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HISTORY OF TAROT CARD READING

There is a lot of confusion and difference of opinion when it comes to when tarot card reading actually began. Most agree however that the first deck of tarot cards that are documented as having existed were printed in 15th century Italy. This is known as the Visconti deck. Interestingly enough, the deck was created using Christian symbolism and meanings. Decks that followed would change this somewhat as paganism and the occult influenced the tarot card decks that would follow. One such notable difference is that the Hierophant card that is used today was originally the Pope card. As the tarot cards progressed, the Christian allegory was all but lost.

Tarot card reading would be first practiced around the 18th and 19th centuries. A Swiss clergymen and freemason, Antoine Court de Gébelin, would do much to influence modern tarot when he published the book Le Monde Primitif. The book was all about religious symbolism and how it has survived throughout the ages. In this book he attributed the tarot to the mysteries of Isis and Thoth in Egyptology. He claimed that the word 'tarot' even stood for "royal road" in the ancient Egyptian language. As such, he claimed that tarot was a royal road to wisdom. Sadly, after Egyptian hieroglyphs had been deciphered, there was no proof that the Egyptians had anything to do with tarot whatsoever; even so, it remains a belief of occultists.

Tarot card reading officially began around the 1700s in Italy. The practice was not well known however, until Alliette, also called "Etteilla" publicized the practice. Not too long before the French Revolution, he had made quite a name for himself as a seer and soothsayer. The deck of tarot cards that he invented more closely resemble the ones that are available today than the older decks. He constructed them by using Egyptian symbolism and artwork as well as astrology. These decks are still available but they have fallen out of practice. The most popular tarot card decks today include Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck and the fully illustrated Smith and Waite's deck.

Divination was made a more common practice among the French during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte whose wife would often consult a well known seer Marie-Anne Le Normand. Although she herself didn't use tarot card readings, other French citizens found they preferred them. Tarot card readings would finally become a more mainstream method of divination during the Hermetic revolt of the 1840s. Victor Hugo and Eliphas Levi would play a large role in the popularization of tarot card readings, in fact, Levi is considered to be the father of tarot, not Etteilla. Finally, in 1910, Tarot would officially take off as Rider, Waite, and Smith published their first deck of fully illustrated tarot cards. The cards use numeric cards with symbolic images related to divinatory meanings. Arthur E. Waite, one of the deck's creators, had in fact been a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which had helped to popularize tarot during the Hermetic revolt.

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