Tarot

Tarot is a deck of 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana (trumps) and 56 Minor Arcana in four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles).

History

• Tarot began in 15th-century northern Italy as a card game (tarocchi). The Visconti-Sforza decks of about 1440–1460 are among the oldest that survive.
• Divinatory and occult use dates from the 18th century in France. Antoine Court de Gébelin (1781) claimed an Egyptian origin, which has no historical basis. Etteilla published the first divination deck (about 1789).
• In the 19th century Éliphas Lévi linked the trumps to the 22 Hebrew letters. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn developed this further.
• The Rider–Waite–Smith deck (1909), drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for A. E. Waite, is the modern standard. Its 1909 artwork is now in the public domain in the US. Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck followed in 1944.

How it works

Tradition / belief Readers hold that the cards reflect the questioner's situation, through synchronicity, intuition or divine guidance. No scientific evidence supports predictive power. The practice is offered here as tradition and for reflection.

Drawing a spread

1. Ask a clear, open question. Shuffle while focusing on it, cut the deck, and draw from the top.
2. One card: the guidance of the day.
3. Three cards: Past · Present · Future (or Situation · Action · Outcome).
4. Celtic Cross (10 cards): 1 present; 2 crossing challenge; 3 root; 4 recent past; 5 crown or potential; 6 near future; 7 self; 8 environment; 9 hopes and fears; 10 outcome.
5. Helian Sun spread Tradition / belief (5 cards in a cross): Helios at the centre (the self); Venus to the east (love); Mars to the south (strife); Saturn to the west (lessons); Jupiter to the north (blessing).
6. Reversed cards are often read as a blocked or inward form of the card's meaning.

Key trumps for the Helian Way: XIX The Sun, XVII The Star (Astraea), III The Empress (Venus), XI/VIII Justice.

Public-domain texts

• A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910): archive.org
• Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians: archive.org