TAROT as 11th Century Central European

I'd say at least there's Tarot in Europe by the time the Cathars
are obliterated, or shall we say scattered to the winds..?

""Pope"" anybody the #Zip and his sycophantic gang are losing control...

Tarot walks, head high, the length and breadth of Europe. And yet, with the stench of the Inquisition still in the air, here we are today, walking along like it's a holiday on the graves of millions murdered as "witches" with no thought of Tarot as the living language of revolution and freedom.

Let's rock'n'roll boys and girls. Tarot is here to stay, and we can shuffle
our cards while the King of the Dogma-house burns. 78 times "Alive!"

OK. The argument usually goes, Tarot is Christian.
If you ask is Tarot something other than Christian
it gets buggered off into... is Tarot PRE Christian.

Tarot, is UR Christian
Tarot is yes Christian
Tarot is non Christian
Tarot is pre-Christian
and, it is POST X-ian.

Was geht ab, bru? *hiccup* [pink elephants]

I love the Tarot, I do an online test almost compulsively. I'll do one now...

Eight of Pentacles (Prudence): Dedicating yourself fully to a task. Learning a new craft or skill. Applying painstaking attention to detail. Industriousness and the efficient completion of tasks. Sticking with a project long enough to see it through.

Means I have to finish my homework :/

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Originally Posted by Fulgour

OK. The argument usually goes, Tarot is Christian.

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Who argues that? The standard Tarot theory of just about every occult group that sprung up after Eliphas Levi is that the the twenty two major arcana represent the twenty two paths (and thus the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet) on the Tree of Life. The paths connect the ten Sephirot (which are manifested in four worlds); these are represented by the fifty two numbered minor arcana and court cards. This is definitely Kabbalistic not Christian.

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Originally Posted by Psychonaut

Who argues that? The standard Tarot theory of just about every occult group that sprung up after Eliphas Levi is that the the twenty two major arcana represent the twenty two paths (and thus the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet) on the Tree of Life. The paths connect the ten Sephirot (which are manifested in four worlds); these are represented by the fifty two numbered minor arcana and court cards. This is definitely Kabbalistic not Christian.

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This theory has emphasis based on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Tarot is much older than that and there is still doubt as to the whereabouts of its origins. The deck compiled by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith is very much influenced by Hebrew tales but there are also other influences, including Egyptian. Waite also reversed the Strength and Justice cards. While Justice was originally the 8th card, Strength was the 11th. Therefore, it's been a relatively recent change and so is the concept on which the Golden Dawn based it. The 22 Major Arcana cards could, indeed, be seen as separate paths, but since they comprise of the deck of 78 cards, they are seen to be read as significant markers in the overall use of the deck - not strictly as separate entities. I've not studied Kabbala so I can't comment on this. I've used the cards for divinatory purposes and while the cards are relatively self-explanatory, they are interchangeable in regards to the issues of each querent.

There are, in fact, 56 Minor Arcana cards, not 52. It is, however, from the Minor Arcana cards that we have the standard deck of 52 cards, with the pages of each suit taken out. Otherwise, the standard deck can be read in exactly the same fashion as that of the Minor cards. Cups are Hearts, Pentacles Clubs, Swords Spades and Wands Diamonds. If they are to be read that way, though, it's more for the mundane occurrances rather than any significant changes you would see in the Majors.

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Originally Posted by Fulgour

the graves of millions murdered as "witches

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I really hope you're joking.

And yes, I've read/heard the "calculations" that produce the xmillion figure that nobody takes seriously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WasDIOnMnI

The tarot is based off ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that are said to hold the key to immortality. For example, the Alligator on The Fool card is actually a reference to Nwt, an important Egyptian deity. The dog in this card represents Anubis. The goat head on the famous Baphomet idol, and the tarot card 'The Devil', represents taking bliss in every aspect of creation, from the most holy to the most profane.

The twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana of the Tarot being an organism, a complete whole, it is not a question of diverse and disparate origins of particular cards, but rather of the degrees of their evolution or transformation. For the Tarot, also, is not a wheel, a closed circle, but rather aspiral, i.e. it evolves through tradition and reincarnation.

Minor Arcana represent an extension to the final Major Arcanum, The World. As such, they represent an ascent, known as Jacob’s Ladder. The Minor Arcana of the Tarot represent the way of ascent from consciousness belonging to the world of action (the phenomenal world) through the world of formation and the world of creation to the world of emanation.

The suit of Pentacles corresponds to Assiah, or the World of Action. This is the mixed, or dualistic world. Not fully God’s creation, it is the result of Adam's fall. It is ruled by Satan, the Prince of the World.

Since the Egyptian god, Thoth, is also known as “Hermes” or “Hermes Trismegistus” (the "Thrice-Greatest"), tarot cards are therefore considered by some occultists to be “Hermetic.” Both Thoth and Hermes were gods of writing and of magic in their respective cultures. Thus, the Greek god of interpretive communication was combined with the Egyptian god of wisdom as a patron of astrology and alchemy. In addition, both gods were psychopomps; guiding souls to the afterlife.

However, even granting that tarot cards had an Egyptian origin, the images of the Tarot de Marseille are entirely Renaissance European: the clothing, the architecture, the furniture, the objects and the people, which include an emperor, an empress, a pope and a papess (female pope), all did not exist during the ancient time of Hermes.

Tarot was originally made available to the plebs back in the 16th century. It was part of an information explosion made possible through the printing press and newly forming non-noble wealthy class that could afford to buy oddities and promises of ancient knowledge to guide their success in life. The Tarot of the time was more like playing cards with only the Major Arcana drawn with symbolic pictures. Still, its ability to capture the attention of the masses made it a very popular item.

In the 18th century, the Rider-Waite tarot deck was produced. There's some drama around this because Arthur Waite, the man who "updated the Tarot deck for the modern times", was a member of the same mystical order that Aleister Crowley belonged to. In fact, Aleister Crowley did some repeated trolling of A.E. Waite, calling him a talentless hack and at one point taking out an obituary of him in the paper to piss him off (or so they say).

Aleister Crowley, unlike Arthur Waite, believed in Antoine Court de Gébelin's fake history of the Tarot (Court believed that tarot cards are the embodiment of all the books that were lost in Alexandria's library and were introduced to Europe by the Gypsies, who he also falsely believed were descendants of those Egyptians that harboured Jesus Christ and his family during Herod's cull of all the first born of Israel).

That's why Crowley named his deck the Thoth deck (being the book of Thoth, the ancient Egyptian god of wisdom and equivalent to the Greek Hermes and the Abrahamic angel Uriel).

This also proves how quite a bit of Crowley's work, though powerful as it may be, is flawed; Gypsies (Roma) come from India and not from Egypt (there's significant proof of this that Crowley would never have known at the time).

Waite swapped the Justice and the Strength cards from the old Tarot, which is completely innocuous and would never impact one's use of the deck, but which completely changes the meaning of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life when you array the Major Arcana around the tree in accordance with their numerical values. The swap of Strength/Justice creates a reversed polarity effect, the effects of which I'll leave to the alchemical Kabbalists to recognise.

Spoiler!

https://i.imgur.com/19fTURr.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/81EiikI.png