Tarot history never really started with fortune telling. The first tarot decks were said to come from Arabia in the 14th century where there was a lot of intellectual exchange going on between the Middle East and Europe. The first known deck was made for the Vicsconzi-Sforza family from Milan and the first cards were designed by an artist named Bembo. During this time, the tarot cards were hand painted and could not be mass produced until the printing press was invented. The word tarot was commonly believed to come from the Arab word “turuq” which meant “four ways”.
Contrary to what most people believe in, tarot cards did not come from the gypsies. This presumption could have started with the fact that the gypsies were often associated with fortune telling. The myth can be easily dispelled with the fact that the tarot cards were already in Europe before the gypsies arrived in Europe. However the gypsies were considered to be the first ones who used the tarot cards for fortune telling purposes.
Another common misconception is that the tarot cards are said to be cards of the devil. The truth is that the title was given to all playing cards by the early churchmen. The churchmen were condemning all playing cards because of the fact that they are being used for gambling.
Tarot cards are actually early forms of the playing cards that we now have today. These tarot cards were originally use in order to play a card game called tarocchi before it was used for divine and occult purposes. In this card game, the 22 major arcane cards were trump cards while the 56 minor arcane cards in four suits are quite similar to today’s standard deck of playing cards. According to tarot experts, the characters that are illustrated in the major arcana cards represented the characters of the parade that graced Italian celebrations.
You may be wondering how tarot cards came to use for fortune telling. The truth is all playing cards have been used for these purpose. The only thing is that the tarot cards had more intricate illustrations and are older making them look more perfect for the role.
The next milestone in tarot history happened during the 1700’s when Court de Gebelen who was a member of a secret occult society heard about the game tarocchi and became interested to the point of obsession with the cards. He believed that the cards were imbued with symbolism which he thinks came from Egyptian lore. The connection to Egypt was probably based on the fascination that the Europeans had over Egypt during the period as they regarded Egypt as the center of man’s early wisdom. In fact, he even wrote a nine volume book entitled “Le Monde Primitif” where he discussed the meanings of the tarot. Since then, the use of the tarot cards for divination had spread ever since.
By the 19th century Eliphas Levi Zahed who was a famous mystic during that time was able to connect the tarot with the Hebrew mysticism known as the Kabbalah and saw that the tarot was a key to life and a tool that man can use in order to develop himself in the right path towards heaven.
Fortune telling was a very fascinating past time that has intrigued people from before until today due to the fact that it can produce the most shocking and even accurate predictions through the tarot cards. The tarot cards are able to show the path and the journey of a human being, showing the challenges and the pitfalls that the human would face in between birth life and death.
tarotreveals 