Tarot cards have had a troubled history over the last two-hundred years, they have gone from being one of the most popular card games in Europe to being recognized throughout the English speaking world as essentially occult objects. Popular myth is recounted in countless texts on the bookshelves, in newspapers, magazines, film, Television, and across the internet. The truth is, as has always been the case, having a hard time.

 

I don’t intend this to be a history book, there are far more knowledgeable people who have already written exhaustively about the history of tarot. However, I do feel the need to say something about the cards and their confused identity. There are a variety of muddled and conflicting perceptions, interests, and uses which need untangling.

 

So, where do tarot cards come from?

 

Let’s begin at the beginning in Europe...

 

Playing cards are first seen in Europe in the mid 14th century. They are thought to have descended from the Far East, ultimately from Chinese money games. Coming to us from the Malmuks, our earliest cards are distinctly Islamic in appearance and feature, as our modern packs, 52 cards made up from 4 suits, each with 10 pip cards and 3 court cards. The suit symbols were Cups, Coins, Scimitars, and Polo Sticks. Islam (by most interpretations) does not allow the depiction of living things, so the court cards were represented by abstract designs and calligraphy. Polo was not played in Europe at that time, so Polo Sticks became Batons, the court cards were then represented with the figures of a King, a Rider, and a Footman. These changes created what we now call the Latin suits. Cards like these are still used today in countries such as Italy and Spain.

 

The Queen appears to have been independently invented on more than one occasion and may even have existed in non-Islamic predecessors to our cards. It Italy there was an early pack that featured 6 court cards in each suit, being a male and a female of each rank. Most of these extra cards were dropped but retaining the Queen in a 56 card pack, that for a time may have been a regional standard. It was to this pack that in the early to mid 15th century, a fifth suit of picture cards was added. These picture cards would appear to have taken as their theme a Christian triumph procession, hence their early name of trionfi, meaning triumphs and from which we get our word trump. It was the invention of tarot that marked the wider introduction of trumps in card games, although again, trumps seem to have been invented independently on more than one occasion. And this is what they were invented for, card games, games that have grown into a large and varied family, spread throughout much of continental Europe and that continues to be played to this day.

 

As I’ve mentioned, the original name for tarot was trionfi but this was soon changed to tarocchi, probably to save confusion with another game of triumphs that was becoming popular. Perhaps the most plausible origin of this new name is the term tarochus, meaning ‘to play the fool’, The Fool having an important and unique role in the games. As the cards spread through Europe, this was name often truncated to Tarock, while the French gave us the name that we have inherited, Tarot.

 

Given the modern perception of tarot cards, it may seem hard to accept this. You are very likely to have read about the church suppressing tarot cards, and that they had to be used in secret because of their heretical images. However, this is not the case. Tarot games spread across the continent, being played openly, without opposition by the church all through the counter-reformation. The only real exception to this is in Spain, where it is important to note that the opposition was not from a perception that the images were somehow un-Christian, but precisely because they were Christian. The authorities there felt that it was inappropriate to use such images in a card game, something they felt trivialized or disrespected the sacred. We have good reason then, to go back and question our initial thoughts. It might help to take a closer look at two cards that have been widely misunderstood.

 

The Female Pope, often renamed The High Priestess by modern occultists, is an excellent example. This must surely be heretical. But no, we are looking at the cards through modern eyes, with a vision coloured by popular myth. If we are to understand what the images represent, then we must look at them in the context of their origin – Renaissance Italy. If we look at the religious art of that time and place, we find that The Female Pope was an established figure in Christian art, being used to symbolize such things as The New Covenant and the Virtue of Faith. There was no heresy, which explains why there was no opposition.

 

Another card that is often cited as having esoteric meaning is The Hanged Man, perhaps because it is difficult to see just what overt and obvious meaning it could ever have had. What are we to make of a man suspended by one foot, often holding money bags? Some have suggested it be Judas, though he would have hung himself by the neck, others have suggested it to be the Virtue of Prudence, indeed, the list of offerings is long and varied. However if we again look at the card in context we find a different story and no mystery at all. The title of Hanged man was given to the card by French card makers but we know from written sources that in Italy it was called The Traitor – and little wonder, as this is how Italians used to execute traitors, suspended by one foot and left to die rather slowly and publicly. As for the money bags, we can find an explanation from another practice of the time, that of Shame Pictures. It was the practice to shame those who betrayed a trust by employing an artist to draw that person’s likeness hung as a traitor, which would then be publicly displayed – often this was done in the case of bad debtors, hence we can suppose the money bags.

 

The beginning of the 18th century saw a big change in tarot in many countries. At this time, German card makers began to produce French suited tarot cards that also gave up the traditional trumps in favour of a number of themes, such as animals or local scenes. This offered two advantages. The first was economic. Regular French suited playing cards had existed since the 15th century and had quickly become the dominant pattern in Europe. While the Latin suits required costly wood blocks and hand colouring, which was labour intensive, the French suits required only a simple stencil to reproduce the pips, making production much cheaper. Additionally, by dropping the traditional trumps, the card makers could do more to show off their skills, as well as create cards with themes that might appeal more to their customers. This new pattern of Tarot cards has now become the dominant form for game play.

