Tarot and Cartomancy: What is the tarot?
Courtesy TAROTArticle Summary.- The tarot is a deck of cards is often used as a supposed means of divination of events past, present, or future, of what would constitute a type of fortune telling.
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INTRODUCTION - That is the tarot:
The tarot is a deck of cards that is often used as a means of divination course of present events, past or future, of what would constitute a type of fortune telling.
The tarot consists of 78 cards, divided into Major Arcana (22) and younger (56). Comes from the Latin arcanum Arcanum, which means mystery or secret.
This last is the only one not numbered (though erroneously be named as number 22 or zero).
The 56 Minor Arcana cards are divided equally into four suits: swords, cups, batons and gold, as in the Spanish pack, but with a slight variation: cards numbered from Ace (1) to ten more members of the court: Sota , Queen, King and Knight. Etteilla makes a discovery about the number 78 which theosophical considered as the sum of the first twelve numbers. (1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +10 +11 +12)
The design of the cards is changed, although there are classic designs such as the Tarot de Marseille (final do XVII century) that has served as a guide in preparing the figures and their symbols. A very popular deck is the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot (Rider-Waite or Rider or just) designed in 1910 by Arthur Edward Waite and his disciple by Pamela Colman Smith, printed by the Rider Company.
Another deck of cards is the Book of Thoth Tarot devised between 1938 and 1942 by the English magician Aleister Crowley and his disciple by Frieda Harris, the pack was together in 1944 in black and white, with The Book of Thoth, which explains the and use symbols, but was released with its original colors only in 1977, in New York, U.S. Games Systems and Samuel Weiser.
HISTORY
Origins of the Tarot
It is not known with certainty the origin of the Tarot its historical origin is shrouded in mystery. Some date its origins in Egyptian times, others say it comes from the East, and others determined that it was in the Middle Ages.
In ancient Egypt, the origin of these cards could come from a derivation of the famous "Book of Thoth" or holy book whose origin is believed to have been done in gold leaf and issued by Thoth Egyptian God "that was responsible for foreseeing the future and the measure of time.
It also ascribes the invention of writing numbers and engravings. Apparently he had every respect for the rulers and the adoration of the people regarded him as the God who ran the life and destiny of all.
It appears that at the time of the Ptolemies to Hermes came to be regarded as the incarnation of the God Thoth, and he was also a great king in Egypt.
The major arcana is believed that his works were embodied in the Emerald Tablet, which was a gem that was recorded in the table magic, and was later found in the tomb of Hermes.
This table can it be equated with the tables that were established in the law which Moses. Many of the symbols displayed on the "Book of Thoth" is believed to come from the teachings of ancient civilizations that inhabited the Earth for nearly eighty centuries, and left the track with these prints, many of them very current today.
While others date back to at least the fourteenth century, having no basis to take their roots far back in history.
The technique "divination" is based on the selection of playing cards specifically dedicated to this art. After the selection, a supposed expert interprets the meaning of the letters concerning the future of the consultant.
The first references to Tarot appear in the fifteenth century in Italy. The oldest deck is the Tarot de Filippo Maria Visconti (1412-1447), today at the Yale University Library, USA.
Giordano Berti Italian historian was himself supposed to be Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, the inventor of Tarot.
In studies by occultists of the XVIII and XIX, as Antoine Court de Gebelin, Eliphas Levi and Dr. Gérard Encausse (Papus) attempts to demonstrate the connection between the tarot and Kabbalah, as well as Egyptian symbolism.
According to the researchers argue today Daniel Rodes and Encarna Sanchez, the origin of Tarot would be sought between the Cathars medieval Occitan culture whose philosophy fits perfectly with the basic idea of the game of Tarot.
Thus, the presence of a High Priestess, the importance of female characters and obvious references to Christianity than Roman orthodoxy would think of an original use of the Tarot as a transfer of philosophical knowledge, but over time would become be used as a divination system.
But the High Priestess was actually a symbol of Christian faith, as evidenced by numerous works of art from the Middle Ages.
Other authors argue that the wandering gypsies in European countries promoted the Tarot as a divination system. But the gypsies arrived in Europe when the Tarot was already known.
Moreover, the Tarot game is played in Italy since the fifteenth century, and in the following century it spread in many regions of Europe: France first, then Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and Austria. Divination with the Tarot appears safely in Italy and France in the eighteenth century.
Theories about the origin
Tarot cards were associated with time for mysticism and magic. Tarot was not widely adopted by mystics, occultists and secret societies until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The tradition began in 1781, when Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Swiss clergyman and Freemason, published Le Monde Primitif, a speculative study on ancient religious symbolism and its remnants in the modern world.
In Gébelin argued that the symbolism of the Tarot de Marseille represented the mysteries of Isis and Thoth. Gébelin later claimed that the name "tarot" came from the Egyptian words "tar", meaning "real" and "ro", which means "way" and that the tarot therefore represented a "royal road" to wisdom.
Gébelin argued these and similar views in a dogmatic, no factual evidence presented to support their arguments. In addition, Gébelin wrote before Champollion had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics. Modern Egyptologists found nothing in the Egyptian language that would support the Gébelin fanciful etymologies, but these findings came too late.
By the time authentic Egyptian texts that were available, the identification of tarot cards with the Egyptian "Book of Thoth" was already firmly established in occult practice.
Although tarot cards were used for fortune-telling in Bologna, Italy in the eighteenth century, were originally touted as a method of divination by "Aliette", also called "Etteilla", a French occultist who reversed the letters of his name and worked as a diviner shortly before the French Revolution.
Etteilla designed the first esoteric Tarot deck, adding astrological attributions and reasons "Egyptians" to several cards, altering many of the Marseille designs, and adding divinatory meanings in the text of the letters. Etteilla decks, although now eclipsed by Smith and Waite illustrated and maso "Thoth" by Aleister Crowley, is still available.
Later, Madmoiselle Marie-Anne Le Normand popularized divination and prophecy during the reign of Napoleon I. This was due in part to the influence he had over Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife. However this is not usually used the tarot.
Interest in tarot for divination by other ocultitas came later, during the heyday of the Hermetic, the 1840's, in which (among others) Victor Hugo was involved.
The idea of the cards as a mystical key was further developed by Eliphas Lévi and passed to the English speaking world by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Lévi, not Etteilla, is considered by some the true founder of most contemporary schools of Tarot, his "Dogme et Ritual de la Haute Magie" of 1854 introduced an interpretation of the letters that relations with the Kabbalah.
While Levi accepted Court de Gébelin claims on etipción origin of the symbols of the cards, rejected innovation and harness Eteilla altered and arranged in place a system which related the Tarot, especially the Marseille tarot and Kabbalah with the four elements of alchemy. On the other hand, some Etteilla divinatory meanings are still used by some tarot readers.
LeoTarot.com has been created to help you through the Tarot and gather as much information about the Tarot. The Tarot comes from ancient Egypt Book of Thoth.
