The early Tarot as a flexible multi-game system

Al Craig

I have decided to re-instate an updated version of this post to tidy this thread.

[size=+1]The early Tarot as an adaptable card-playing system[/size]

Introduction

The earliest European packs of playing cards appear to have had 52 cards just like modern packs. Within a few decades of their first introduction the Tarot appeared with it's 56 suit cards and 22 special cards.

56 suit cards

Most early packs of cards had Kings, two types of Knaves but no Queens. Others had Queens in place of the Kings, perhaps to cater for the tastes of women players. The original intention with the Tarot may have to play with either Kings or Queens, but not both, thus explaining the departure from the 52 card standard.

22 special cards

In modern packs these cards form a single sequence. But they can be shown to fall into groups with separate themes. Much sense can be made of their unusual number by recognising the first two cards

Code:
The Fool  The Magician

as a separate group with a gaming theme. The Magician is a character that could be seen to win a card trick whereas the Fool would lose it. This reflects their use in the modern game which, together with their high point score there, might suggest they were combined with the suits cards to play a particular game. Although not related to modern Jokers, that term will be used as a convenient label here.

The remaining twenty cards can be made into a tidy 5x4 formation of themes.

Code:
 Afterlife:  Death        The Devil    Judgement    The World
 Celestial:  The Tower    The Star     The Moon     The Sun
Allegories:  The Chariot  The Hermit   Fortune      The Hanged Man
   Virtues:  The Lovers   Justice      Fortitude    Temperance
 Overlords:  The Papess   The Empress  The Emperor  The Pope

These were likely a set of trumps to be used in the same way as they are in the modern game. All that remains is to show that their imagery was selected to suggest to the players the sequence of a set of trumps.

At this point the Tarot could be explained as a pack of playing cards, extended to play additional games, with this makeup:

Code:
52 suit cards, 4 Queens, 2 Jokers, 20 trumps

Too many trumps?

Twenty trumps seems too many to be used with a deck that can have no more than fourteen cards per suit. A better choice might have been to select only twelve trumps and remove sufficient suit cards to create a balanced 5x12 deck. Alternatively, by including the two Jokers, a 5x14 structure could have been achieved.

Also, there appears to be no overall scheme that links all five themes of the trumps. However, three of the themes: the Overlords, the Virtues and the Celestials; could be seen as a unified model of Men, their Ideals and the Universe. This makes them suitable to represent the heirarchy of the trumps and to extend the heirarchy of the suits as follows:

Code:
The Tower    The Star     The Moon     The Sun
The Lovers   Justice      Fortitude    Temperance
The Papess   The Empress  The Emperor  The Pope

  King         King         King         King
  Queen        Queen        Queen        Queen
    "            "            "            "
    "            "            "            "

The twelve trumps form a linear sequence in order from left to right and bottom to top.

The subjects of the remaining eight cards don't seem to be suitable for representing a trump sequence.

It's not clear that the Allegories all have allegorical meanings but if they do they could be seen to have a gaming theme with a triumph, a wheel of fortune, Father Time and a punishment for a debtor. Perhaps they should be read as a warning:

"TRUMPS and LADY LUCK, in TIME, cause RUIN"

The cards of the Afterlife theme form a temporal sequence which does not fit with the heirarchy of the twelve trumps above. It's not even a straight sequence:

Code:
                       HEAVEN
DEATH - RESURRECTION -
                       HELL

Perhaps all twenty cards were available as trumps but players were expected to choose only three rows of them, and that's why they were organised in fours. The themes may have become disjointed as a result of bringing together ideas from different packs.

Fortune-telling?

A more imaginative but speculative idea is to see the Allegories and the Afterlife themes as a single group. The depiction of an old man on The Hermit card might suggest a link to create a representation of the stages of a person's life and afterlife:

Code:
             FAME?                                       IMMORTALITY
          The Chariot                                     The World
DESTINY?                  TIME      DEATH   RESURRECTION
Fortune                The Hermit   Death    Judgement
             SHAME?                                       DAMNATION
         The Hanged Man                                   The Devil

This is a forced fit but if the interpretation is correct then it suggests a fortune-telling theme. As the other 70 cards of the Tarot seem sufficient for playing card games, these eight cards may not have been used for those games but were instead an added novelty used for divination, education or playing an unusual game.

Conclusion

Although, with this approach, there are problems in trying to find meanings and uses for all of the special Tarot cards, most of the cards can be seen to have meaning in a card-playing context. This reinforces the view that the Tarot was, in origin, a pack of playing cards with an addition of extra optional cards for playing a range of games. The final breakdown to explain the number of 78 for the Tarot cards is as follows:

Code:
52 suit cards, 4 Queens, 2 Jokers, 12 trumps, 8 others

It seems likely that it was never the original intention to play games with all 78 cards at once. But, once the transition had been made, the trump cards became jumbled in order and their original meanings obscured.

-------------------------

Notes

There is scope to re-arrange cards in the themes. The Tower with it's complex imagery could be an allegory and could be swapped with The Hermit which could be seen as cosmological.

The 12 trumps could be increased to 13 or 14 by the inclusion of the Heaven and Hell cards. This would maintain the model of the World theme but would leave redundent Afterlife cards.
 

Moonbow

Some interesting thoughts here Al Craig, (and welcome to Aeclecic and the History forums btw).

On the continent it is still most popular, I believe, for only the Majors of a Tarot pack to be used for divination, maybe this is a possible explanation as to why that is. It's like a 'card compendium' game, with a choice of uses.
 

Al Craig

Thanks, Moonbow.

I'm sure it's possible to use any cards for divination provided interpretations are put on them beforehand. Although I chose to represent my my ideas in a gaming context, the observation that the Majors may be three separate themes rather than just one might be of interest to card-readers.

On reflection I shouldn't have put so much emphasis on gaming as it's not really appropriate for this forum.
 

Moonbow

I agree that I haven't yet seen anyone else see the Majors in this way, in fact Jean-Claude Flornoy is someone who comes to mind with a lay out in a similar vein, but not in three themes (as you say), in his Journey of the Soul:

http://www.tarot-history.com/Symbolism/pages/structure.html

Meanwhile, I will have a look at the cards laid out in your method and see what else comes to mind.
 

Al Craig

It just so happens that I've already seen that page and that it was one of the ideas that inspired me to put the cards in formation. I couldn't make a wheel out of them that made any sense and I eventually plumped for a split formation.
 

Al Craig

I have deleted this post. It's text has been superseded by the updated text of the original post.
 

Al Craig

I have deleted this post. It's text has been superseded by the updated text of the original post.
 

Bernice

This is a very interesting take on the 78 cards, a 5 x 4 formation of 'themes' for the Majors.

An innovative approach - will mull over it... :)

Bee