October 26, 2020 • 35 mins
How did a card game gain a reputation for being connected to mysticism? Tarot's history takes a significant turn in the 18th century, but much of that shift in perception is based on one author's suppositions and theories.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, you've
seen plenty of tarot decks. I'm sure, I sure have.
Most people probably have these days. They're super uniform in
(00:24):
terms of what they contain, although the designs of decks
very greatly. Uh. There are normally four suits, which can
vary particularly regionally, but the ones that you commonly see
in North America are cups, coins, swords, and wands or staves.
Each of those suits has fourteen cards, so the pip
cards that number one to ten and then a King, Queen, Knight,
(00:45):
and Jack. Those suit cards make up what's called the
minor arcana, and then there are another twenty two cards
that make up what's called the major arcanum. And these
are the trump cards, so they include things like the Lovers,
the Sun, the Moon, the hanged Man, and death plus
the fool. Tarot cards show up all over the place
in entertainment, even if you've never seen a deck personally,
(01:06):
we have all seen that very dramatic moment on TV
or in a film when a person draws the death
card and there's that scary music sting. But if that
character knew the history of tarot cards, they probably wouldn't
be too worried about it, even if they just know
how that card is often interpreted today. Right, Yeah, we'll
(01:29):
get to that. Yeah. So that's what we're talking about
today is kind of a brief overview of tarot cards.
And I do want to level set you will not
walk away from this episode going I could do a reading, Um,
that's not this at all. I mentioned that I was
doing this to a friend and they were like, oh,
are you gonna explain? I was like, I would have
to have way, way more knowledge of that one to
(01:51):
do it anyway and to know, um no. But we're
going to talk about how they came to be used
as a divination tool, and a are things, but really
the start is pretty pretty benign and humble. Yep, yep. So,
as Holly just alluded to, if you say the word
tarot today, people usually think of mysticism and the occult,
(02:14):
but really this just started out as a card game.
There was no divination or meditative aspect to these cards use,
and games played with cards are believed to have originated
in China. There are references to games with suited cards
going all the way back to the ninth century in
Chinese texts, and we also know that card games were
(02:36):
played in the mam Look Sultanate of Egypt by the
thirteenth century. Their theories about whether or not cards traveled
from China or whether different cultures were developing these ideas,
but there are examples of these mem Look cards that
feature suits that are very familiar cups, coins, swords, and sticks.
From Egypt, card games traveled into Europe and we see
(02:56):
mentions of them starting in Italy and thirteen seventy Venice,
because of its status as a port city, was probably
the point of entry, and then from there it seems
like cards, which were very easily transported because of their
small size, spread pretty quickly. In thirteen seventy seven, a
game called Lutas Cartarum was invented by a German monk,
(03:18):
and almost as quickly as card games were introduced into Europe,
there was some suspicion about them. There are sermons that
you can find historically and ordinances forbidding card playing and
suggesting that it might lead to bad behavior. In some cases.
These are the things you would here, and even more
modern things about the vices of cards and the dangers
(03:40):
of being a card player. Those all developed right alongside
the spread of the games, so none of that is new.
One Paris decree issued on January stated that working people
could not play tennis, bowl, play dice, play cards, or
play nine pins on a workday had to wait for
a holiday. But while the working man may have been
(04:02):
discouraged from playing cards, the wealthy were not only playing cards,
but they were also commissioning artists to make really beautiful
hand painted decks. In thirty two, Charles Poupar, who managed
the treasury for King Charles the sixth of France, is
said to have commissioned three guilt decks from painter jacquesmin
(04:23):
Green Guneus On behalf of the king. Earliest examples of
cards that look like what we might recognize as taro
or from Italy in the early half of the fifteenth century,
and these were primarily in Venice, Florence, Milan and Urbino.
So these seem to have been gaming decks that were
used in the Italian court and the houses of nobility,
(04:44):
and the reasons that these cards would have been a
pastime for nobles more so than anyone else. Was that
they were really expensive. The cards were all being hand painted. Initially, yeah,
those ones in France that were forbidden for common working
men to play with were like the more mass produced
when one, but the ones that start to look like tarot.
Really we're all very beautiful. Um and it sounds very
(05:05):
much too like a pack of modern playing cards. So again,
there were four suits, each with nu miracle cards, ace
to tend so cups, coins, batons, and swords. Batons you'll
sometimes see again as wands or staves. And then it
had the face cards Jack, Night, Queen, and King. And
in addition to this list, which is really close to
what you're probably very familiar with, there was also a
(05:27):
set of trump cards sometimes called Tarokei, depicting various figures
as well as a fool card. Although Italian decks are
the oldest examples that we have of these cards, there
were other and maybe older kinds of trump cards that
were being developed in Europe as well as early as
the fourteen twenties. A German card game called Carnival featured
(05:50):
these sorts of trump cards, and while there are some
similarities in Carnival and Taro in the game form, including
Carnival also being a trick taking game game. These are
believed to have developed independently. So going back to the
cards in Italy in the fourteen hundreds, the decks included
forty numerical suit cards, sixteen face cards, so those are
(06:12):
the court cards, twenty one trump cards and the fool.
