Episode 228: The Devilish History of Tarot Cards

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• From Oracle & Divination Cards, Simon Wintle, World of Cards, 2022: Although divination was increasingly condemned as a pagan practice and formally prohibited by the early Christian Church, many divinatory traditions persisted. Early scientific and medical notebooks frequently combined alchemical and medicinal recipes with texts on geomancy and divination—often translated from Arabic sources or attributed to ‘ancient physicians in Babylon.’ Knowledge of cartomancy developed largely through informal and oral traditions. From the early modern period onwards, fortune-telling practices using playing cards became closely associated in popular imagination with Romani communities, whose mobility and marginal social position contributed to this reputation. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, divinatory and occult practices were frequently and erroneously attributed to “ancient Egypt”, reflecting a broader European fascination with imagined Eastern antiquity. Fortune-telling with playing cards gained wider visibility in Europe during this period, shaped as much by printed manuals and urban popular culture as by oral transmission. These informal practices coexisted with, and were later shaped by, the reputations of particular communities, most notably Romani fortune-tellers, whose visibility in early modern Europe helped cement the widespread association of cartomancy with divinatory insight (later called clairvoyance) or esoteric knowledge. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such practices were increasingly codified, theorised and often linked to imagined ancient sources, giving rise to the structured systems of cartomancy familiar today. French occultist Jean-Baptiste Alliette’s book published in 1770 introduces cartomancy as a form of entertainment which alleviates boredom and stimulates reflection as one seeks answers to issues such as marriage or romance. He also points out that it is a relatively safe activity with less financial risks than gambling. https://www.wopc.co.uk/tarot/cartomancy-oracle-and-divination-cards/ 
• From A history of tarot cards, Rebecca Billingham, Ruth Hibbard, Josephine Nardecchia, Victoria & Albert Museum, 2026: Today best known for divination and fortune-telling, Tarot was originally a card game played for fun. The tarot consists of 78 cards: 22 triumph or ‘Major Arcana’ cards and 56 pip or ‘Minor Arcana’ cards. The Major Arcana includes archetypal figures – the Emperor, the Devil and the Fool; astrological elements – the Sun, Moon, and Star; and other eclectic symbols such as Strength, the Tower and Death. Rather than using the French suits of spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds that are more commonly known in England, tarot cards use the Italian suits of swords, cups, coins, and batons or wands. In tarot today, the suits are understood to represent aspects of life or the four elements – swords (thoughts or air), cups (emotions or water), coins/pentacles (material aspects or earth), and batons/wands (actions or fire). It is possible that they once represented classes of society – aristocracy, clergy, merchants and peasants respectively. The elusive origin of tarot has been variously traced back to India, Egypt, and to the invention of papermaking and playing cards in China and Korea in the early 12th century. It was not until the 15th century that tarot entered Europe, most likely through the ports of Venice at the height of maritime trade. Tarot, like other card games, was a product of cross-cultural exchange as they were used by merchants, traders, and seafarers seeking entertainment on their long voyages. The beauty and symbolism of these cards would delight and entertain the card-playing nobles of the Italian Renaissance courts. 
