What Are All These Cards?
by msesheta
Sometime in the fifteenth century a man named Visconti commissioned Bonifacio Bembo to paint a set of unnamed and unnumbered cards. They were for an Italian game called Tarrochi. There were four suits of fourteen cards each plus twenty-two images which showed different scenes. These twenty-two cards were later called 'trifonti' - triumphs or trumps in English.
What did Bembo wish to portray with these images? Were they merely social types of the day? Did they represent esoteric meanings of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet? Were they symbolic of some deep secret tradition?
There has never been any proof for any of these claims. For a long while Tarrochi was seen as a game for gambling and some may have used them for fortune telling. Then, Antoine Court de Gebelin in the eighteenth century declared that they were created by the Egyptian god Thoth as a means of conveying all the ancient knowledge of the Egyptian magical system. Etteila, alias Jean-Francois Aliette, set about proving de Gebelin correct and published a book called "How to Amuse Oneself with a Pack of Tarot Cards" in 1783. He was one of the first people to make his living from fortune telling. The next important man in the history of the Tarot was Eliphas Levi who linked the cards to the Qabala. The system was growing and expanding; becoming filled with more depth and mystical significance as the years passed.
In 1909 Arthur Edward Waite, with the artistic vision of Pamela Colman-Smith, produced what is known today as the Rider-Waite deck. The Tarot became a popular means of meditation, pathworking on the Qabalistic Tree of Life, and fortune telling.
Today there are hundreds of Tarot decks available. Most of them are 'themed', based on mythology or personal visions. The Rider-Waite is still the most popular; there is something about the images created by Colman-Smith that is universal and easily accessible to everyone.
The Major Arcana, or Greater Secrets, are seen as a path to personal development, to inner growth and an understanding of ourselves, of our lives, and of our gods. The Minor Arcana, or Lesser Secrets, depict normal people rather than archetypes. It is this 'ordinariness' that either draws one to them or sends one back to the faceless pips of older cards.
The Qabala and the Tarot are two distinct but deeply connected systems. Understanding this connection and applying it brings a wealth of knowledge and realization of self that can be found nowhere else.
The next article in the series will address the Major Arcana and how to use these images in our daily life as a tool for growth and self actualization.
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