THE ORIGINS OF THE TAROT
Despite numerous hypotheses, the origin of the tarot remains obscure, and few historians venture to specify it. Perceiving in ancient Egypt the source of Western symbolism, Court de Gébelin wrote in the eighteenth century: […] If one were to announce that there still exist today works of the ancient Egyptians, which devour their superb libraries and which contain their purest doctrine on interesting subjects, everyone would, no doubt, be eager to know such a precious and extraordinary book […]
This Egyptian book, the sole remnant of their magnificent libraries, still exists today: it is even so common that no scholar has deigned to take an interest in it, no one before us having ever suspected its illustrious origin. This book is the game of tarot.
Or, if it is true that the tarot is an extraordinary symbolic work, Court de Gébin nevertheless claims, quite gratuitously, the Egyptian origin of the tarot. It is enough to discern the symbolic character of figures hitherto considered fanciful for one to immediately recognize in them hieroglyphs, attributable to the sages of the highest antiquity. That is to proceed too hastily.
On the other hand, a far more interesting hypothesis was developed in the last century by numerous scholars such as Eliphas Lévi, Papus, Stanilas de Guita, and Oswald Wirth. It concerns the Hebrew origin of the tarot, with each of the twenty-two major cards corresponding to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Indeed, what strikes one above all in the tarot is the number 22, which is precisely the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. One may therefore wonder whether it is to the Jews that we owe our twenty-two Kabbalistic figures.
Some hermeticists claim that these allegorical drawings were created by medieval Kabbalists to serve as supports for metaphysical reflections on the twenty-two Hebrew letters.
According to the alchemist and inevitable Oswald Wirth, one can learn about profane matters by listening to educators speak; this is not the case with initiation. The true secret remains forever incommunicable; it is not whispered from mouth to ear. To possess it, one must manage to assimilate it spiritually, by discovering it within oneself. The very nature of symbolism is to remain indefinitely suggestive; each person sees in it what their visual power allows them to perceive. As a mode of expression, symbolism abhors the positivism of business and profane teaching. It addresses only those thinkers capable of meditating and delving deeper.
In days of old, when people read less, they thought more by silently speaking to themselves. The minds of the ancients delighted in mounting the Pegasus of philosophical dream to rise with the poets into the sky of ideas.
We must return to this mental aviation, so contrary to our earthbound habits of locomotion. Contemporary positivism, rigorous in its deductions, must be complemented within us by a subtle poet (vates in Latin) capable of logically vaticinating, for the complete thinker reveals himself as a seer: he divines what remains mysterious and unintelligible to the common man.
Far from dismissing divination, it is fitting today to rehabilitate its practice. Even when it amounts to nothing more than childish stammering, it opens to the intellect doors that are commonly shut.
We will therefore refrain from discouraging those who study the tarot, especially from a divinatory standpoint, for divination is the era of all our sciences, our philosophies, and our religions. It is respectable in its principle and deserves to be taken seriously. It is Reason that forbids us to neglect the divinatory interpretations that the twenty-two arcanum of the tarot suggest to cartomancers. To untangle, as best we can, the chaos of interpretations that are indefinitely extensible. We first point out, for each arcanum, the notions of the most transcendent order. From metaphysics, we then move to the moral or psychic domain, where virtues, qualities, and aptitudes are ranked. We finally descend to the most material acceptations, to end with vices, misfortunes, and defects.
Be that as it may, it seems that tarot was introduced to Europe in its current form around the fourteenth century. Indeed, the study of certain graphic elements appearing on the arcanum leads us to believe so.
For example: The young man of the arcanum VI is dressed in a doublet and hose that only appeared around 1335. The third crown of the papal tiara, drawn on the arcanum of The Hierophant, appears around 1315 or 1316. If the medieval character of tarot, in its current form, is beyond doubt, we will nevertheless refrain from advancing anything regarding its origin, the great archetypes constituting it being in any case eternal. Nevertheless, what remains undeniable is that it constitutes a set of extremely powerful symbolic images that easily mobilize the gaze and attention of He who contemplates them. This is what interests us.
