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The Origins of Tarot Cards
Say the words “Tarot Cards” to most people and they are likely to associate the origins of Tarot Cards with the occult or strange and magical practices. But did you know that today there’s a Tarot Certification Board of America with seven levels of certification from Apprentice to Grandmaster
It’s now proven that the first Tarot Cards weren’t intended as tools of the occult, but were used as highly decorated playing cards in tarot games dating as far back as 1425 in Italy
As ever, it was the wealthy ruling classes and nobility who had the time and inclination to spend hours at this exclusive pastime of tarot games with the 22 lavishly painted and decorated playing cards making up a highly prized tarot deck
The Visconti Trumps and Game of Triumphs
One game much loved by the Italian nobility in the 1440s was played with three decks of playing cards and a deck of 22 trump cards that were very close to those of our current day tarot deck and was called Triumphs
Like all card decks back then there were cards numbered from 1 to 10 in four suits plus the “court” cards featuring The Page, The Knight, The Queen and The King. And then came the 22 trump cards that bore a resemblance to todays Major Arcana in the tarot deck
These 22 cards were decorated with symbolic pictures of The Pope, The Emperor, Wheel of Fortune, The Devil and The Moon, and these were the trump cards that outranked the court cards and all other cards
Triumphs was very much like todays game of bridge, and after it become so popular with the southern Italian nobility it spread north through Italy, then into France, Austria and Germany
As far back as 1487 records show that though the meanings of the cards differed from what we know today they were used for divinatory connotation, and in 1572 a poem was written showing a person’s fate based on the Trump card titles
From the 16th century we have evidence that poets were employed to write flattering verses for the ladies of the court using the characteristic attributes of the Trump cards titles as an inspiration
So that’s a short (and not complete) history of the tarot card deck, and next let’s take a look at how to prepare your new deck for it's first tarot reading
Maybe you'd like to
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