Tarot, gypsies, and qabala...

There are quite a few posts on here talking about the tarot coming from egypt as if it is a known fact. It was my understanding that playing cards came from india and the first actual *tarot* decks were commissioned by rich families in italy. Have read that the erroneous egypt "connection" was because gypsies from eastern europe were mistaken as egyptian (gypsy/'gyptian) and this more romantic origin was run with as if it were fact.

Also see people talking as if they are hebrew in origin, and created steeped in kabalistic references. I know that the golden dawn was all about kabalah, but the earliest decks i could find don't seem to be.

I guess my question is, what exactly are these thoughts based on, and can anyone show me any real proof? Decks found in egypt or hebrew lands prior to the 1400’s? References to the divinatory decks in ancient egyptian manuscripts or hebrew scrolls? Or is it all just fanciful nonsense?

You may feel like checking out the Historical Research forums.
There are people there, that can answer your question.
http://www.tarotforum.net/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=78

You might also like to get hold of Cynthia Giles: The Tarot - History, Mystery and Lore, which goes into all these ideas in great and fascinating detail. But no, there are no KNOWN TAROT decks as such before then. The kabalah ideas were laid on the cards later, as far as I know.

But of course no-one knows what was carried down in oral tradition, or by whom...

Tarot's alleged ancient Egyptian origins and its association with kabbalah appear to have originated with 18th- and 19th-century occultists such as Court de Gebelin and Eliphas Levi. In the more fanciful accounts, tarot was created by the Egyptians using what Moses taught them about kabbalah. As Holly Voley once said, “the biggest secret of the Occult is that, over a period of time, a bunch of guys made up a bunch of stuff.”

Later occultists such as Aleister Crowley added Egyptian and kabbalistic symbolism to the traditional tarot but generally acknowledged that its origins were more or less as you have summarized them.

What remains as an area for speculation is the full range of influences upon the Renaissance creator of the tarot trumps. Robert Place has theorized that neo-Platonic ideas embedded in the symbolism may have inspired thoughts of Egypt, though they point to Hellenistic Alexandria, not the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

The flow of water in a system of pipes and valves is analogous to the flow of an electric current in a switching circuit, and the understanding of one can help with understanding the other. Likewise, the structure of a Tarot deck and the Qabalistic Tree of Life are analogous. This was a discovery; it was not the imposition of one structure onto another. However, just as mathematicians tend to identify quaternions as a non-abelian group of order eight because of their similar structure, some occultists identify the Tree of Life with Tarot. It is really a metaphorical identification, not literal. No one is twisting anyone's arm to learn (or even accept) the Qabalistic attributions of Tarot cards. In turn, it is not at all necessary to imply that esotericists are arbitrarily attaching Qabalistic meanings to Tarot. Although it is fashionable to trivialize the Qabalistic theory of Tarot, this has the appearance of a defensive posture, whether or not this is an accurate assessment. In any case it is most emphatically not a matter of chicken versus egg priority. There is probably no historical connection between Tarot and Qabalah, just the discovery of parallel structures in each of the two conceptual systems.

I agree with LRichard. At least, I would if I could understand his post! But yes, the roots of Tarot and Qabalah are not connected before Papus and Ettiella, but that does not mean it doesn't make sense. It actually does work together, very well in fact. However, the Waite deck could be thought of as a very different animal than the original Marseilles decks. Qabalah is inherent in it, as the images and structure quite clearly on based on Qabalah, to the point where it is doubtful if it is "pure" Tarot or a bastardized version of it, a Qabalistic teaching tool. Same goes, of course, for the Thoth.

As to the Egyptian/Gypsy connection, that doesn't hold water, and that is the prevailing attitude of this forum, as far as I have seen.

Egyptian culture and mythology has been found to be a useful resource in connection with the understanding of the message of Tarot, just as Joseph Campbell, C. S. Lewis, and others, clarified the message of Christianity by finding its origins in the myth of the dying and rising god. Whether Christianity was consciously created from myth (which I tend to think was indeed the case), it is certainly clarified by its mythological parallels.

