|
Tarot
Moon, the eighteenth card of the Major
Arcana
Death, the thirteenth card
of the Major Arcana
Hanged Man, the twelfth card
of the Major Arcana
|
Any of a set of cards used in
fortune-telling and in certain card games. Claims have been made for
tarot cards' having originated in China, India, or Egypt, but their true
origin remains obscure. Tarot cards approximating their present form
first appeared in Italy and France in the late 14th century.
Early tarot decks were of several
types, each varying in the number of cards. The standard modern tarot
deck is based on the Venetian or Piedmontese tarot. It consists of 78
cards divided into two groups: the Major Arcana, which has 22 cards (also
known as trumps), and the Minor Arcana, which has 56 cards. The cards of
the Major Arcana have pictures representing various forces, characters,
virtues, and vices. The 22 cards are numbered from I through XXI, with
the Fool being unnumbered (other variations include 0, 00, and 22
- additional comment by Dawn). The tarots of the Major Arcana are,
in order: I Juggler, or Magician; II Papess, or Female Pope; III Empress;
IV Emperor; V Pope; VI Lovers; VII Chariot; VIII Justice; IX Hermit; X
Wheel of Fortune; XI Strength, or Fortitude; XII Hanged Man (see
photograph); XIII Death (see photograph); XIV Temperance; XV Devil; XVI
Lightning-Struck Tower; XVII Star; XVIII Moon (see photograph); XIX Sun; XX
Last Judgment; XXI World, or Universe; and the Fool.
The 56 cards of the Minor Arcana are
divided into four suits of 14 cards each. The suits, which are comparable
to those of modernplaying cards, are as follows: wands, batons, or rods
(clubs); cups (hearts); swords (spades); and coins, pentacles, or disks
(diamonds). Each suit has four court cards (usually named king, queen,
knight, and page) and 10 numbered cards. In ascending order, the value
progression in each suit is ace to 10, then page (knave, or jack),
knight, queen, and king (though the ace is sometimes assigned a high
value as in modern playing cards). The standard deck of modern playing
cards was historically derived from that of the Minor Arcana (with the
elimination of the knight).
At first the tarot was probably used for playing games, though Gypsies
may have used it for fortune-telling. From the 18th century, the cards
began to take on esoteric associations, as certain European writers
connected them to diverse traditions of mysticism, divination, alchemy,
and ritual magic. The cards have retained these associations and are now
widely used for fortune-telling.
For fortune-telling, each tarot card is
ascribed a meaning. The cards of the Major Arcana refer to spiritual
matters and important trends in the questioner's life. In the Minor
Arcana, wands deal mainly with business matters and career ambitions,
cups with love, swords with conflict, and coins with money and material
comfort. The tarot deck is shuffled by the questioner, and then the fortune-teller
lays out a few of the cards (either selected at random by the questioner
or dealt off the top of the shuffled deck) in a special pattern called a
"spread." The meaning of any card is modified according to
whether or not it is upside down, its position in the spread, and the
meaning of adjacent cards.
quoted
from Britannica.com
How do I get a reading?
|
|
Medieval Tarot Cards
Tarot cards were originally used in the game of tarot; today they are
used in fortune-telling. These cards symbolize, from left to right: 1)
romance, 2) the devil, and 3) a forceful or willful nature.
THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE
|
|
(please
note: The Strength card, or LeForce, is actually a card of spiritual
strength overcoming the material or animal nature. -
Dawn)
|
|
|
History
The earliest record of a deck of cards
carrying tarot symbology can be traced back to Northern Italy, where for
the first few centuries they were used as a parlor diversion called
"Cartes de Trionfi". According to tarot historians Ronald
Decker, Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett ("A Wicked Pack of
Cards"), the earliest surviving set of tarot cards is the few remaining
hand-painted cards created in approximately 1441 for the court of Filippo
Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan. A hundred years prior to this, packs of 52
playing cards bearing the suit symbols of Cups, Coins, Swords and
Polo-Sticks could be found in Islamic countries, from whence they
migrated into Europe via the British. It was only with the addition of
the 22 trump cards sometime after the 18th Century that the pack came to
resemble what we now recognize as the modern Tarot deck.
