Tarot
The Tarot is a deck of 78 cards — 22 Major_Arcana (the “Greater Secrets”) and 56 Minor_Arcana — that functions simultaneously as a divinatory system, a map of the human psyche, and an encoded syllabus of Western esoteric philosophy. Originally created as Italian playing cards (carte da trionfi, c. 1440), the Tarot was reinterpreted by 18th- and 19th-century occultists as a pictorial compendium of Kabbalistic, Hermetic, and alchemical wisdom.
Historical Development
Playing Cards (15th century)
The earliest known tarot decks (Visconti-Sforza, c. 1440s) were luxury hand-painted sets for the Italian nobility, used for trick-taking games (tarocchi). The 22 trump cards depicted figures from medieval Italian culture: the Pope, the Emperor, the Wheel of Fortune — Petrarchan Trionfi (triumphs) visualized as cards.
Occult Reinterpretation (18th–19th century)
- Antoine Court de Gébelin (1781): First claimed the Tarot was a surviving fragment of the Egyptian Book of Thoth, encoded by ancient priests.
- Éliphas Lévi (1856): Made the decisive synthesis: mapped the 22 trumps onto the 22 Hebrew letters and the 22 paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, creating the Tarot-Qabalah system.
- The Golden Dawn (1888): Systematized all correspondences — each card receives a Hebrew letter, astrological sign, color scale, and position on the Tree.
- A.E. Waite & Pamela Colman Smith (1910): Created the Rider-Waite deck — the first to fully illustrate all 78 cards, making the esoteric symbolism visually accessible.
- Aleister_Crowley (1944): Published the Thoth Tarot (painted by Frieda Harris), incorporating Thelemic and advanced Hermetic Qabalistic correspondences.
Modern Era
Tarot games remain widely played in continental Europe (French Tarot is France’s second-most popular card game). Simultaneously, cartomantic and esoteric tarot reading has become a global practice. The terms “Major Arcana” and “Minor Arcana” were coined by Paul Christian (Jean-Baptiste Pitois, 1811–1877).
The Major Arcana as Initiatory Journey
The 22 Major_Arcana trace the Fool’s Journey — from The Fool (0, naïve innocence) through a sequence of archetypal encounters to The World (XXI, integrated wholeness). This journey is a pictorial map of Individuation:
| Card | Archetype | Jungian Parallel | Canonical Mythic Form (Golden Dawn/Crowley) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 – The Fool | The beginning | Pre-conscious innocence | Dionysus, Spirit of Aether |
| I – The Magician | The Trickster/Creator | Ego consolidation | Thoth, Hermes |
| II – The High Priestess | The Anima | Gateway to the unconscious | Isis, Sophia, Artemis |
| V – The Hierophant | The Wise_Old_Man | Received wisdom and tradition | Osiris (as lawgiver), Ptah |
| XII – The Hanged Man | Sacrifice | Ego surrender | The Dying God (Osiris, Odin on Yggdrasil) |
| XIII – Death | Nigredo | Dissolution of the old self | Osiris/Typhon, the alchemical putrefactio |
| XV – The Devil | Tempter | Confrontation with bondage | Set, Pan, Baphomet, Samael |
| XVI – The Tower | Catastrophic ego death | The Qlippothic crisis | Fall of Babel, the Shevirah (Shattering) |
| XVIII – The Moon | The Collective_Unconscious | Descent into the depths | Hecate, Nephthys, Anubis (guardian) |
| XXI – The World | The Self | Rubedo: integration of all opposites | The unified Hermaphrodite, Frashokereti |
The Minor Arcana and the Four Worlds
The 56 Minor_Arcana comprise four suits of 14 cards, mapping onto the Hermetic Qabalah’s Four Worlds:
| Suit | Element | World | Jungian Function |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wands | Fire | Atziluth | Intuition |
| Cups | Water | Briah | Feeling |
| Swords | Air | Yetzirah | Thinking |
| Pentacles | Earth | Assiah | Sensation |
Kabbalistic and Energetic Correspondences
19th-century occultists (Éliphas Lévi, the Golden Dawn, Crowley) mapped the 22 Major Arcana onto the 22 paths connecting the Sefirot on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Each card thus became a meditation on a specific relationship between two divine emanations. The gematric values of the Hebrew letters assigned to each card created additional layers of numerical correspondence — transforming the Tarot deck into a portable, visual Kabbalah.
Furthermore, this pathway ascent maps directly onto other initiatory models documented in this archive:
- Kundalini: The ascent up the Middle Pillar of the Tree of Life (from Malkuth to Kether via paths represented by specific Trumps) structurally parallels the raising of Shakti up the Sushumna and through the chakras.
- Merkabah_Mysticism: The progression through the cards mirrors the visionary ascent through the seven heavenly palaces to the Chariot-Throne. The “seals” required at each gate in Merkabah literature function identically to the mastery of the archetypal trials depicted in the Major Arcana.
See Also
- Major_Arcana — the 22 Greater Secrets encoding the Fool’s Journey
- Minor_Arcana — the 56 suit cards mapping daily life onto the Four Worlds
- Kabbalah — the mystical system mapped onto the Tarot by Western occultists
- Hermetic_Qabalah — the syncretic tradition that systematized Tarot-Qabalah
- Tree_of_Life — the Kabbalistic glyph whose paths correspond to the Major Arcana
- Gematria — the numerological method linking card values to Hebrew letters
- Jungian_Archetypes — the universal patterns depicted in the Major Arcana
- Individuation — the Fool’s Journey as a map of psychological integration
- Aleister_Crowley — creator of the Thoth Tarot deck
- Hermeticism — the philosophical tradition underlying Tarot interpretation
- Western_esotericism — the broader tradition encompassing Tarot
- Occult — the occult revival that transformed playing cards into esoteric tools
- Devil — Atu XV: confrontation with bondage and Shadow
- Nigredo — Death (Atu XIII) as the alchemical dissolution
- Rubedo — The World (Atu XXI) as final integration
- Manly_P_Hall — the esoteric encyclopedist who documented Tarot symbolism