tarot1

    One of the most interesting and popular of all the Esoteric Practices is the use of Tarot cards. Most people know them as the precursors of the standard playing cards, and they are perhaps best known for thier use in fortune-telling. They have also appeared as symbols in modern media-from plays to posters.
       Tarot cards are popularly believed to have been passed down through history by the Romany people, and there is certain veneer of superstition surrounding them. However, most of the legends concerning the Tarot cards are false. They were certainly not invented by the Romanies of medieval Europe, since they are known to have been present in Italy a century before the Romanies arrived there. Nor did the Tarot originate in Anceint Egypt. This particular legend is part of the 18th and 18th century romance of "lost cultures", when people looked back to a "golden age" that possessed a secret, esoteric wisdom, which was then transposed into all sorts of fictitious or symbolic locations, like "initiation chambers" in the Great Pyramid, or the "lost continents" of Antlantis and Lemuria.
     Antoine Court de Gebelin (1754-84), a French theologian and student of mythology, was responsible for some of the early, somewhat fancifull tales about the Tarot. In his book Le Monde Primitifzi (or The Primitive World), Gebelin surmised, withought, substancial evidence, that the Tarot was part of the Egyptian "Book of Thoth"-the book of divine wisdom-and that the cards symbolized in pictorial form the arcane knowledge of the initiates to the esoteric beliefs of ancient Egypt. Particularly important was the number 7-there are twenty-two major Tarot cards and each of the four suits was composed of 2 x 7 cards. Gebelin also claimed that the origins of the word "tarot" derived from the Egyptian phrase meaning "royal road of life", and he believed the the cards were an important occult tool that could help to accomplish the transformation of humanity.
    Gebelin's speculation was continued by Alliette, a Parisian Wigmaker, or a professor of mathematics, who wrote under the pseudonym Etteilla (his own name reversed), declared that the Tarot originated 171 years after the biblical deluge, and was developed by seventeen magicians. From his room in the Hotel de Crillion, he used to offer pronouncemtns on the divinatory use of the Tarot, including regarding the fate of this fellow man during the French Revolution.
    The next major theorist of the Tarot, and the one who has perhaps influenced modern occultists more than any other, was Eliphas Levi (1810-75). Levi was a priest of the Catholic Church, a graphic artist and a political satirist. He was fascinated by the Qabalah, with its then levels of consciousness, and he made the brilliant discovery that the twenty-two major arcana trump cards of the Tarot correlated symbolically to the paths leading to these stages of consciousness. Likewise, in the tree of life there are twenty-two links that connect the ten spheres, or the sephiroth. Levi believed that the Tarot was therefore an important representation of the images of mystical consciousness.
     Levi's work was extended by Gerard Encausee or "Papus" (1865-1916), who similarly wrote commentaries on the relationship between the Tarot and the Qabalah and, in particular, on the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
     Levi also exercised a strong influence on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. A E. Waite (1857-c. 1940), whose "Rider" pack of Tarot cards is well known (which I use!!), translated a number of Levi's books, including Historie de la Magie, into English and regarded Levi as the most significant magus of his age. Aleister Crowley even considered himself to be Levi's reincarnation and drew on Levi's corelations in formulating his own work on the Tarot, The Book of Thoth.
     The Golden Dawn magicians used the Tarot cards as pathways into the mind, rather than as a means of divination. Each of the cards can be visualized as a doorway through which magicians can imaginatively pass: they can them have symbolic and mystical visions related to the imagery of the tree of life.
    Modern occultists therefore use the major arcana Tarot cards as thier doorways to greater consciousness. The other fifty-six cards, called the "minor arcana", which are divided into four suits-wands and swords (masculine) and cups and pentacles (feminine)-are of less significance. Each of the major arcana corresponds to a certain portion of the psyche, smybolized by the tree of life. The tree is a living, vibrant thing, and each sephirah flows into another. The magician too, just flow along the tides of consciousness.
     The Tarot images constitute a type of mythology of the mind, rather in the same manner as Jung's archetypes of the unconscious. Magicians meet the gods in thier visions, seeing them as embodiments of different facets of thier own personalities: the warring aspect, for exampe being represented by Mars (the chariot), and the more intuitive, emotional side by Venus (The Star). Meditating on the Tarot cards helps occultists to balance thier personalities
     Many different meanings can be applied to the individual Tarot cards, depending on which system of interpretation is used-and MacGregor Mathers version, although fairly standard, is just one of these. It should also be noted that when each card is reversed its characteristics become a negative mirror image of any attributes, and vise versa. For example, although it may state that The Tower signifies ruin or disruption, in it's positive aspect the card can also represent the breaking down of emotional barriers.