  • In the late 18th century, tarot cards began to be used for fortune-telling. In the 1770s, self-proclaimed master of cartomancy Ettaille created the first deck of cards to be used specifically for divination. By the 1780s several writers introduced mysticism to the cards for the first time by declaring tarot’s Egyptian origins, which remain unproven. Interest in the occult bloomed in the 19th century, and the use of tarot as a divination tool gained in popularity. In 1861, French occultist Eliphas Levi published his book Dogma & Ritual of High Magic, turning tarot from a fun fortune-telling parlour game to an esoteric tool for serious occultists. Around this time several elements of the tarot were changed to fit with a combination of beliefs from different religions and mythologies, such as numerology and Kabbalah. Tarot was introduced to Britain in 1886, with Arthur Edward Waite’s English translation of Levi’s book. Two years later, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was formed, a society which studied the occult and practised ceremonial magic. It was as members of the Golden Dawn that Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith crossed paths, a meeting that would lead to the creation of one of the most recognisable tarot decks still in print today. The Rider Waite Smith tarot deck, featuring artwork by Colman Smith, was first published in 1909. It was the first deck to have fully illustrated pip cards which could be read intuitively. Though Waite gave precise instructions for the design of the Major Arcana cards, Colman Smith was given a blank slate to create the Minor Arcana. This had a lasting impact on the design of tarot cards, many of which still use the symbology created by Colman Smith to this day. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/tarot-cards?srsltid=AfmBOormxgiATdXUmcXahr7FrI3LHPQO1oH8aNeJxDzJX7NiJkICdZcj 
• From Tarot Mythology, Hunter Oatman-Stanford, Collector’s Weekly, 2014: Contrary to what the uninitiated might think, the meaning of divination cards changes over time, shaped by each era’s culture and the individual users. This is partly why these decks can be so puzzling to outsiders, as most of them reference allegories or events familiar to people many centuries ago. Using cards for playful divination probably goes back to the Mamluk game cards brought to Western Europe from Turkey. By the 1500s, the Italian aristocracy was enjoying a game known as “tarocchi appropriati,” in which players were dealt random cards and used thematic associations with these cards to write poetic verses about one another. These predictive cards were referred to as “sortes,” meaning destinies or lots. Even the earliest known tarot decks weren’t designed with mysticism in mind; they were actually meant for playing a game similar to modern-day bridge. The random draw of the cards created a new, unique narrative each and every time the game was played, and the decisions players made influenced the unfolding of that narrative. Those who use cards for divination are often at odds with academics researching their past: There’s a lot of friction between tarot historians and card readers about the origins and purpose of tarot cards. The evidence suggests they were invented for gaming and evolved for use in divination at a much later date. The imagery was designed to reflect the world that the players lived in, and the Christian symbolism in the cards is obvious. As divinatory usage became more popular, illustrations evolved to reflect designer intention, and the subjects took on more and more esoteric meaning. By comparing decks from different time periods, enthusiasts can identify the evolution of certain illustrations. The modern version of the hermit with the lantern was [originally] an hourglass, and he was Saturn or Chronos, the keeper of time. It was about time moving slowly, though that’s not used as a modern meaning much now. Most card readers recognize that the associations and preconceptions of the person being read for are just as important as the actual drawings on the cards. https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/the-surprising-origins-of-tarot-most-misunderstood-cards/
• From the Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley, 1944: In the middle of the nineteenth century, there arose a very great Qabalist and scholar, who still annoys dull people by his habit of diverting himself at their expense by making fools of them posthumously. His name was Eliphas Levi, a philosopher and an artist, and he was immensely attracted by the Tarot. While in England, he proposed to Kenneth Mackenzie, a famous occult scholar and high-grade Freemason, to reconstitute and issue a scientifically-designed deck. In his works are new presentations by him of the trumps called The Chariot and The Devil. He seems to have understood that the Tarot was actually a pictorial form of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, which is the basis of the whole Qabalah, so much so that he composed his works on this basis. He wished to write a complete treatise on Magick. A similar movement took place in England. Its interest centred in ancient religions, and their traditions of initiation and thaumaturgy. Learned societies, some secret or semi-secret, were founded or revived. Among the members of one such group was an attribution of the trumps of the Tarot to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It appears natural to a mathematician to begin the series of natural numbers with Zero; but it is very disturbing to the non-mathematically trained mind. In the traditional essays and books on the Tarot, the card numbered “0” was supposed to lie between the cards XX and XXI. The secret of this initiated interpretation, which makes the whole meaning of the Trumps luminous, is simply to put this card marked “0” in its natural place, where any mathematician would have put it, in front of the number One. The card XI is called “Strength”; on it appears a Lion, and it quite evidently refers to the zodiacal sign Leo, whereas the card VIII is called “Justice”, and represents the conventional symbolic figure, throned, with sword and balances, thus obviously referring to zodiacal sign of Libra, the Balance. Tzaddi is “The Emperor”; and therefore the positions of XVII and IV must be counterchanged. This attribution is very satisfactory. Yes, but it is something a great deal more than satisfactory; it is, to clear thought, the most convincing evidence possible that the Book of the Law is a genuine message from the Secret Chiefs. For “The Star” is referred to as Aquarius in the Zodiac, and “The Emperor’ to Aries. Now Aries and Aquarius are on each side of Pisces, just as Leo and Libra are on each side of Virgo; that is to say, the correction in the Book of the Law gives a perfect symmetry in the zodiacal attribution, just as if a loop were formed at one end of the ellipse to correspond exactly with the existing loop at the other end. Even to the layman, it ought to be evident that balance and fitness are essential to any perfection, and the elucidation of these two tangles in the last 150 years is undoubtedly a very remarkable phenomenon.
