An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Tarot Cards

These mysterious cards are today popular with occultists of many schools for the purpose of divination. They are also regarded as containing mystical and magical secrets, for those who can discern them. However, before the Tarot reached its present-day level of general interest, it was preserved among the gypsies, and also among their frequent companions in hardship and misfortune, the witches.

Grillot de Givry, in his Pictorial Anthology of Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy (University Books, New York, 1958), bears witness to the fact that, in France at any rate, and probably elsewhere on the Continent, the Tarot cards were part of the magical armoury of the village witch. Before the days of fashionable Society clairvoyants, ladies of rank and wealth who wanted their fortunes told would go secretly to consult the wise woman in her tumbledown cottage. Later, her place was taken by such elegant practitioners as Mademoiselle Le Normand and Julia Orsini. The former lady is famous for the consultations she gave to Napoleon and Josephine by means of the divining cards.

When the Tarots arrived in England is not known, but there are records to prove that cards were imported here from Europe before 1463.

As for the Gypsies, they had for so long borne the Tarot pack with them in their wanderings that many people believed the Tarot to be of gypsy origin. Hence it was sometimes called ’The Tarot of the Bohemians’. Others have cast doubt on this, saying that the cards were known in Europe before the gypsies arrived here from the East. The generally accepted date for the gypsies’ first appearance in Europe is 1417; and Tarot Cards were known before then. However, some experts on gypsy lore would dispute this date also, saying that gypsies were in Europe before that time; so the enigma remains. No one really knows the origin of the Tarot.

The gypsies themselves claim to see in some of the pictures on the cards, the sad history of their wanderings and persecutions. They derive originally from India, and their language, Romany, has links with the Hindu tongue. Now, it is certainly true that playing cards, and very elaborate and beautiful ones, are known in India and the East generally, and in Tibet. In the latter country, before it came under Chinese Communist rule, cards were produced which were not only intended for gaming, but bore pictures associated with the Tibetan religion. Even so, although the Tarot cards can be used to play games, and were so used sometimes in olden days, their significance is obviously deeper than this.

Records exist of artists being paid to execute beautiful hand-painted Tarot packs for the diversion of kings and the nobility; and a few examples of such cards remain in museums. Also, we find very crude and quaint-looking old packs, produced in the early days of printing, for sale among the poorer classes. These cards, printed from wood blocks, often have a good deal of charm. In order to keep them flat, such old-fashioned packs of cards were kept in a little miniature press, when not in use.

The Tarot cards are the ancestors of our playing cards. Like them, the Tarots have four suits; but they also have a fifth suit the Trumps, or Major Arcana, and it is these latter which are the cards bearing the mystic pictures. There are twenty-two of the Major Arcana; and each of the four suits has fourteen cards, namely the ace to ten, and a mounted figure, the Knight, in addition to the usual court cards of King, Queen and Knave. Thus the Tarot pack consists of seventy-eight cards. This is the usual number; though there are found examples of augmented Tarots, like the Minchiate of Florence, which has 97 cards; and also of shortened Tarots, such as the Tarot of Bologna, which has only sixty-two cards.

Our pack of playing cards has discarded all the Trumps except one, The Fool, which has survived as the Joker. Also, it has lost the four Knights from among the court cards; and it has made the cards double-headed, so that they look the same either way up, for convenience in playing games. The Tarot cards, and many of the old playing-cards, are not like this, but are actual little pictures.

The playing-card suit symbols also, have been simplified from the grander emblems of the Tarot. The four suits of the Tarot cards are Wands, Cups, Swords, and Coins or Pentacles (the latter in this sense meaning a round disc with a magical sigil upon it).

The gypsies have their own names for the four suits. They call them Pal (the Wand), Pohara (the Cup), Spathi (the Sword), and Rup (the Coin). Pal could be from the same Sanskrit origin as ’phallus’. Pohara is reminiscent of the Celtic pair and the English Gypsy pirry, both meaning a cauldron. Spathi is possibly from the same root as espada (Spanish) and epée (French), meaning a sword. Rup is like English gypsy ruppeny, meaning silver, and, of course, the Hindu rupee.

