Tarot history is a tricky subject.

There are three unanswered questions on the history of tarot:

• What was the origin of the suit card symbols, and what did they stand for?
• What was the source of the trumps, and what was their original import?
• When and why did people begin using the cards for divination?

Judaic and Islamic influence

The Judaic and Islamic religions believe that no graven images are permissible of the Prophets. Tarot is image rich.

While there is evidence of propaganda in texts such as the Sepher Yetsirah and the Bahir to convert Jews to Christianity. Islamic influences were simply deleted. For example, we only have references to tarot being banned in the 1370s, while the first examples of decks appear around 1450 to 1480. Michael Dummett proposed the Islamic origins in 1980, forty years after the discovery of the Mamluk in Istanbul.

In the 14th century the Mamluk deck has 52 playing cards with four suits; the courts were the King and a Minister, which evolved into the Kings, Knights, Knaves and Queens.

By the 15th century, the symbols for the suits had become Coins, Cups, Swords and Batons.  The number of the Major Arcana has always been 22, although the introduction of zero meant that there have sometimes been 21 with an un-numbered card. The history of the Major Arcana portrays a continuous snapshot of the ebb and flow of religious and political trends in society. The decks portrayed the nobility who had money and influence. This flattery worked well in Italy with the Viscontis of Milan and the D’Estes of Ferrara.

The next century printing technology spread the decks for playing around Europe.

Religious war broke out on the iconography of some of the cards in the 17th century, in Catholic countries over the Pope and female Pope .

The 18th century saw the rise of the Tarot of Marseilles which had Egyptian symbolism to explain its origin. The cards were commonly used for divination.

The 19th and 20th centuries introduced kabbalism, astrology, and divination.

The Triumphs

The Triumphs shows the search for an identity, which seems to have originated in Petrarch’s I Trionfi, began in 1356 and continued until his death fourteen years later. There may well be a connection to the Mystery Plays and Morality Plays. However much the depiction and order of the Triumphs has changed down the centuries, the constant has been the number 22. The next stage is  the development of esoteric tarot. The Tarot of Marseilles included Egyptian iconography, but the problem was of course that hieroglyphics had so far eluded translation. This did not stop Thoth take root as the God of the Tarot.

With Egyptian hieroglyphics such an impenetrable barrier, an alternative route was found, and where better than kabbalism? Jewish mysticism could not be taken on until it was used as propaganda to convert Jews to Christianity. Incidentally, the 12th century books from Southern France and Spain, the Sepher Yetsirah, Bahir and Zohar were originally propaganda tools against Judaism.

Our modern interpretations start in the 1750s when Etteilla began to explore it as a divination system. Etteilla declared that the tarot contained all the secret wisdom of the ancients. Court de Gebelin regarded not the kabbalism of Judaism, but ancient Egyptian symbols, and the Book of Thoth. Etteilla developed his system of divination with a mish-mash of sources that had no internal logic.

Eliphas Levi

Eliphas Levi connected the Egyptian symbolism with the Hebrew Alphabet inspired by Le Mond Primitif by Court de Gebelin and the Oedipus Aegypticus by Athanasius Kircher. These two books provided a structure of attributions to the Hebrew alphabet incorporating astrology and angelology. Add in the heady mix of the renaissance magic of Henry Cornelius Agrippa, and we have the esoteric tarot.

The Golden Dawn system

Various members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn revised some of Levi’s ideas. Historians disagree on who was responsible, but it is clear that Wyn Westcott, Macgregor Mathers, and AE Waite all had some comments.

Interpretations – Major Arcana

The basis of all the interpretations of the Major Arcana are found in authorities in a period of barely 200 years. These are:

• Pratesi’s Cartomancer 1750
• De Mellet 1781
• Court de Gebelin 1773-82
• Eliphas Levi 1855
• Christian 1870
• Macgregor Mathers 1880
• Golden Dawn 1888-96
• Waite 1889-1909 and 1910
• Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot 1944.

Minor Arcana Interpretations

The Picatrix, (1256)  is the basis of the Minor Arcana and  36 decanates. The decanate system is truly ancient, going back around 5,000 years to Ancient Egypt.

The Golden Dawn was the primary force for the Picatrix, although it naturally did not acknowledge this. The interpreting authorities are:

• Etteilla
• Golden Dawn
• Mathers
• AE Waite
• Crowley

What happened to the Sephiroth? Everything written about the Minor Arcana about the Sephiroth is clearly an extrapolation based upon what the Sephiroth mean. The Sephiroth on the Tree of Life is seen only as a secondary system, and one that is not particularly coherent. This does not of course, stop books continuing to print diagrams of the Minor Arcana on the Tree of Life.

Since there are 36 decans, four Minor arcana do not fit into the system, which is why the Aces are the ‘Roots of the Powers of the Elements’, interestingly not to Kether, which would be an obvious choice if one wanted to reinforce the kabbalistic notion of the Tarot. The reason Kether is not the first choice is the division of the  Minor Arcana into four elements, and Kether is not subdivided in any way.

The Court Cards

If there have been many reinterpretations and arguments over the order, naming, and attributions of the Major Arcana, it is as nothing to the Court Cards. Originally there were only two courts; a King and a Minister. This was later expanded to include a Knight, Knave, and Queen. The Golden Dawn changed the order to fit in with Kabbalistic ideas of the Sepher Yetsirah and Bahir.

The primary attribution of the Courts is of course to the four elements. The elements were sub-divided into the elements, so that we have fire of water, earth of air, etc. The Golden Dawn added an extra level of complexity by associating the King, Queen and Prince with astrology using the decanate system, but by overlapping the signs such as the Queen of Wands rules from 20 degrees Pisces to 20 degrees Aries. Since the Princesses or Knaves were the earthy part of each element, they could not rule a decanate, so they each ruled a “Quadrant of the Heavens about Kether”.

However, the main authorities of interpretation are:

• Pratesi
• Etteilla
• Mathers
• Waite
• Crowley

The latter three names are part of the same school, the Golden Dawn.