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The Tarot Tradition |
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There is something inherently mysterious about Tarot cards. The pictures themselves seem to come from a timeless world remote from our own. Although they may very well have existed before, our first knowledge of the deck dates from the very late Middle Ages, in southern France and northern Italy. Contrary to some long-held myths, the Tarot almost certainly did not originate with the Gypsies or the ancient Egyptians. Such notions meshed well with the European fascination for the exotic, but the actual genesis seems to have been much closer to home. Another legend has it that a conclave of adepts met in Fez, Morocco around 1200 AD, with the express purpose of creating a type of occult cryptograph in the form of the Tarot deck. Initiates would get it, while ordinary rubes would never suspect that the cards were to be used for anything besides parlor games. |
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Fanciful as this last myth seems, it might hold some grain of truth. The oracle's appearance in Southern Europe puts it in close proximity to the rich mix of ideas and culture in Islamic Spain. From there, Morocco is practically a stone's throw. As militant Catholicism pushed this rich civilization further out of the Iberian Peninsula, an exodus of scholars (many Jewish) fled into the parts of France and Italy that are the cradle of the Tarot. This strain mixed with the germinating Renaissance, itself a period of rediscovery of ancient knowledge. Perhaps signifigantly, the first surviving Tarot deck, the Visconti-Sforza, dates from the mid fifteenth century. The ensuing era, from about 1450 to 1610, is a high point in the flowering of esoteric knowledge and practice. Europe had emerged from centuries of feudal and theocratic subjugation. Science, art, and magic flourished side by side. In the seventeenth century this state of affairs would change, to the detriment of alchemy, astrology, Cabala and all other occult pursuits. Rational materialism gained ascendancy, and its high priests would show no tolerance toward the hermetic arts. |
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Things remain pretty much the same in modern times. Thankfully, nobody gets persectued for dabbling in witchcraft or fortune-telling anymore. Marginalization has proven a more effective tool. It is taken for granted among the vast majority of academics, scientists and other such arbiters of thought that all forms of psychic phenomena and alternative healing are self-delusion at best. Nobody is suggesting that we should throw out our rational and technical legacy in order to regain the magical. Both flourished side by side during the Renaissance. Perhaps they will again someday.A visit to any present-day metaphysical or new-age bookstore will turn up a vast selection of classic and newfangled Tarot decks. That most of these were created in the last 25 years is testament to the oracle's continuing vitality. On the other hand, not all of these contemporary decks show sufficient tapping into the powerful and mysterious Tarot tradition. Some emphasize the artist's pet agenda (you name it); some emphasize pretty pictures; some try to shoehorn in, say, the I Ching or Jungian archetypes. Mind you, I have no problem at all with a uniquely modern take on the cards, as in the Voyager or Roehrig decks. A lot of thought and inspiration went into both. Their futuristic look notwithstanding, they are rightful descendants of the old heritage. |
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On that note, the popular Waite deck is often mistakenly taken to be "the original one" by the curious, yet uninformed. This deck, often referred to as the Rider-Waite (after the first publisher, Rider and mentor A. E. Waite), was in fact a radical innovation. Dating from 1909, it was a collaboration between British occultist Waite, American artist Pamela Coleman Smith, and (possibly) Irish poet William Butler Yeats, all members of the Order of the Golden Dawn. The classic tarot deck consists of the 22 Major Arcana cards (the Tower, the Moon, Death, etc.), plus the 4 suits: Wands or Rods, Cups, Swords and Coins or Disks or Pentacles. These four suits are known as the Minor Arcana, each consisting of 4 court cards (Queen, Knight, etc.) and 10 numbered cards. Until 1909 the latter were represented as abstract patterns of 5 cups, 9 of swords, etc. The Waite deck creators departed from this practice by, instead, having graphic vignettes evoke the numbered card meanings in a distinctly open-ended fashion. This was not done randomly, but with complete regard to age-old hermetic correspondences. The drawings themselves are deceptively simple, yet never fail to provoke the intuition and imagination. It remains a standard by which later decks are measured. |
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Being a reader myself, I am often asked how shuffling a deck of cards can illuminate a person's predicament in present, past and future. The proof is in the results, I often say. Beyond that I have to plead ignorance. We may never have an explanation, but that's okay. Apparently, the centuries-old continuing Tarot tradition has seen to it that we are in good hands when we consult the oracle. |
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