However, Tarot did not come from Egypt. The association of water with electricity does not mean that water is derived from electricity or vice-versa (although there is a more-or-less obscure connection between them involving the ionization of water, just as there may a spooky connection between Tarot and Egypt via the collective unconscious).

closrapexa said:

I agree with LRichard. At least, I would if I could understand his post!......

Click to expand...

It has been a long, hard day, so I'm probably incoherent. My life is dedicated to a certain purpose, and opportunities to fulfill that purpose have suddenly exploded all over the place. I guess this means that I'm on the right track, but I don't know if I'm ready for all this just yet. Fortunately there are rewards which compensate for the storm and stress.

I'm not especially interested in the historical origins of Tarot. Its significance for today does not depend on any sort of exotic connection with the harems of a Turkish prince, however interesting they may be . As Closrapexa suggested, Tarot was effectively recreated when the Qabalistic and mythological parallels were discovered. The most prominent fruits of this re-creation today are the Waite and the Crowley decks. However, the fundamental parallels already existed in the Marseille and other historical decks, which, in my opinion, still provide a valid alternative to the more modern designs, in spite of the efforts of certain Marseille purists to dissociate their pet deck from attempts to find a deeper meaning therein.

As far as I'm concerned, A. E. Waite, a mostly self-educated scholar, in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, dealt the death blow to the Egyptian/Gypsy origin theory, and this was in the early 20th century.

But ... but ... but the idea is such .... fun! - besides ... I WANT it to be true

(Especially since I have a Gypsy grandmother, a Jewish great grandmother, I am fascinated with ancient Egypt and read tarot virtually all my life.

Damn you factual reality and research :shakes his fist at the nearest University:

The cards could not pre-exist the technology for making them...like cardboard...and printing...they just couldn't...

But...do we believe the tarot is a deck of cards?

That's like saying we believe God is the bible...

The tarot pre-existed the cards by many hundreds of years....as symbols and emerging archetypes, ideas and patterns in our collective conciousness...as such, they may well go back to india, egypt, atlantis, the star people...who knows?

But this is the way I see it, and them are the facts, as far as I believe them. I don't believe the tarot is a buncha cards, and I don't believe God is the bible.

Tarot is living and breathing....like art, like beauty.

It's more than a deck of cards...it's in US. And we predate the 1400's.

The patterns that the cards attest to go back much further...and so do qabalah, alchemy, astrology, etc....

At that level, the pattern level, the ideas belong to us collectively...not to the Hebrews or the Celts or the Aryans or the Egyptians...they belong to all of us. We see patterns of things emerge in Egypt and in South America at the same time...the "hundredth monkey" is all it takes to make things go "pop" and out they come as new technologies.

Tarot, as a deck of cards...representing the ideas...came when the technology was available...yes, that's true....

Even in the little bible story, light came several days before the sun, moon and stars. Tarot came before the cards.

Don't believe everything the historians claim. They are "right" but they are incorrect.

...show me ONE thing...ONE thing that humankind has created that didn't pre-exist in the imagination. Just one...little...thing. This is the proof I challenge the historians with...they say we can't prove the cards didn't exist before the 1400's. Ok, but can they prove that it's symbols didn't? They most certainly did...we know that. They know that. They are convinced that tarot is cardboard. How cheap. How literal. How...fundamentalist.

This is a common belief many taroists seem to stand on, together: we create reality, and that the reality we create exists first, in the mind, and it's real...when it's there in the imagination.... BEFORE the physical manifestation. Tarot pre-existed the cards.

Maybe, just maybe this mysterious land of vision and mystic knowledge is our "Egypt". Better get your earring, if 'gypsies are from Egypt, cause we are ALL from that place...

Cards didn't exist before the technology to produce them. Tarot's not cards. The cards represent the Tarot...that's why there are so many different styles and versions of them.