As I said, a total of seventy eight, which is
the number you would have in a deck today. The
trumps were numbered with Roman numerals, and they included a
hierarchy of figures, not the same figures you would see today,
So like the Pope, the Emperor, the Son, and Death
were in there, but not all of the same lineups
(06:33):
that we would normally see in a modern deck. The
inclusion of the fool and this set of trump cards
is what sets these decks apart from regular playing cards
sets of the time and establishes the game of the
time that we would call tarot. Both the decks and
the games that they were used for grew in number
and they diversified pretty rapidly. There are examples of decks
(06:55):
that involved different numbers of cards, different breakdowns between the
numbered cards and the trump cards, and then different orderings
of the cards. The figures represented on the trump cards
were not consistent from deck to deck, and there were
different artistic styles and themes that the artists were using.
These were, as Tracy alluded to, a moment ago, primarily
(07:17):
games known as trick taking games, So that meant that
in each round of play or trick, the result was
that one of the players would win or take that trick.
We still have card games that are trick taking games today. Obviously,
some of the games that originated with these fifteen century
tarot decks are in fact still played today with a
deck that is basically a tarot deck, although not again
(07:38):
in the way that we would think of it in
associations with the occult or fortune telling. There are a
number of decks that were made in the fourteen hundreds
in Italy that are sometimes referred to collectively as the
Visconti Sforza decks. These decks are said to be the
work of court painter Benafaccio Bembo. The first of these
(07:58):
decks is a deck made or Philippo Maria Visconti that
was the Duke of Milan. Sixty nine of the decks
cards remain, and they are in the Biniki Rare book
in Manuscript Library at Yale. A deck made for Francesco Sforza,
who was a mercenary who married Philippo Visconti's only daughter,
is dated to sometimes shortly after fourteen fifty. This was
(08:20):
probably to mark the marriage. The deck is known as
the Visconti Sforza Deck. There are seventy one surviving cards,
although they are not all part of one collection. Thirty
five of them are in the collection of New York's
Morgan Library and Museum, and the other twenty three are
in Bergamo, Italy at the Academia Carrara, and thirteen of
(08:40):
them are privately held by the Colloni family. Another deck,
known as the Brambilla Deck, is part of a collection
in Milan, Italy, at the Pinotcoteca Debrera. This deck is
also believed to have originally been made for Duke Philippo
Maria Visconti. That name Brambilla is that of an owner
of the deck. Later. These decks changed hands a number
(09:00):
of times, and we're recognized pretty early as collector's items.
There are only two surviving trump cards from this deck,
but the rest of them that still exists are the
numbered suit cards. So these decks are kind of talked
about collectively, but they're not identical, and the Visconti Tarot
the court cards are more numerous than in later iterations.
(09:22):
There are also masculine and feminine versions of all the
court card ranks, and this also incorporates faith, hope, and
charity in the trumps. But the Visconti Sforza deck is different.
Although we don't know if this was an evolution of
the game or a refinement of the game, or just
a change made for some other reason like maybe, oh,
this person likes these things will add a card for that,
(09:45):
we do not know. Because this deck is so similar
to a tarot deck that you might see today versus
the Visconti deck that preceded it, The Visconti Sforza deck
is sometimes called the oldest known tarot deck. The hierarchy
of cards and the Visconti Sforza deck is as followers.
This goes from the highest to the lowest rank world Angels, Sun, Moon, Star, Temperance, Death, Trader,
(10:12):
old Man, Wheel of Fortune, Fortitude, Chariot, Justice, Love, Pope, Emperor, Popes, Empress,
Mountebank and finally the full yes. Uh. The popes would
eventually evolve into high priestess like you could see where
these weren't all as uniform, and they slowly become the
(10:32):
things we're familiar with now. Um, that other deck, the
Brambia deck, is closer to this one, I believe. And
then there's another deck which was likely designed in Italy
and then made its way to France and became known
as a French deck, and that's the Tarot de Marseilles.
This deck was based on woodblock prints of the fifteenth
century and its design actually continues to be used today.