Speculation about the Egyptian origins
of the Tarot springs almost exclusively from the conclusions and
assertions of one person - Antoine Court de Gebelin, a Protestant pastor
born in 1695. Caught up in a period of wide-spread fervor over the
mystery of all things Egyptian, Court de Gebelin's essay in his work
"Monde primitif" says that he discovered this mysterious work
while visiting a Lady acquaintance occupied in playing with the game of
"Tarots." Within a short time (15 minutes, the essay declares)
he prounouced them to be a mysterious book of knowledge of Egyptian
origins which had survived the ravages of time. Similar conclusions were
drawn in another essay by Court de Gebelin's peer Comte de Mellet. The
belief that the Tarot originated with the Gypsies sprung from the same
fount of speculation based on the mistaken idea that the Gypsies
originally came from Egypt.
|
Cards from the recently restored
Le Bateleur or The Magician, the 1st
card of the Major Arcana
|
|
|
Mystery
Despite the lack of hard evidence as to
the "mystical" origins of the Tarot, the symbology of the tarot
can be traced to the ancient Greeks as well as to the myths and legends
of other ancient cultures. From these convergent and divergent points, a
school of thought developed that compared the cards to the intricate
Judaic system of Qabalah and the Tree of Life, an important component of
the early development of modern hermetic magickal systems, developing
further into the founding of the Order of the Golden Dawn and
Freemasonry. Early hermetic Tarot scholars, including Papus, MacGregor
Mathers, Eliphas Levi, Aleister Crowley, and Arthur E. Waite contributed
vastly to the body of mystical knowledge which comprises the basis of
modern Tarot - Crowley and Waite being the creators of the two most
popular systems extant today - the "Thoth" and
"Rider-Waite" decks (respectively).
While Crowley's Thoth deck developed to
incorporate Qabalistic theory along the lines of the developing OTO
("Ordo Templi Orientis") and Golden Dawn systems, A.E. Waite's
interpretation of the Tarot stands today virtually as the standard by
which all Tarot decks are judged. Prior to this, the minor arcana (or
"pip" cards) of the Tarot were illustrated with various
geometric arrangements of the four suit symbols - Cups, Swords, Batons
and Coins. With the aid of artist Pamela Coleman-Smith, Waite
incorporated scenes, symbols and imagery into the pip cards, which,
although continuing to be of hermetic/qabalistic interpretation, assigned
a more graphic meaning to the cards, bringing them within a more
accessible reach to the general public, or at least those with an
interest in the occult. In the process, he also changed the suits of
Batons to Wands and Coins to Pentacles to realign them with his ideas
about their connection to the magickal disciplines. Crowley's deck,
oriented more toward the hermetic tradition, continued with the geometric
suit design of the pips. However, his "Book of Thoth" written
as an explanatory text for the deck, is considered basic required reading
by Tarot authorities.
|
La Movrevx or The Lovers, the 6th card
of the Major Arcana
|
|
Evolution
The creation of the Waite deck began a veritable
avalanche of new decks into the marketplace. Many artists saw the medium
as a way to present variations of artistic genre, creating decks which
were veritable galleries of miniature artwork. The occultists saw it as a
way to broaden and further the study of other magickal/spiritual
traditions, and began to assert a universal connection between Waite's
assigned meanings and their own traditions. Thus, today we see decks
containing images from many spiritual paths and historical time periods,
including Native American, mythological, Celtic, Arthurian, pagan,
aboriginal, Renaissance, and even combinations thereof into a single
deck.
However, despite the variations in
presentation, the basic structure of the standard or archetypal tarot
deck consists of two groups of cards known as the "Major
Arcana" and the "Minor Arcana" ("arcana" meaning
"secret" or "hidden"). Briefly, the Major Arcana deal
with images that represent the broader, universal, often spiritually-oriented
issues, ideas, beliefs and experiences of life. The Minor Arcana deal
with the more mundane themes of everyday living. The Majors contain 22
cards numbered from 0 to 22. The Minors contain 56 cards divided among
four "suits" - Cups, Wands, Swords and Pentacles. Each of the
suits have their own over-arching associations, and the cards within each
suit have a their own meaning.
The standard method for
"reading" the cards involves the use of a "spread,"
which means the card or cards chosen from the deck are placed in a
certain position that has a designated meaning and interpreted from
there. Methods of choosing the cards vary widely from reader to reader.
Some allow the querant full range to shuffle and choose the cards and
place them where they please, relying heavily on the random aspect of
chaos to reveal the issue at hand. Some never allow anyone to touch their
cards, and insist on placing the cards in a certain design in specific
ways, feeling more comfortable in a highly structured reading
environment. Readings can fall anywhere between the two extremes
depending on the card reader.
Spreads, of which there are hundreds, vary widely as well. The most
widely used spread is called the "Celtic Cross" (the origins of
which are a topic for another dissertation) consisting of ten positions
for the cards which are generally labeled as follows:
|
Le Chariot, or the Chariot, the 7th card
of the Major Arcana
|
- Significator
(a card representing the querant)
- Central
issue
- Crossing
(What blocks the issue at hand)
- Basis of
the issue
- Recent
past
- Possible
outcome
- Near
future
- Self
- Environment
- Hopes
and fears
- Outcome
Readers have come
to rely on this spread as an all-encompassing containment of information
that provides the querant with answers to most of the details surrounding
the central issue of the reading. If questions remain after reading this
set of cards, additional clarification cards are sometimes pulled from
the pack and read as a part of the session. Most all Tarot readings
follow this same simple structure, with little variation.