  • From Children of Lucifer, Ruben Van Luijk, 2016: In a footnote to Magick, Satan is described as the great initiator who stands for life, love, and liberty, and similar ideas are prevalent in Crowley’s famous “Hymn to Lucifer” and in his lesser-known “Hymn to Satan.” When Crowley discusses the devil more systematically, it is mostly in the context of Lévi’s reinterpretation inspired by Tarot and Kabbalah. Already in one of his earliest magical writings, Crowley had extended and systematized Lévi’s Kabbalism, making the symbolism of the Kabbalah the master key to interpret and test magical visions, devise new rituals, and interpret the perennial truths expressed in the world’s most important mythological systems. In this system, the Devil from the Tarot accordingly corresponds with the Egyptian god Set, the human genital system, the Goat as symbolic animal, and the Antique gods Priapus and Pan. This rather straightforward schema is complicated, however, because the Greek god Pan is also equated with the Kabbalist divine principle that is One and None at the same time. For Crowley, the emanation of the universe from this oneness is the origin of all things; all things at the same time aspire to reunite with this original oneness. The cosmos thus is a constant flux between the One and the Many. Lévi’s shadow looms large here again, with his Baphomet who is also the “pan-theos.” In contrast to Lévi, however, the highest divine principle is emphatically not identified with the JudeoChristian deity by Crowley, but with Pan. In The Book of Thoth, he writes that the Devil card was completely misunderstood “in the Dark Ages of Christianity,” but that Lévi “at least succeeded in identifying the goat portrayed upon the card with Pan.” This is indeed the real significance of the Devil card according to Crowley. The Tarot Devil becomes the embodiment of a supreme formula that is the complete appreciation of all existing things. “He rejoices in the rugged and the barren no less than in the smooth and the fertile. All things equally exalt him. He represents the finding of ecstasy in every phenomenon, however naturally repugnant; he transcends all limitations; he is Pan; he is All.”
• From Paper Tools For Broken Hearts, William Pooley, Journal of French History, 2023: Card-reading became one of the most prevalent forms of fortune-telling in France after the eighteenth century. The French Revolution was a fertile breeding ground for fortune-telling: “Never before had men and women thirsted with such anxiety for oracles; never before had there been so many soothsayers. Hazel wands, magic mirrors and all of the paraphernalia of witchcraft had been discredited, and prophecy had to be made up on the fly. Decks of cards, both easy to acquire and to use, were all the rage.” Six decades later, when he was writing, he suggested that anyone wishing to find out what cartomancy involved could easily find 10,000 pamphlets on the subject for sale. Despite this, skepticism about card reading was widely shared even by clients of cartomancers.The mayor of Gassville reported that one man who had asked a cartomancer for help concerning his son’s military conscription refused to pay in advance because ‘he did not have enough faith in cartomancy to consent to such a thing’. A witness in an 1888 fraud trial told the court: ‘As for me, I gotta tell you that I don’t believe in all that twaddle. I only went to that witch to make my friend happy.’ Witnesses were particularly scathing about a cartomancer prosecuted at least three times in the 1830s and 1840s. Claude Boucher told the police ‘I can’t remember all the fancy promises he made when he turned over specific cards. I don’t have much faith in that nonsense.’ But perhaps skepticism is not quite the right word for how these men felt. In both cases, the witness’ actions at other times suggest they were not wholly consistent in their attitude, and the man who told the police cartomancy was ‘nonsense’, was seen by a range of witnesses weeping after consulting a reader. As one informant told a court in 1834: “Madame Tournois came to my house and laid out a large deck of cards that she asked me to cut. I turned up a kind of monkey and she told me it was the devil and that I had been bewitched. I immediately turned pale and felt unwell. … When I returned to my senses, she had me cut again, and I turned up the same card. ‘There’s no doubt about it,’ she told me, ‘You have the devil in your body and we must chase him out.’ Occultists were scathing about the kinds of cartomancers who plied their trade in taverns and marketplaces, charging just a few coins or a drink for their services. Subsequent researchers have focused their attention on the famous occultists and their writings, making little or no mention of the widespread improvised use of cards for fortune-telling.
