The origins of Tarot cards are shrouded in a mysterious aura of colorful symbolism, speculation, and forgery. But the truth is actually reasonably well-documented, and the factual history of the cards is perhaps even stranger than fiction. Read on to learn how the Tarot went from being a set of playing cards to a centerpiece of modern occultism.

The Tarot’s Original Use as Playing Cards

The 78-card Tarot deck includes four suits and a wild card similar to a standard card deck, and in fact, the cards were originally used as playing cards. Playing cards first appeared on the historical record in China in the 9th century. They had spread to Europe by the 14th century. The earliest known Tarot cards date from 15th-century Italy.

The first Tarot cards were used for a card game still played today in Europe, called Tarroco or Tarocchini in Italian, Tarock in German, and Tarot in French. Some versions of the game do not use all 78 cards. The game is played in tricks, like whist or bridge.

From Playing Cards to Fortunetelling

The first mention of reading Tarot cards for fortunetelling or divination dates from a 1540 book entitled The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forli. This book reflects a much less complex divination system than that used by modern practitioners, lacking the elaborate meanings associated with contemporary cards, and employed for selecting simple random predictions, rather like rolling dice.

In the early 17th-century, anonymous manifestos promoting a secret society called the Rosicrucians referred to a Rota Mundi, a “Wheel of the World.” Some commentators have speculated that this was a prototype for the Tarot, but there is no evidence to support this in the text of the original Rosicrucian Manifestos, which only mention the Rota in passing without elaborating on its nature.

The documentary trail for divinatory usage of the Tarot becomes definite starting in late 18th-century France. In 1781 a former Protestant pastor turned Freemason named Antoine Court, calling himself by the title Antoine Court de Gébelin, published Le Monde Primitif (The Primitive World), the seminal occult book on the Tarot. Gébelin proposed the theory that the Tarot descended from an ancient Egyptian book called The Book of Thoth and was spread to Europe by Gypsies. There was and is no historical evidence to support this theory, which Gébelin advanced before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone even allowed scholars to read ancient Egyptian.

Gébelin’s colorful speculation stirred interest from his contemporaries, inspiring card design expert Jean-Baptiste Alliette. Alliette reversed his last name and wrote under the name Etteilla, publishing Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées Tarots (How to Entertain Yourself With the Deck of Cards Called Tarot) in 1785 and Cours theorique et pratique du livre de Thot (Theoretical and Practical Course in the Book of Thoth) in 1790. Etteilla built on Gébelin’s Egyptian Tarot theory by adding an interpretation of the Tarot which mixed ancient Greek astrology, alchemy, and medicine with an occult interpretation of the Jewish mystical tradition called Kabbalism. Etteilla popularized his new Tarot interpretation by forming a society of correspondents and creating his own Tarot deck. Etteilla’s deck became the first Tarot pack specifically designed for occult divination.

The Modern Occult Tarot Defined by Eliphas Lévi

Gébelin and Etteilla’s work spawned the major modern Tarot decks through the influence of the popular 19th-century French occult writer Alphonse Louis Constant, who wrote under the name Eliphas Lévi. Lévi, after being expelled from the Catholic seminary for heresy, became a follower of a charismatic leader named Ganneau, who claimed that he was the reincarnation of Louis XVII and his wife was Marie Antoinette. Following Ganneau into the occult, Lévi elaborated on Alliette’s integration of the Tarot, astrology, and Kabbalism, adding a strong dose of black magic to the mix. Lévi laid out his Tarot framework in “The Book of Hermes,” the last chapter of his 1855 book Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie.

In this chapter Lévi commented on the previous work of Gébelin and Etteilla. He claimed that the true key to the Tarot was not known to them, but was possessed by their French occult contemporaries among the Rosicrucians and another mystical society called the Martinists. Lévi alleged that he had rediscovered the secrets of the Rosicrucians and Martinists and was revealing them. He introduced a key for decoding the meaning of the Tarot by assigning the cards numbers corresponding to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the signs of the Zodiac, and the four directions of the compass and four elements. This set of correspondences enabled the image on each card to be translated into a number and a Hebrew word with a symbolic astrological, alchemical, and geometric meaning.

