divination known as cartomancy—divining with cards.
It wasn’t until the 1700’s in France that the Tarot cards really came to known for being used for divination. Marie Anne Lenormand was one of the first cartomancers to people in high places such as Napoleon and Empress Josephine.
Many students of the Tarot have written that the history of the Tarot may very well go beyond 14th century Italy, however, there is little evidence for this.
According to Occultist Jean Saunier and Jean-Baptiste Alliette, the images of the major enigmas derive from the symbolic paintings in the Egyptian Book of Thoth-Hermes, representing the knowledge of the universe, but archaeology has provided us with no trace of anything like the Tarot in Egyptian, Arabic, or Graeco-Arabic history. Occultist Oswald Wirth indicates that the Cabala may have been known to the authors of the Tarot, because they fixed the number of major arcana at 22, the same number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and also the same number of the teraphim, the hierglyphs used by the Hebrews in divination. Mysteries certainly abound around these peculiar cards.
Psychology:
The Tarot is used as a divination tool but most often used as a tool for navigating the struggles in the life of man, for personal advice and spiritual growth.
Psychologist C. G. Jung’s view recognizes the portrayal of the two different, but complimentary, struggles in the lives of men and women: a) the struggle against others (the solar way) which he pursues through his social position and calling, and b) the struggle against himself (the lunar way) involving the process of individuation. These struggles correspond to the concepts of introversion (lunar) and extroversion (solar)–to contemplation and action. From a psychological persepective, the person themselves is the one making the connections between the cards, letting one’s subconscious speak (ala Frued) or because of meaningful coincidences between the situation or questions at hand and the cards (ala Jung’s synchronicity).
Joseph Campbell, best known for his work in comparative mythology and the monomyth, gave a lecture and wrote a short essay on the tarot in Tarot Revelations.
Suprisingly he did not link the tarot to the monomyth, rather he described the Major Arcana as a series of ladders to be climbed by a person over the course of their life, in various life stages.
Creativity:
The Tarot has a history of being used for creativity, from W.B. Yeats, William Blake, and Piers Anthony to the great Stephen King. Italian author Italo Calvino described the Tarot as “a machine for constructing stories.” Books and short stories have been written using the Tarot, and there are a plethora of books available to help writers and artists use the Tarot for writing and creativity.
There are lots of ways and spreads to use the Tarot for creativity, learn more about it here.