What is particularly significant about these suit symbols is that they are the four Elemental Weapons or tools of magic. The Wand, the Cup, the Sword and the Pentacle, or their equivalents, lie upon the altar of every practising magician. Their usual elemental attributions are fire for the Wand, water for the Cup, air for the Sword, and earth for the Pentacle.

Moreover, a correspondence may be found between these four Tarot emblems and the Four Treasures of the Tuatha De Danann, the divine race of the Gaels, who arrived in ancient Eire untold centuries ago, as Celtic legend tells us. This race of gods had dwelt in four mystic cities, Findias, Gorias, Murias and Falias; and from each city they had brought a treasure. There was the fiery Spear of Lugh; the Cauldron of the Dagda; the Sword of Nuada; and the Stone of Fal, which became known as the Stone of Destiny, because the ancient Irish kings were crowned upon it. The story goes that this is that very Stone of Destiny which now forms the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey. The whereabouts of the other three treasures is unknown.

In the later Grail romances, the Four Talismans appear again, in another guise of myth. They become the blood-dripping Lance, the Grail Cup itself, and the Sword and Shield bestowed upon the knight who set out in quest of it.

To the student of the Qabalah, they are the four letters of the Divine Name, the Tetragrammaton. The whole Tarot can, in fact, be arranged to form the figure of the Qabalistic Tree of Life, The real Qabalistic attributions of the Tarot cards were long kept a profound secret, in the occult fraternity known as the Order of the Golden Dawn; and it has been only in comparatively recent years that Dr. Francis Israel Regardie has published this information fully and accurately. (The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie. Second Edition, Hazel Hills Corporation, U.S.A., 1969).

Aleister Crowley published a most elaborate volume upon the Tarot, entitled The Book of Thoth (privately printed by the Ordo Templi Orientis, London, 1944). His version, however, is an individual one, many of the old designs of the cards being adapted to suit his own magical ideas.

A popular version of the Tarot pack is that which was drawn by Pamela Coleman Smith to the designs of A. E. Waite. The figures of this Tarot have something of the air of Art Nouveau. Waite was a member of the Golden Dawn, and although sworn to secrecy, he introduced many subtleties into the designs which accord with the attributions given to the cards by that famous magical Order.

Many, however, prefer the older version of the Tarot cards, of which probably the best example is the Tarot de Marseilles. This can still be obtained today.

The numbered series of the Major Arcana or Trumps of the Tarot runs as follows: the Juggler; the Priestess (or Female Pope); the Empress; the Emperor; the Pope; the Lovers; the Chariot: Justice; the Hermit; the Wheel of Fortune; Strength; the Hanged Man; Death; Temperance; the Devil; the Tower; the Star; the Moon; the Sun; Judgment; the World; and the unnumbered card, the Fool.

The pictures and personages they show are strange and enigmatic. Occultists of various schools have written thousands of words in their interpretation; some wise and some otherwise. The Tarot is a book without words. It speaks in the universal language of symbolism. It is equally at home in the gypsy caravan, the witch’s cottage, or the splendidly-appointed private temple of the ceremonial magician. It can be used upon the level of fortune telling, or upon that of the High Mysteries. Some derive its origin from Ancient Egypt; it remains one of the real wonders and secrets of the world.

Witches see in the Tarot a relationship at any rate with their own traditions. Their Horned God is shown (especially in the older versions) upon the card called the Devil. The Goddess of the Moon appears as the Priestess. The Hermit can be interpreted as the Master Witch, passing on his way unknown, carrying the lantern of knowledge. The Wheel of Fortune is also the wheel of the year, equally divided by the Greater and Lesser Sabbats. The Hanged Man can be understood by the witch as he is by the gypsy, as the symbol of suffering and persecution. Nature in perfection, naked and joyous, is pictured upon the card called the World; and so on.

As a means of divination, the Tarot can often be startlingly accurate; on other occasions it may refuse to speak at all. As in all psychic matters, much depends upon the individual gifts of the diviner, and the conditions prevailing at the time.