Of course history and research is not conducted like this. It need more than one writing and one person's work - other research, information, records, artifacts, other authors.
I agree, as per my Herodotus example. He was a very important historian, but notoriously unreliable. No credible historian today would base themselves completely on him.
So, okay then, what is the difference between those two ?
I actually think there is a difference, but it requires a certain amount of mental gymnastics. We seem to agree that the merging of Tarot and Kabbalah was a "discovery," in essence, parallels were found and exploited. This would seem to suggest that the original makers of Tarot were at least indirectly influenced by any number of Hermetic ideas. They may even have been Masons. That theory would, indeed, link Tarot through the "golden chain" back to antiquity.
However, that account, while compelling, is fiction and does not fit the historical narrative. Tarot decks did not always have 22 Trumps nor four Courts, either. The Minors, too, went through many permutations until they more or less stabilized to what we recognize as Tarot today. The golden chain, in this case, while present, is due to arbitrary chains of events. In certain decks the allmighty archetypes of Tarot we all venerate are replaced by others, and those are just as inherent to those decks as the Majors we know are to our own heavily structured decks. In a different timeline, Tarot could have stabilized at 23 or 26 or 80 Trumps, and would never have been discovered by occultists.
So, still, while I am aware of the difference, I still think that in this specific question, there is none, because you can't separate fancy from fact. However, it is still possible to put Tarot history aside, for occult purposes.
Earlier in this thread I mentioned a Crowley quote where he speaks of chess. The rules of chess are simple, its gameplay archaic. But it is because of that, that it is so good and works so well that it stopped evolving centuries ago, that sophisticated games are possible. Its inventors would not have to be chess masters in order to invent it, they did "better than they knew." So did the makers of Tarot.
