**The Magical Story of Tarot Cards — Tarot History**
Tarot cards are a series of symbols that hold the primordial energies of existence and convey them to humanity on a subtle plane through divination, namely, the reading of signs.
China is the land of origin of the card and a likely place of invention of playing cards. The scarcity of sources and the difficulty of interpreting the language still leave many obscure aspects in the history of the early Chinese cards.
We know that the cards with suits corresponding to coins are inspired by ancient local currency, as demonstrated by the suits of the game: Jian (or Qian) ‘coins, money’, Tiao or ‘sticks, long objects’, and Wan ‘myriads, 10,000, tens of thousands’.
The suits of Chinese cards may have become, in the West, the traditional suits of common playing cards: Strings are similar to canes, later split into Swords and Clubs; Circles or Balls, on the other hand, inspire the Coins; while the Tens of Thousands become Cups, possibly due to a misinterpretation of the related ideograms.
The symbol of the Italian Denari is almost identical to that of Chinese Cash, and the Clubs that appeared in Italy in the 16th century, also called Columns, bear a great resemblance to ku p’ai cards, in which the image of Swords can also be interpreted.
**As for the Cups, it is probable that the abbreviated Chinese hieroglyph for wan, seen from a Western perspective (i.e., from right to left, rather than from left to right as in China), and upside down, can take the form of a cup. It is hypothesized that the figures depicted on the cards may have been inspired by chess, connecting this connection to an ancient Indian game that featured pieces representing real and military figures. The ancient Indian board game Ashtapada (renamed Chaturanga, or “the game of the four kings,” in the 5th century AD) is very similar to the four suits of playing cards.**
**Chaturanga, which later became Persian Shatranj, is considered one of the possible origins of round Indian cards.**
**The Ganjifa deck is also composed of twelve subjects, with values ranging from non-picture cards (from 1 to 10) to two figures: a minister (or counselor) and a king.**
- *Some traditions also report a connection between Tarot cards and the Romani world.**
In attempting an etymological explanation of the term ‘Tarocco,’ a connection was found between the word ‘Taro,’ ‘Tarot,’ and the term ‘Tantra,’ an Indian mystical technique aimed at establishing contact with the divinity residing in every person to find harmony with all of creation.
**Sources appropriated a sacred Indian game, which could be related to the images that color the cards of the Major Arcana of Tarot cards.**
Sources testify to the presence of nomadic tribes in Crete, Corfu, and the Balkans before 1350, while in the first half of the 15th century, they are documented in northern Germany (near Hamburg), and in Rome (1422), Barcelona, and Paris (1427).
Other sources claim that Tarot cards are a representation on paper of Egyptian ideograms, reproduced in the ancient text of pharaonic Egypt known as the Book of Thoth.
**This unproven hypothesis was also put forward by Court Gebelin (Le Mond Primitif analyzed and compared with the modern world, 1781).**
According to the scholar, the symbols on the Tarot cards would have been known to nomads who, in ancient times, migrated from the banks of the Nile to European countries. This migration would have occurred around the 15th century, and in this sense, there are historical records of migrations coming from both India and North Africa during that period. According to Court de Gebelin, the Tarot cards would have been the key to unlocking the seals of hieroglyphic writing.
**In this historical context, the work of Jean-Baptiste Alliette is embedded, who acquired the name that distinguishes him in the history of Tarot cards: Etteilla, which is his surname read in reverse. In the 18th century, he published his book Etteilla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes, the first text that contained all the explanations of the cards and the rules for a correct reading.**
- *The symbols contained in the iconography of some Tarot cards are also found in the prophecies of Ezekiel and Saint John.**
It has also been suggested that Tarot cards, in an archaic sense, were medals from which talismans were later made. In fact, the clavicles, or small keys of Solomon, are thirty-six talismans that bear sixty-two seals similar to the hieroglyphic figures of Tarot cards.
**These seals are also part of the Book of the Thirty-Two Paths, and their explanation can be found in the text attributed to Abraham, namely, the Sepher Yetzirah.**
**This leads to a current of thought that sees Tarot cards as a representation of the wisdom of Jewish Kabbalah.**
These readers see in the term “tarocchi” an obvious connection with “rota,” meaning “wheel,” from which “tarot” and “Torah” derive.
Taking a broader look at the additional hypotheses related to the origin of the Tarot card deck, some believe that their origin predates Egyptian culture and is connected to some now-extinct or perhaps forgotten people, a mythical or real Atlantis, or the Korean deck Htou-Tjyen (composed of 80 cards).
**An hypothesis by Paul Foster Case (The Tarots, a Key to the Wisdom of the Ages) claims that Tarot cards were born in 1200 in Fez, Morocco.**
Other sources link the introduction of playing cards to the Crusades.
**In this regard, we recall that the occultist Oswald Wirth, in his magnum opus on the world of Tarot cards, placed the birth of playing cards and Tarot in Bologna, by the hand of Francesco Fibbia Castracani (see image).**
**But no matter how many books have been written on the subject, even today, nearly five centuries after its first historically documented appearance, this game remains an unsolved mystery.**
We know for certain that Tarot cards found their greatest popularity in Europe between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, including in the noble courts of northern Italy.
**Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, appears as a key figure in the world of triumphs. To celebrate the future birth of a son, which he never believed he would have, he commissioned one of the most important Italian Tarot decks (1424), for which sixteen deities from the Greek pantheon were chosen. The following year, the heir was born, but instead of being a boy, as he hoped, it was a girl, Bianca Maria Visconti. This later modified the symbolism of individual cards.**
History also remembers that before 1420, there was already some interest in playing cards in Italy. From 1420 to 1429, the first laws regulating playing cards in the region of Milan and around Florence appeared. In 1422, the first document attesting to this game at the Ferrara court appeared, which later became one of the most important historical sources regarding the birth of Tarot cards in Italy.
The following year, Bernardino da Siena preached against the use of Tarot cards, and from his words, it can be inferred that the structure of the deck was 4x14 numbered cards.
The sources that lead to the consideration of regional Tarot cards, such as the Piedmontese Tarot, are fundamental. There are crucial testimonies that confirm the presence of Tarot card games among the Savoy from 1401 to 1761, the year of the birth of the Royal Fabric of Turin, and then until the Unification of Italy (1861).
Another important chapter concerns the city of Bologna. To delve into this topic, the research conducted by Sir Michael Dummett, Giordano Berti, and Andrea Vitali is illuminating. These scholars allow us to reconstruct a historical picture of great interest.
Source: (ITA) http://www.museodeitarocchi.net/storia.html
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