The divinatory system of Tarot, at face value, is quite simple. It's a
deck of cards with pictures, placed in positions that have their own
meanings. The card reader interprets the relationship of the card
meanings to the positions. Anyone can learn how to do it. The new student
of the system should, however, realize that their study of this subject
can quickly deepen and broaden, given the history of the cards and the
symbology they contain. Given the potential breadth of the subject,
experienced readers often urge beginners to choose the Rider-Waite deck
to learn the basic meaning and symbology of the system before branching
out to other interpretations of the Tarot.
There are
literally hundreds of decks on the market, with new ones being developed
and published almost daily. Although definitely confusing for the new
student of the Tarot, it is a collector's paradise for those who are
interested in the historical origins and further development of this
fascinating activity. The study of the symbology of the cards alone has
caught the interest of many scholars who have written reams on the subject.
Harking back
to the ancient symbology of the cards, another important influence on the
understanding and interpretation of Tarot was the work of Carl G. Jung
and his study of archetypal imagery arising from the human collective
unconscious. In an introductory statement to Sally Nichols' book
"Jung and Tarot" Laurens van der Post stated that "He
(Jung) recognized at once, as he did in so many other games and
primordial attempts at divination of the unseen and the future, that
Tarot had its origin and anticipation in profound patterns of the
collective unconscious with access to potentials of increased awareness
uniquely at the disposal of these patterns." Nichols herself states
early on that "It seems apparent that these old cards were conceived
deep in the guts of human experience, at the most profound level of the
human psyche. It is to this level in ourselves that they will
speak."
|
La-Rove-De-Fortvne,
or the Wheel of Fortune, the 10th card of the Major Arcana
|
|
"Fortune"
telling?
Many believe
it is this view of the cards that explains the development of the cards
for "fortune telling." Waite himself despised this aspect of
the cards, and took every opportunity to denigrate this idea. Yet for
this topic, Jung's system of archetypal psychology suggests that we
reevaluate our definition of the term "fortune telling."
Most people
who hear the word instantly think of the rag-headed Gypsy with the
crystal ball and smoking incense in the dark tent with a name preceded by
"Madam." However, modern uses for the cards has elevated this
image from the darkened tent into the light of developmental self
awareness, plumbing the depths of psychology and spiritual enlightenment.
Today, "fortune telling" with practiced readers can more often
be a participatory session with an active and dynamic interplay between
reader and querant, with the reader helping the questioner divine their
own sources of problems and solutions through the story presented in the
images.
Given today's
rash of less-than-honest psychic pretenders, a good Tarot reader is a
rare find. Anyone can learn the Tarot card meanings by mere rote
memorization. However, the skill of a good reader becomes obvious when
they can tune in to that numinous interface between the energies of the
cards in the spread and the energies of the querant and the issues that
need to be discussed. You'll notice the word "need" is used,
because inevitably the cards will most often speak to the issue of what
the querant needs to know instead of, or in addition to, what the querant
wants to know.
In a good
Tarot session, the reader will develop a rapport with the querant and
involve them in the reading, rather than listening to a "talking
head." According to Mary Greer, a good reader will be able to pull
all the cards in the spread together to interpret not only the message of
each individual card, but the spread as a cohesive whole, so that the
querant can see the entire story.
The best
Tarot readers today will often set up a dialog about the cards in the
reading, asking the reader's ideas about what "they" see in the
cards, which almost inevitably acts as a "Rorschach" test of
sorts that helps the querant reveal issues that might have been deeply
buried within their unconscious. Many who seek the services of a Tarot
reader or psychic are concerned with a "surface" problem that
has manifested in their life, but refuse to deal with the underlying
issues that cause the problem. Often, Tarot cards can reveal these issues
and provide a forum where the querant can bring them out to discuss in an
atmosphere of comfort and safety, much as in a professional counseling
session.
The good
reader will also be able to recognize when a problem surfaces that is far
beyond their scope of practice, and suggest the querant seek additional
counseling when the issue warrants this step.
If the querant does take the advice of the reader about seeking further
counseling, they might just find themselves (if they're lucky) with a
professional who uses the Tarot as a basis for understanding their
clients problems. In a foreword to Mary Greer's book "Tarot
Mirrors," tarot author Rachal Pollack comments that "a growing
number of people have realized that readings can serve as a primary means
of penetrating into the layers of a person's life - a way of exposing
desires and fears, the conditioning of past experiences, the future
developments that exist now in the immediate reality."
by Evelyn Henry,
quoted from the Mythica Encyclopedia
|
Le Jugement,
or the Judgement card, the 20th card of the Major Arcana
|
|
|
