What is a Tarot Card?

The word tarot means wheel of life. It is a representation or an image of the universe.

A tarot is like ordinary playing cards but consists of usually 72 cards. These include 22 cards that represent human virtues and vices, death and fortune and so on. Tarot cards are used by tarot readers to predict the future of their clients.

Reading tarot cards is both an art and a science. It is an art because like every other art form, it requires understanding and constant practice which, in course of time, develops the intuition. It is also a science because, like every other subject of science, its procedure is duplicable and produces precise and reliable results.

Tarot cards are used primarily for analyzing the personality of the subject and  forecast his future. Tarot cards have been used for thousands of years. Egyptians and gypsies used tarot cards for divinatory and magical purposes.

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Tarot the Book of Life

Tarot [pronounced Tay-roh] is believed by some, to be the Ancient Egyptians “Book of Life”, consisting of 78 separate tablets of stone. These tablets have two sections, known as Major and Minor Arcana. Arcana is Latin for "Secrets". There are twenty-two cards in the Major Arcana, and is a psychic guide of man’s journey through life. When he leaver his creator and takes his first breath to become a mortal being until he ultimately returns to his creator as a wiser soul after completing his life experiences. The Minor Arcana consists of fifty-six cards, which are divided into four suits. It guides man though the elements of air, earth, fire and water which we all need to exist on this planet and this being who we are Spiritually, emotionally, mentally and Physically. In Tarot it is known as Suits. These suits consist of Wands the Spirit, Cups the emotions, swords the mental and pentacles the physical. It guides man through his journey and lessons on life.

Modern Tarot Cards

Tarot has been subjected to many different styles over the centuries and even today they are many different packs available. Generally they are known by the name of the person who researched and designed the individual packs. For example, the Ryder Waite packs were designed by Arthur Edward Waite, the artwork was by Pamela Coleman Smith and was published by Ryder, others may be known by the country in which they originated such as the Swiss, French, and Spanish packs. The choices are many. The general rule in picking a pack of Tarot is up to the individual. Some say that you should not buy a pack of cards for yourself, but I have found over the years, that again, it is the individual choice of the person wanting to know more about this fascination form of divination. Its method stemmed back to the times when tarot was not ready available to the individual person readily.

Egyptian Stone Tablets

One of the legends handed down through time talks about stone tablets in Egypt, perhaps brought there during the last day of Atlantis. There were considered by the Egyptians to be one of their most sacred items. With the decay of Egyptian culture, the tablets, the Book of Life, were transferred for safekeeping to the great library of Alexandria. Centuries later when the library was burnt down the tablets of stones were rescued and placed in the hands of the nomadic Gypsies to prevent the stone tablets falling into the hands of pagans. However, these stones were cumbersome for the nomadic tribe to carry, and the Gypsies carefully reproduced each stone on small sheets of metal, more that likely to be made of silver and gold and them, just as carefully, buried or destroyed the original stones. The gypsies knew and understood the messages on the stones and became known for their ability to Read the book to others, thus foretelling the future. It is not difficult to see how through mispronunciation, that the term ”Fortune Telling” evolved.

The earlier Tarot Cards were the exclusive possession of nobility who commissioned an artist to paint reproductions. The individual artists were careful to maintain the original colours and symbology, yet each pack was the individual artist conception and interpretation. Sometimes, they may have used the faces of the people at court to portray the images on the cards they were painting for Novelty. The cost of painting a pack of cards was excessive, both because of the time involved and because they were painted on sheets of precious metal.

The earliest known Tarot cards date back to the 1390s. With the invention of cardboard and later block printing, the cards found wider distribution. To help further reduce the cost, and because of a fashionable game of that time Tarroc (which used the Minor Arcana and the Fool from the Major Arcana), the other twenty-one cards where dropped from the deck. Even more economical decks were produced when the queen was dropped from the decks. After the Inquisition the queens where restored to the decks and the knights and pages were combined to form our modern deck of cards.