(10:56):
This deck, as the Italian ones we've been discussing, was
also a true gaming deck, with none of the association
with mysticism that would come later. And before we get
into that mysticism which is coming, we'll take a break
for a quick word for some sponsors. In the eighteenth century,
(11:19):
a Frenchman named Antoine Cour provided the pivotal moment in
Taro's historical identity. Court de Cheblin was born on January
seventy five in Name, France, and he became a French
Reformed Church pastor. He was a Protestant propagandist, a scholar,
and a supporter of the North American colonies in their
(11:41):
quest for independence from Great Britain. But in terms of
today's subject, the germain part of his story is that
cour de Jeblin wrote a multi volume book project in
the years from seventeen seventy three to seventeen eighty four.
This project was called The Primeval World Analyzed and Compared
(12:01):
to the Modern World. He died in May of seventeen
eighty four with this work unfinished, but he had already
published a lot. His writing, as this title suggests, had
a pretty wide focus. He wrote about calendar history, grammar,
the possibility of a universal language, and he also examined
mythology and in the volume of the work that was
(12:22):
published in seventeen eighty one, he wrote about Tarot. Cards
Court of Javelin linked Tarot to the Lost Book of Thoughts.
So Thoughts is an ancient Egyptian god linked to writing, wisdom,
and magic, and there have been multiple texts that have
been referred to with the name Book of Thought, in
each case suggesting that the information contained in them came
(12:43):
in some way from the god and the theory that
was put forth by Court of Jablin was that this book,
which contained information about ancient magic and wisdom, had been
entrusted to travelers rather than risk its destruction by enemies.
But Court of Jebalin leave that this book that had
made its way to Europe had been transformed into a
(13:04):
deck of tarot cards as a way to disguise it.
This is all totally supposition on his part. He had
no actual evidence to back it up. He also linked
the two trump cards of a tarot deck to the
twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. He was suggesting
that there was this linkage among multiple cultures through this
(13:25):
lost book, and that the true meaning of the cards
was a secret that had been shared only with a
trusted few. And at the time these ideas completely fascinated people.
It was an utterly captivating concept. It's worth noting to
set the scene of why this was the case that
this was the same time when Franz Mesmer, covered in
(13:46):
an episode of the podcast by previous hosts Sara and Dablina,
was living in Paris and the idea of his so
called animal magnetism had enthralled Parisian high society. Spiritualism was
having its first big aave of popularity as people grappled
with the new developments in the scientific world and how
those developments sometimes challenged long held religious and spiritual beliefs.
(14:10):
So Court of Jabulan's assertions about a deeper meaning to
a deck that people had been using to simply play
games with, We're completely enthralling. There was this certain romanticism
about the idea that they had been holding in their
hands images that were linked with ancient magic without ever
having realized it. I feel like someone making similar assertions
(14:31):
today would get a similarly captivated response. Yes, fortune tellers
worse in some cases, using decks of cards already as
tools of their work. Um, this was already being used
at this time in Europe. But this seems to have
been similar to the way tea leaves might have been interpreted.
Nobody really thought that tea itself was mystical. Similarly, it
(14:54):
wasn't so much about the cards themselves prior to Court
to Jablon's writing, was more about the person doing the interpreting. Yeah,
they did not think that there was hidden or magical
meaning in the cards. They were just kind of part
of a uh fortune teller's tools of how they could
help you perceive bigger ideas than you were accustomed to.
(15:17):
But the first person to gain widespread recognition for his
work with Tarot cards was Jean Baptiste Aliette, who went
by Etia, which is just his name backwards. Uh. More
than a decade before Court of jablin is writing about
Tarot cards, Aliette had published Etia, or A Way to
Entertain Yourself with a Deck of Cards in seventeen seventy.
(15:41):
But after Court of Jeblen's writing about the Tarot deck
was released, Elliott got to work on a new and
updated piece of writing of his own. Etia, or a
Way to Entertain Yourself with a Deck of Cards called
Tarot was released in seventeen eighty five, and in this
writing Elliott built on the ideas that court To Jeblin
(16:01):
had already introduced. The new writing claimed that the Tarot
was a book written by the God thought himself that
it was the oldest book in the world. Aliette also
shifted the order of the trump cards so that they
differed from court de Jaubulin's analysis. And to be clear,
this was all just like court to Jeblin's work conjecture.
(16:24):
But this book that Aliette wrote, is where a lot
of ideas about Tarot cards and their meaning which persists
today got their start. One of these was the idea
that a card that appears inverted has a shift in
its meaning. This is like a whole ball of wax
I dare not open. I know, if you talk to
people that actually like to use Tarot cards, some will
(16:44):
read inversions and some you can get a whole debate going. Um.
This is where the whole idea of that came up.