Lévi’s book was translated into English in 1896 by Arthur Edward Waite as Dogma and Ritual of High Magic (also published as Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine & Ritual). Later, after becoming disillusioned with some of Lévi’s followers and teachings, Waite issued a new edition with some pointed criticisms of Lévi in the preface and footnotes. He pointed out numerous factual errors and logical contradictions, arguing that Lévi invented his own ideas but misrepresented them as derived from earlier authorities, and asserting that Lévi “read that which he wanted” into the Tarot.

The Occult Tarot Revised by the Golden Dawn

Waite belonged to a British quasi-Masonic society called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which became the source of the most popular versions of the Tarot in the English-speaking world. In 1887 the head of the Golden Dawn, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, began circulating an internal document laying out a new system of Tarot interpretation. This document was later reproduced by Israel Regardie as a chapter called “Book ‘T’” in his book The Golden Dawn, published after one of the order’s offshoots dissolved.

Mathers altered the cipher of the code Lévi was using to interpret the cards. He changed the sequence of the deck so that the numbering started at 0 with the wild card known as the Fool, restoring Gébelin’s original order, which Lévi had changed by placing the Fool between cards 20 and 21. Mathers also replaced Lévi’s set of astrological correspondences with one derived from the Sepher Yetzirah (“Book of Creation“), a medieval Kabbalistic document which had been translated by his Golden Dawn associate William Wynn Westcott.

Mathers claimed that his Tarot system reflected ancient teachings handed down to him by a Rosicrucian society from Continental Europe. Expert investigators such as David Allen Hulse have argued that Mathers used his own original research to expand on Lévi’s framework, and forged his Rosicrucian lineage in order to lend his innovations an air of historical legitimacy.

Later Tarot Interpreters

The most widespread Tarot systems of the 20th century were descended from Lévi, Mathers, Waite, and Tarot interpreters drawing from them. These formed the basis of the most popular Tarot interpretations used today.

Tarot systems descended from Lévi have remained in use in France and elsewhere. Their main disseminator was 19th-century Martinist writer Gérard Encausse, who called himself Papus. His associate Oswald Wirth, who created a Tarot deck to go with Papus’ books, also wrote about Lévi’s system.

In the English-speaking world, the most influential interpreter of Mathers’ Tarot system was his renegade Golden Dawn associate Aleister Crowley, internationally notorious for his decadent tabloid exploits. Crowley claimed that a spirit named Aiwass had revealed a new interpretation of the Tarot’s Fool card to him. Aiwass’ revelation coincidentally happened to be the same interpretation Mathers advocated in then-unpublished internal Golden Dawn documents. Crowley also proposed methods for cross-referencing the Hebrew interpretation of the Tarot with English and other languages.

Another influential commentator was Paul Foster Case, a member of an American offshoot of Mathers’ Golden Dawn faction.

Largely though the influence of Waite, Crowley, and Case, Golden Dawn Tarot systems have become the most popular way of interpreting the Tarot since the New Age movement emerged out of the 1960s. Over the past few decades, a number of derived Tarot and divination systems have been released, sometimes exchanging traditional Tarot symbolism for symbolism from other cultures, but retaining the same underlying principles, ultimately derived from Lévi and Mathers.

Worthy Notes

Museo dei Tarocchi: Italian museum devoted to historic Tarot cards
Online text of 17th-century Rosicrucian Manifestos
Le Grand Etteilla ou Tarot égyptien or Grand Etteilla Egyptian Gypsies Tarot: Images of Etteilla’s Tarot
Link to PDF text of Waite’s translation of Lévi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (earlier edition without Waite’s critical comments)
Wescott’s translation of the Sepher Yetzirah
Link to PDF text of Mathers’ Book “T”

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