A
Brief History of Tarot
(The following is borrowed from various sources)
Historians have turned
to the word, Tarot, to attempt to solve its origin. Some have
suggested that Tarot comes from the ancient Egyptian word, Ta-rosh,
meaning the royal way; others have asserted that it is an anagram
of the Latin word, rota, meaning a wheel — the cards then
symbolizing the circle of life from birth to death. Still others
have felt the Hebrew word, Torah, which means the law may link the
cards with the mystical system of the Cabalah, forgetting that the
Cabalah originated in Spain, a country which has never known the
Tarot major trumps.
Some have seen in it a corruption of the name Thoth, the ancient
Egyptian god of magic or wisdom; an attempt to reaffirm the legend
that the cards were created in the initiation temples of the
mysterious East. It may, perhaps, be derived from the Hungarian
Gypsy word, tar, meaning a deck of cards, which in turn derives
from Sanskrit, taru. The word gypsy, itself, is an old English
abbreviation of Egyptian. Today the Crypt of the Church of Les
Saintes Manes delaMer in the Camargue area of Southern France is
reserved exclusively for Gypsies; it contains the shrine of Saint
Sara of Egypt, supposedly their patron saint. Saint Sara is
suspect as a Catholic saint; she may be none other that Sarapis,
the Egyptian God of the Dead. (In France, there is a tradition
that the shrine of Sara rests upon an ancient altar dedicated to
Mithras, the Persian Sun God.)
It is generally accepted, by scholars that the earliest playing
cards originated in China and Korea, where examples have been
found dating back to at least the 11th century. The design of
these cards appears to have been based on paper money, which
evolved during the T’ang dynasty (A.D.618—90). A Chinese dictionary, Ching-tze-tung, claims that playing cards
were invented in A.D.1 120 for the amusement of the Emperor’s
concubines.
Some believe that the cards originated in India. The four-armed
Hindu deity, Ardhanarishvara, an androgynous figure combining the
right half of the god, Shiva, with the left half of his consort,
Parvati, is sometimes depicted holding a cup, a scepter, a sword
and a ring. The monkey god, Hanuman, is also at times shown
holding these same emblems, which bear a close resemblance to the
four suit signs of the Tarot pack: Cups, Wands, Swords, and Coins
(Disks). Unfortunately, there is no evidence to reveal how old
these symbols are or whether they ever appeared on Indian playing
cards, which are generally circular and bear little resemblance to
European cards.
From the time of the Islamic Empire, roughly A.D. 900—1100, Egypt
had been singled out in many wizards’ minds as the place where the
most potent magical secrets had originated. The word alchemy
itself derives from Arabic, meaning the art of Khem, or Egypt.
Egyptian origin is the oldest theory, and was actively evolved by
18th century occultists who rediscovered the Tarot. It is possible
that the four Tarot suits refer to four castes of Hinduism: Cups
being priests/Brahmin; Swords, warrior overlords or Kshatriyas;
Coins, merchants or Vaisyas; Batons or Wands, serfs or Sudras.
Both Chinese and Indian notions are fine theories, but when one
compares the decks, one finds very little symbolism in common,
especially where the Major Arcana are concerned. Any similarity is
limited to 56 cards of the Minor Arcana.
The general climate in Europe in the 14th century, when Tarot made
its first appearance, was one in which Christianity reigned
supreme, but paganism still lurked in obvious forms, resulting in
terrible persecution of heretics. There was a rise of heretical
Christian sects, which today are grouped under the collective
title of Gnosticism. The word Gnostic is derived from Greek and
implies much the same as the Anglo-Saxon words wizard or witch, or
someone who knows, a wise man, or initiate. Gnosticism mixed
together Indian, Caldean, Persian and Egyptian magical doctrines
and seasoned them with Greek philosophy and Hebrew Cabalistic
beliefs. These unorthodox Christian sects were called Waldenses,
Cathari, Albigenses, Bogornils, and the monastic order known as
the Knights of Templar.
Alexandria became the center for Gnostic learning around 2nd
century A.D. and Coptic Christianity absorbed many of the old
Gnostic symbols dating from that period. It is from this welter of
Gnostic cults that the occult arts of the West appear to derive:
alchemy, astrology and the images of the Tarot cards themselves.
Popular demand for cards far outweighed religious opposition to
them, and by the mid-l5th century, card-making workshops were
thriving in many cities of Italy, France, Germany and Belgium.
In 1781 — eight years before the French Revolution — Antoine Court
de Gebelin, a French occultist and archeologist, proposed the
theory that the gypsy Tarot was the remains of an ancient Egyptian
book of magical wisdom, still treasured by the Roman people since
their exodus from their native land of Egypt. He published a
nine-volume book: The Primitive World Analyzed and Compared to the
Modern World. The effect of this work was to almost overnight
cause the Tarot to became the tool of the Rosicrucian sages, and
it was feted as the bible of all true occultists.
Eliphas Levi, a French Rosicrucian writer and cabalist, inspired
an 18th century occult revival. He discovered an apparent link
between 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the cards of the
Major Arcana and he was the first to give elements to suits. There
evolved a secret society, The Golden Dawn, founded by three
erudite scholars, Wynn Westcott, S. L. Macgregor Mathers, and Dr.
William K. Woodman. This was a blend of theosophy, Eliphas Levi’s
magical cabalism, and Egyptian Rosicrucian ceremonies typical of
the 17th and 18th centuries. The purpose was basically for the
achievement of mystical illumination and magical power. The chief
symbol that the group used for its teaching was the cabalistic
glyph, known as the Tree of Life, based on the medieval philosophy
of Spanish Judaism known as Cabala.
From The Mind of a Mnemonist, written by A. R. Luria, and
translated from Russian, by Lynn Solotaroff, (N.Y., Discus Books,
1969), there is a theory, that Tarot, may have been an amnesic
device for monks. It is said that perhaps it was a visual filing
system, to remember all that they were to record on their
manuscripts.
In an article in ASTROLOGY (Vol. 51, No. 2, Summer/1977), Ian
Macfarlane Smith suggests that the origin of Tarot may be found in
the constellations: i.e., The Fool (Orion); The Magician (the
constellation Ophiuchus); and The Hanged Man (the constellation
Hercules).