Another idea that he introduced was that the numbered cards
also called the pip cards we've been calling them Matt
also had meaning not just the trump cards of the
major arcana, and this was not the only instance of
(17:05):
the trump cards shifting position. Different writers and interpreters ever
since have debated the order of the cards and particularly
where the fool fits into the hierarchy. Remember too, that
the representations in every deck were not necessarily the same,
and that further opened up other interpretations. Yeah, I was
(17:25):
I can't remember exactly which deck it was, but there
was one that mentioned that there was a representation of
Nebuchadnezzar in it, and like how that changed the whole
thing and like basically, if an artist was doing their thematic,
it could significantly shift the way somebody who was used
to a different deck would look at that deck. Um
Etta also established first a society for discussion of Taro interpretation,
(17:50):
and then he opened a new school of magic. He
also developed a new deck of tarot cards that was
created not at all for gameplay, but expressly for use
in divination. The next figure who significantly influenced the development
of tarot cards is another Frenchman, la Fa Levi. Levi
was born in eighteen ten, so almost thirty years after
(18:11):
Court of Jebalance Tarot Analysis was published, and almost twenty
years after Elliott died. Levi was born Alphonse Louis Constant.
Levi's early vocation had actually been theology, although the week
before he was supposed to become a priest he abandoned
that path, but that background did inform his study and
exploration of spirituality and mysticism, though he didn't deeply embrace
(18:35):
his work in the occult until he was almost forty,
which was when he changed his name. Levi took Court
of Jebulan's connection of the tarot trumps to the Hebrew alphabet,
and then further refined that sorting the letters and their
associated cards into three groups of association, they were the elements,
the planets, and the zodiac. And Levia is interesting because
(18:57):
he acknowledged that the tarot cards were useful as a
divination tool, but he was not especially fond of their
use in that regard. He thought that the far more
important role of tarot cards was as a tool of
spiritual philosophy, being away for students of esotericism and the
occult to gain insight in wisdom through meditation and psychological
(19:19):
self analysis. Levi also believed that the tarot had been
part of a greater knowledge which had been universal to
all of the ancient world's cultures. Swiss occultist Joseph paul
oswald Worth built on Levi's work when he wrote the
book Lettero does maaggier du moye That's the Terror of
the Magicians. That was an eighteen eighty nine. Worth introduced
(19:41):
a deck to accompany it called Arcandu tero Cabalastique, which
was Arcana of the Cabalistic Tarot. This was not a
complete deck, It was just the twenty two major arcanic cards,
and this is the first instance where the game card
designs are really reimagined with clear occult symbolism and included yeah.
Prior to that, they were still very much in the
(20:04):
old style where it looked a lot like the game.
Gerard and vincent Encos, known by the name Papus in
Esoteric circles, was a physician and occultist who founded the
Modern Martinist Order of Christian Mysticism. He studied the Kabbala, alchemy, magic,
and the occult taro in addition to medicine, and he
(20:27):
also connects to our recent episode on Madame Blavatsky. He
was a member of the French Theosophical Society, but didn't
really find that his interests and beliefs completely aligned with
the society's interest and approaching the occult through an Eastern lens. Papus,
who was born in eighteen sixty five, worked to further
the ideas that La Fas Levi had developed in his lifetime.
(20:51):
Like Levi, he sought to integrate a range of ideas
from many cultures into a unified spirituality around the tarot deck.
He developed a system that gay each trump card three
different meanings that you could use to interpret them. A
physical meaning, a magical astral meaning, and a divine meaning.
And he also expanded the number of ways the cards
(21:12):
could be laid out for divination. So a lot of
the layouts that you will see people using even today
are ones that he came up with. So coming up,
we're going to get into a couple of names that
might found pretty familiar to folks, as well as the
order that they belonged to. But first we're going to
take a quick sponsor break. So if a lot of
(21:36):
what we have talked about in those first two segments
so far sounds like it overlaps a lot, for example,
with Rosicrucianism, that is because it does uh. This so
called brotherhood, which is what it's usually called named for
the rose and cross design of its symbol, is organized
around the belief that esoteric wisdom possessed by people in
ancient times has been passed down through their order. This,
(22:00):
like the work of several of the people mentioned in
this episode, incorporates a number of occult ideas from different
religions and cultures into one sort of unified theory. In
the late eighteen eighties, the Rosicrucian society called the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn was founded in England. This
group based its organizational structure and rituals on a group
(22:21):
of documents known as the Cipher Manuscripts. That's a set
of five dozen folios containing writings that were related to Gobala,
Christian gnosticism, Egyptian magic, and other belief systems. These folios
were dated eighteen o nine and we should mention that
these are controversial documents. Their legitimacy has been argued about
(22:42):
for decades in terms of how they're relevant to tarot.