• From The Gypsy-Witch: Social-Cultural Representations, Fascination and Fears, Ioan Pop-Curşeu, Journal of Ethnography & Folklore, 2014: Throughout history, [Romani] have been assigned other divinatory arts as well, especially cartomancy. It was even considered that the Tarot was an invention of the Romani, who spread it throughout Europe starting with the 14th century. The practice of divination and of black and white magic brought Roma people many more serious troubles than excommunication and banishment: many were victims of pogroms and sensational collective executions: pyres, hanging, drowning, etc. Drowning was reserved especially to women, which makes me think that in some famous cases when the so-called ordeal by water was used it was about the detection of witches. A woman suspected of ties with unclean forces was tied by her hands and feet, then was thrown into the water: if she floated, it was believed that she was a witch, and the executioners would take her and if she sunk, she was considered innocent and removed from the water. In the early 18th century, Roma people represented wizards par excellence. When talking about the Roma converted to Islam the Romanian prince installed in Russia. emphasizes that they do not comply with any of the commands of the Prophet: “The Roma people that convert to Muhammad considered themselves to be perfectly pious through this single title, but apart from it, they do not even seek the commandments or the law, but break them all, without obeying or respecting any law; they hold no prayers of any kind, no fasting, about Mecca they do not even want to hear; instead of alms on Pentecost, they commit charms, spells and witchery, all of which are forbidden to Moslems.” In the contemporary urban world, when television, soap operas and the Internet have led to a leveling of beliefs and practices, magic and witchcraft go well with the mass media, and the old stereotypes have not disappeared but have adapted to the new virtual realities. The Romani-witch, taken from the darkness of the Middle Ages or from the fantasy of authors or filmmakers, lives in these early years of the 21st century a new youth where witches of various types, from nuns to crafty Romani women, the latter being predominant, all claim they work only in the name of the lord and have only the intention of doing good, praising their methods in removing mercury, undoing marriages, tarot cards, crystal balls, healing incurable diseases such as epilepsy, alcoholism, impotence, depression, fear, and claim that they have “plants from the banks of India” needed to cure all kinds of diseases and so on. This is no more pronounced in Romania than in other nations: in the Western world, too we see similar ads posted by members of minority population groups, Specialists in magic boast that they can solve any type of case, even without seeing their client, on the phone or by email, only with their surname and date of birth. 
• From Here’s To My Sweet Satan, George Case, 2016: The mystique of the Tarot lay less in the reliability of its predictions than in the attractiveness of its ritual, and of the cards themselves. Upon its reissue in 1971 the most popular Tarot deck in America was the classic Rider-Waite version, designed by Arthur Edward Waite and rendered by Pamela Colman Smith, both members of the Order of the Golden Dawn. The ex-Golden Dawn affiliate Aleister Crowley had created his own Tarot, with illustrations by Frieda Harris, which was another steady seller when it was made available for retail in 1969. These were followed by Native American, Erotic, Egyptian, and Mayan Tarot decks. A number of instructional Tarot books were available. Tarot cards became some of the most familiar occult accessories in the seventies. “Currently in America there is a phenomenal interest in Tarot fortune-telling cards,” asserted Stuart Kaplan in the pamphlet that accompanied the Rider-Waite deck. “Tarot cards are currently sought by college students and teenagers, housewives, businessmen, professional people—indeed, persons from all walks of life . . . . Teenagers revel in Tarot parties. Adults attend Tarot luncheons, charitable benefits and even Tarot picnics at which card readings are performed.” The complex patterns of arranging and displaying them, and the art of explaining what the myriad of arrangements and displays might say were often beyond the amateur Tarot reader. Instead it was the sheer visual beauty of the designs, and their evocation of another world—a separate reality where Death, the Devil, the Lovers, the Hanged Man, and the Last Judgment were elemental descriptors of human action, that held the imaginations of Tarot users. One’s life seemed more profound if it could be explained in a language of Kings, Queens, Knights, Pages, and ravaged castles, nude figures and robed angels. Tarot cards were somewhat controversial in their heydays of the sixties and seventies, and so were other assorted occult interests or psychotherapeutic methods derived from drug-inspired mysticism. They were on the social fringes, but not over the legal limits. 
