A Dominican priest in a ferocious sermon against the horrors of the devil’s tool made one of the earliest references to tarot successes and perhaps the first reference to tarot as the devil’s image book about the year 14501470. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, the tarot was still referred to as a social blight, but outside of Bologna, there is no evidence that the cards were ever utilized for anything other than games. []] 2-0’>[]]-2’> According to philosopher and tarot historian Michael Dummett, “nobody started using the tarot pack for cartomancy until the 1780s, when the practice of fortune-telling with conventional playing cards had been well established for at least two decades.”
In early modern Europe, there was a strong belief in the occult properties of playing cards, which was spread by notable Protestant Christian clerics and Freemasons. This concept is closely related to the belief in the divinatory meaning of the cards. Court de Gbelin was one of them (see below).
The tarot has been utilized in hermeneutic, magical, mystical, semiotic, and psychiatric practices since its use as a divination tool in 18th-century France. It was used by Romani people to tell fortunes, as a psychological tool for archetypal analysis, as a means of accessing “absolute knowledge in the unconscious,” and even as a means of facilitating the individuation process according to Jungian psychology.
In This Article...
When did people first utilize tarot cards for divination?
An anonymous book from circa 1750 that lists the basic divinatory interpretations for the cards in the Tarocco Bolognese is the first source of information about a tarot deck used for cartomancy. Antoine Court and Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla), employing the Tarot of Marseilles, were the first to popularize esoteric tarot in Paris in the 1780s. Around 1900, French tarot readers switched from the Marseilles to the Tarot Nouveau, which led to the Marseilles pattern being primarily utilized by cartomancers today.
How do tarot cards function spiritually?
According to her, “Tarot cards do not predict the future; rather, tarot is a tool for spiritual guidance and allows the reader to connect to his or her inner wisdom.” “Tarot readings assist a person in learning the information required to make sense of a specific circumstance. As readings provide a person with insight into past, present, and future occurrences based on their current path at the time of the reading, decks are best utilized as a tool of inner wisdom and guidance. The cards don’t always predict what will happen; rather, they help a person analyze a situation and choose the best course of action based on what is already known and what the cards indicate.”
What is the name for card divination?
Using a deck of cards, cartomancy is a form of divination or fortune-telling. Soon after playing cards were originally introduced to Europe in the 14th century, various forms of cartomancy started to emerge. Cartomancers, card readers, or just readers are common names for people who practice cartomancy.
In the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, the most common method of giving fortune-telling card readings was cartomancy using regular playing cards. Jokers and even the blank card that may be found in many packed decks are frequently added to the conventional 52-card deck. Although the 52-card deck can also be used, the 32-card piquet stripped deck is more frequently used in cartomantic readings in France. (A 52-card deck can be converted into a piquet deck by eliminating all of the 2s through 6s. The remaining cards are all 7s through 10s, face cards, and aces.)
Tarot card reading is typically the most prevalent type of cartomancy in English-speaking nations. In these places, tarot cards are virtually always employed for this reason.
What kind of religion are tarot cards?
Tarot cards are frequently cited as a component of New Age thought and practice along with astrology, aspects of Buddhism, paganism, and First Nations teachings in the eclectic scholarly approach to the New Age.
What use did tarot originally serve?
Things become a little mystical around Halloween, when horror movies are playing nonstop on TV and your holiday-loving neighbors’ yards are decorated with grotesque decorations. We decided to explore the background of tarot cards in honor of one of the most enchanted seasons of the year.
Tarot cards were originally just another card game, one that was a lot like modern bridge, despite the fact that we now link them with the occult. Like other decks, the earliest known tarot cards appeared in Europe in the fifteenth century, with the wealthiest households in Italy purchasing the most well-liked sets. It cost a lot of money to commission what was practically dozens of tiny paintings because there was no printing press and only hand-painted cards were available.
These early tarot cards, known as tarocchi in Italian, included suits, trump cards, and even pips, just like any other deck.
While others experimented, the mainstream use of tarot cards for divination didn’t begin until Frenchman Jean-Baptise Alliette produced the first comprehensive book on tarot card reading in the late 1700s. He published his own deck along with a user’s manual for the cards under the pseudonym Etteilla. He incorporated ideas about astronomy and the four elements to give each card a purpose. He asserted that he had taken extensive inspiration from the Book of Thoth, a work purportedly penned by Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom.
He incorporated ideas about astronomy and the four elements to give each card a purpose.
Etteilla was the first to allocate the cards to a certain sequence and spread, including a front-to-back method that is still in use today. He became the first person to practice tarot professionally after his writings gained popularity and he published a revised edition of his manual in 1791.
The following significant update to tarot cards happened in 1909. You’ve probably seen the pictures for the Rider-Waite deck, created by publisher William Rider and tarot reader A. E. Waite. The Rider-Waite deck, like Etteilla, came with a written manual explaining how to interpret the cards and what each one meant. When the cards in this deck were arranged together, the intricate scenes presented a narrative. The Rider-Waite Deck was updated and reprinted in the 1970s, along with a new instruction manual by Stephen Kaplan, which led to the most recent tarot card renaissance.
Questions you don’t really want answered
Even though it might seem apparent, it’s advisable to refrain from asking the tarot cards questions that you aren’t prepared to hear the answers to. That’s because answers to these questions can reveal information you’re just not quite ready to hear.
“Tarot can definitely come off as offensive if you’re not willing to hear the truth or consider an opposing point of view. Tarot reading Nicole Fortunaso
According to tarot reader and life coach Nicole Fortunaso, “tarot may truly come out as offensive if you are not willing to hear the truth of the problem or look at an alternate viewpoint.” She advises considering why you’re responding the way you are in order to reflect on the best way to address the underlying cause if you ask the question and are unsatisfied with the response.
What society are tarot cards a part of?
The first tarot decks were created in Italy in the 1430s by adding a fifth suit of 21 specially designed cards called trionfi (“triumphs”) and an odd card called il matto to an already existing four-suited pack (“the fool).
Can I read tarot cards on my own?
It’s normal to be a little clumsy when you first start practicing the tarot. Tarot study is similar to learning a new languageit takes time to become proficient. But what happens if you no longer require the booklet and have intimate familiarity with the deck? Are you able to read yourself? No, except in a few rare cases. Simply put, it’s a horrible idea.
You see, the majority of us turn to astrology or tarot when we’re looking for clarity amid a period of ambiguity. Tarot card interpretation is subject to our consciousness, as opposed to astrology, which is extraordinarily technical. Working with your personal interpretation of the cards, you are not constrained by short- and long-term cycles like the planets’ orbits. It might be tricky to go beyond your current circumstances while utilizing the tarot to better understand a trying scenario. Even if all the cards are spread out in front of you, putting them together requires such a broad perspective that it is all but impossible to fully understand the meaning of each card. Basically, any biases you already have will always be reflected in your tarot reading!