 

Tarot’s occult associations do not arise until the end of the 18th century when a Parisian occultist, Antoine Court de Gebelin, published an article in his encyclopaedia declaring that the cards were of Ancient Egyptian origin, brought to us by Gypsies and codifying the lost knowledge of their priests. He did not present any evidence for his claims but he made them at a time when Egyptomania was popular and so his story captured the public imagination and caught on. He also published the first account of how the cards were to be used for divination. During the following 100 years, various French occultists took up the ideas of an occult origin and divinatory use and built upon them, developing still more elaborate myths. Until the end of the 19th century, these ideas were limited to just France but then a small number of British occultists began to import the cards and translate the French occultist writings about them. In the English speaking world, the cards seemed new and exotic, and the occultist accounts of the cards were the only ones known. During the next century, the myth of tarot gradually established itself in the public psyche, and towards the end of the 20th century, a whole industry built around tarot reading began to establish itself and to spread back across Europe.

 

Since occultism first laid claim to tarot, there has been a growing tendency to redesign the cards to better fit occult beliefs. Thanks to this, there is a broad division between types of tarot cards. Those of the occult and those used to play games. To be honest, those cards designed by occultists and for fortune telling are ill suited to game play and so any concerns you may have about them need not affect our interests here.

 

Although there have been works of serious history about both the cards and the games published in English since 1980, they have tended to be of limited availability and of high cost. However, in recent years, thanks in large part to the internet, the history and the games are at last getting through to the English speaking public. People are at last discovering the games they have been missing. After all, something that has been played for nearly 600 years, and spread through a continent must have something good going for it!

 

***

 

Well, we know from history that tarot cards were created for playing card games. There really is no substantial doubt about that. While we cannot be certain as to what, if anything, the trump designs represented, we do know that the accounts given by the occultists don’t stand up to examination. The questions then, are: Do we declare that occultists should have nothing to do with tarot? Are they simply wrong to think the cards represent anything spiritual? Should the cards only be seen as instruments of play? Now, I have a special interest here – I think that the occult tarot has thrived at the expense of the gamers’ tarot - but need it be so? Can the occult tarot and the gamers’ tarot co-exist?

 

I think that we gamers have to make some concessions to the modern occultists. History may not give them a claim to the cards but perhaps use and modern design may give them an equal claim. Words and symbols have meanings because of the way that we use them and the way that we use them often changes over time. Consider the word ‘nice’. These days we use the word in a complimentary fashion - but it was not always so. When Jane Austin’s characters refer to someone as ‘nice’ they don’t intend a compliment, they intend an insult, they used the word to indicate that someone was plain, simple and perhaps a dullard. Because, historically, the word had a different meaning, does not tell us that we are using it incorrectly today. Nor, when we read Jane Austin today, do we read her use of the word ‘nice’ to be a compliment - because we read the word in the context of when it was written. There is no metaphysical connection between the word ‘nice’ and some abstract thing ‘simpleton’ that determines its meaning, there is only the way that we use the word. Now, occultists use tarot cards to symbolize elements of their spiritual and magical beliefs, so in the context of occultism, they have those meanings. To further strengthen this position, we can take into account that occultists usually use ‘rectified’ packs. We can question that they are really rectifying anything, that is a matter of history and can be debated with reference to evidence, but we cannot deny that these are new designs created with the intent that they contain occult symbolism. While I find many of the modern designs to be rather dreadful, it would be churlish for anyone to deny that a great many of them are beautiful and deserve to be called art. I can say that as an atheist and sceptic because as such, I can still see the beauty in more familiar religious art, whether it be by Mozart or Leonardo da Vinci. In fact, I have a growing collection of occult tarot packs chosen for their art.

 

This is perhaps more of a concession than many card players and sceptics would wish to make and yet, there is still more to say on the matter – we must step back a moment and make sure that I have not been tilting at windmills all along. There are giants out there but we need to make clear who they are. I would level attacks against those occultists who have tried to present an account of history that is simply false, people for whom the occult really has been about revealing hidden knowledge in its traditional sense - these are some of the giants and they do still exist. They do not represent all occultists, over the last quarter of a century some have begun to look upon religions, spiritual beliefs and tarot cards, with almost post-modernist eyes. These people are perhaps more relativist in their outlook and choose a tarot pack, not according to how well it reflects a system of occult belief they accept as ‘true’, but according to its appeal to them personally and how it reflects their view and experience of the world. The people of this new trend do not recognize themselves in the likes of the old school occultists - and those who pursue their interest in tarot to any degree, often know and accept the cards’ history as a game. For these occult tarotists, the new designs of occult tarot cards are no longer understood as ‘rectified’ designs but as personal ones. What I do not know is what proportion of occult tarot users these people represent.

 

However, there is still another giant to tilt against and that is public perception. The old occultist myths have become a part of the public consciousness, and have so much appeal within it that breaking the myth is far harder than it should be. You can explain the truth about their history and take out a pack of cards designed without any occult reference, only to find that people will still say that they are uncomfortable with playing a game with them – I have had this response even with the French suited cards! It is this general public perception that is my principle target.

 

If there is blame to be laid anywhere for this public perception, I do not lay it all with the modern tarot reader. Rather, and now I am venturing more deeply into personal opinion, I tend to blame the popular media. Be they TV producers, publishers, magazines, or newspapers - they can be seen, everyday, to put the story they think will sell above any responsibility to educate or to simply be honest. Of course, we are talking about businesses, they exist to make money for their owners, for their shareholders - but I do not believe that this excuses anyone from basic moral responsibilities.

 

What my argument does not concede is that people learn anything about the world from studying the cards. Nor do I concede that by ‘reading’ the cards people can divine anything about the future. I do not think that they can do either, I am a sceptic and an atheist but these are other debates for other books and do not concern us any further here. What this does all mean is that the occultists’ tarot and the gamers’ tarot are in large part distinct and can co-exist, that the grounds for accord between us are there if we two sides are willing to meet in the middle - and play a nice game of cards.

Will The Real Tarot Please Stand Up...

                      ...being a very brief history and identity of tarot

 

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