• From Feminism & the Shaping of Tarot, Morgan Vonder Haar, The Forum, 2023: Spirituality is considered to be a movement rather than a set belief system. In regard to religious feminism, spirituality is concerned with empowerment, nature, a revisionary view of the world, and an emphasis on female images of the divine. This essay will argue that tarot allowed women during Second Wave Feminism to reclaim spiritual separatism and directly react against masculine archetypes and expectations from traditional occult scholarship. Instead of creating inclusive tarot decks in regard to gender, race and sexuality, many feminist activists worked to obtain spiritual separatism to protect their journey to enlightenment and women’s religious history outside Abrahamic religions. This was in reaction to “the propaganda of misogynistic texts” of occult scholarship, which “resulted in the removal of female leadership and power by portraying the female body as contaminating and evil. The Second Wave worked to reclaim the female image and move away from the civilized obedience expected of women. A surge in tarot and occultism rose in popularity during the 1960s and 1970s, which was shaped by social and cultural changes including the human potential movement, the feminist movement, the rise of ecological awareness, and the turn to nonwestern religions. A growth in spiritual expansion was met by eager young people, creating New Age and Neopagan religious movements directly rooted in Victorian occultism as seen within the Golden Dawn. Tarot and spirituality were reshaped through feminist critiques of traditional history, reviving goddess-worshiping matriarchies to explore their divine. These counter-cultural religious movements set the framework through which to view this wave of tarot, moving occultism under the umbrella of divine femininity, ruled by ancient goddesses and practiced by feminists and others outcast by traditional society. The call to celebrate and worship goddesses was at the core of feminist spirituality.
• From The Inkblot Tarot, Kapro Scious, TST TV, 2022: It’s 2008: I was divorced, I was a single parent, and the army discharged me for hardship so I was available to raise my children, I met a woman and married her and we were very active in the pagan community, and I was in a hurry to learn divination. Fun fact: my mother was a tarot card reader, and I used to read tarot for the psychic friends network. I went to a bookstore and I was surprised that there were like three shelves on Tarot, and soon I’m in the aisle with these books stacked everywhere and people are scowling at me trying to get by. I’m that guy and I accept your judgment. While all these books share overlapping similarities, they’re interpretations of what that card means when you pull it are all over the place. How was I supposed to know which one is the right one? I’m looking for something easy, this was too complicated, I wondered if I should study something like runes because why is this so complicated? Every new book is a copy of a copy, it’s like apostolic succession. If every version is just that person’s version, well I could do that, and nobody could tell me I was wrong. So I get a fancy journal and pen and get my Tarot cards and they just sat there for a day or two. And I hear this little voice like why are you scared of these cards, they’re just paper with ink on them. I’ve got a small window of time. I set a card up and get my journal, and my hands are shaking but why? I’m staring at this card and I just lose it, I start ugly crying. I start writing and I end up writing nine pages, and when I’m done I slam the book shut and throw the pen. But I felt a little better. Is this what catharsis means? I remember that deep breath and how much lighter I felt. When you have traumatic stress symptoms you spend all day trying not to think about it but you have intrusive thoughts, and then at the end of the day you have nightmares and anxiety. The one thing that helps is to express it. That experience gave me hope. Can I do that again? Because there’s more cards there.