TAROT MODERN

Tarot in the Modern Age

In the mid 1850s a third Frenchman, Alphonse Louis Constant (originally a deacon of the Catholic Church), began to publish occult works. For the purposes of authorship he translated his name into Hebrew and wrote under the name Eliphas Levi (he dropped the final Zahed?. His books contained Tarot references and symbolism and it was he who first established the link between the Tarot and cabala (or Qabalah). He felt that the god Thoth-Hermes made the original deck. His theory contains mathematical ideas similar to those of Pythagoras, whom he admired.

Eliphas Levi (real name: Alphonse Louis Constant, author of 'History of Magic|'), 1810-1875, was a French priest and Rosicruician who thought the Tarot the key to the Bible, the Jewish Qabbalah, and all other ancient spiritual writings. He attempted to link the 22 cards of the Major Arcana to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. He drew parallels between Tarot suits and the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, YHVH ('Yahweh').

Late nineteenth-century Parisian author Paul Christian (Jean Baptiste Pitois) was a follower of Levi's who believed that Major Arcana cards represent hieroglyphic paintings found on columns in ancient Egyptian galleries. He also sought parallels between the Tarot and Qabbalistic astrology.

Papus (Gerard Encausse, 1865-1916), a French doctor, philosopher, and Theosophist, was another believer in the Tarot's Egyptian sources. Known for the book 'The Tarot of the Bohemians', he believed the Tarot a bearer of ancient designs inscribed in secret chambers below the Pyramids. The designs represented initiation tests. When the temples were at risk, the priests transferred the mystical designs to materials which later became a pack of cards. Papus, too, described a link between Tarot and the Tetragrammaton. He also dealt with numerology and the Tree of Life.

MacGregor (Samuel Liddell) Mathers lead the English Order of the Golden Dawn, which was founded in 1886. He studied Jewish, Egyptian, Christian, and alchemical mysticism and wrote about the Tarot.

A. E. Waite (1857-1942), the English Christian occult philosopher, broke from the Order of the Golden Dawn and founded his own school of mystical thought. Working with the artist Pamela Coleman Smith - who was also a member of The Order of the Golden Dawn - Waite created a "rectified" deck featuring images and scenery on all the cards, Minor as well as Major Arcana. They produced the 78 card deck that we use today.

The tarot has been studied by many adepts and has been shown to be directly relating to the Qabalah. The Order of the Golden Dawn in 1890 made a deck for its members, utilizing the knowledge of the Qabalah in its symbolism. This was not the first deck, but the research done by the golden dawn and its members helped shape the views of the Tarot and the western philosophies of the mysteries. Together, they produced the 78 card deck that we use today. The tarot has been studied by many adepts and has been shown to be directly relating to the Qabalah.

Aleister Crowley, too, founded his own occult school, the Ordo Templi Orientis, which had to do, among other things, sex magic. Working with Freida Harris, he created the colorful Book of Thoth Tarot. He considered identifying with each card more important than trying to guess about origins.

Paul Foster Case, who formed the Builders Adytum, thought the Tarot from Morocco. According to him, 11th century philosophers designed it to both to preserve knowledge after the Alexandrian libraries were burned down and to furnish a universal language. He, too, designed a deck, a black and white one. It strongly resembles Waite's.

Other theories of the Tarot's history and origins are:

• the cards are allegories of Sufi masters;
• Grail legend depictions;
• the Indian game Chaturanga, a forerunner of chess;
• Indian holy texts;
• Gypsy imports;
• Hebrew lore;
• Greek philosophy;
• ancestors of Mesopotamian copper cylinders;
• symbols handed down from prehistoric oral stories;
• symbols from ancient Central American Indian cultures;
• wisdom of prehistoric matriarchal cultures;
• teaching aids of the Waldenses, a persecuted Christian sect;
• surviving lore of the Order of Knights Templar, founded in 1188 to protect pilgrims and guard the ways to the Holy Land;
• creation of the 13th century alchemists, the Tarot containing hidden alchemical imagery

We don't know, and perhaps will never know, what the original Tarot cards looked like. Nor do we know where they came from or who created them. We don't even know how many were contained in a deck. It has frustrated Tarot experts and inspired countless origin theories. However they came to be, the images of Tarot, like all true symbols, resound spontaneous self-expressions from the psyche's deepest springs; and for that reason they hold up magic mirrors to whatever reactions we bring them. Like all authentic artistic creations, Tarots are ultimately a mystery and will remain so.

The Beginnings of Tarot