They were deciphered by a man named William Wynn Westcott,
and that was a key development that led to the
formation of the Golden Dawn, and the practice of and
ideology of tarot evolved signific frequently. Within the Golden Dawn.
The deck was linked, for example, to the Judaic Cabala
(23:05):
Tree of life. It was also seen not just as
a way to peer into the future possibly but also
as a means to manipulate and control it. The tarot
also became linked to Celtic concepts and symbols through the
work of one of Golden Dawn's most famous members, William
Butler Yates. There were changes to the deck itself as
well to reflect changing ideas about its symbolism. Spearheaded largely
(23:29):
by a member of the Golden Dawn named Samuel Liddell
McGregor Mathers. Mathers was British, and that McGregor in his
name was something that he added. He claimed that he
had ancestors from the Scottish Highlands, but there are no
actual records to back that up. Mathers linked suits, wand's cups,
swords and pentacles to conceptual meanings. He related them to
(23:52):
the ideas of father, mother, the masculine and the feminine,
with wands and cups representing, respectively, kings and queen means,
and the swords and pentacles sort of a tear below
them as princes and princesses. He also associated them with fire, water, air,
and Earth's. Arguably the biggest contribution that Mather's made to
occultism and tarot was through his translation work. He spoke
(24:17):
several languages and translated a number of occult texts into English.
He was a practitioner of ceremonial magic and also a
teacher of Alistair Crowley. Although the two men would eventually
become enemies. Yeah we'll tell you why in a minute.
But that brings us to the work of Crowley as
well as another man, Arthur Edward Waite, and these two
(24:37):
names are fairly commonly known as part of modern occult history. Uh.
If you have brushed up against any of this subject matter,
you have seen those names. And both of them were
members of Golden Dawn. Wait was thirty four when he
joined the Brotherhood in one although initially he did not
stay with the group for very long. He quit but
joined once again five years later. Wait's name is well
(25:00):
known today because of the tarot deck that he designed,
known as the Rider Wait Tarot, the most popular deck
of all time and is still being produced today. The
Writer in the name is for the Writer Publishing Company,
and one of the big changes in this deck is
the pip cards being illustrated with their own imagery that
was intended for divination, and this kind of takes them
(25:22):
completely away from gameplay decks. And indeed, by the early
twentieth century, there was very little, if any association between
games and tarot cards in most popular culture, with two
big exceptions as being England and a lot in France,
where the game version persisted. You can still play Tarot
in France. The game it is like one of the
(25:43):
most popular card games um. The Rider Wait Deck featured
illustrations by a woman named Pamela Coleman Smith, who was
also a member of Golden Dawn. She is also fascinating
and I would love to do an episode on her.
At some point, uh Wait characterized the deck as a
quote spiritual history of man, following along the idea that
the tarot connected to the esoteric knowledge of many cultures.
(26:06):
This was not the first time the suit cards were illustrated.
There's a version of the game Tarot called the Solo
Busca Tarot that features illustrated pip cards. These do appear
to have been a source of direct inspiration for the
Rider Wait Deck, but the fifteenth century Solo Busca Deck,
while it was visually really rich, was still intended for
(26:29):
game play, although modern recreations have been used for divination
and interpretation. And then we get to Alistair Crowley, who
was born Edward Alexander Crowley. He changed his name at
the age of twenty three years later in eight he
joined the Golden Dawn and Crowley is a fascinating figure.
He could easily be the topic of an episode all
(26:49):
his own, and he's kind of close to the top
of the list. We'll see at Halloween time next year. Maybe. Um.
His good fortune in being born very wealthy meant that
he was afforded really a life of indulgence, even after
he just kind of dropped out of university without a
degree and decided he would travel and write poetry. In
the Golden Dawn, Crowley found a rivalry with Yates, but
(27:12):
that's really a trifle compared to the conflicts that he
would be part of throughout his life. Eventually, he had
burned through his inheritance and he started traveling less. He
became a captivating figure after his death, but during his
lifetime most views of him were pretty unfavorable because of
his association with black magic, including the death of one
(27:32):
of his followers in Sicily that led to him being
kicked out of Italy permanently, and the rift between Crowley
and Mathers, which also led to his really bad reputation,
began with the publication of Crowley's book Lebor seven seven
seven in nineteen o nine, and in this book he
shared details of the connection between the Hebrew alphabet and
(27:53):
the major arcana of tarot cards. That was information that
was considered a secret among the members of the Olden Dawn,
and divulging that secret was just the beginning. Crowley also
started publishing articles in which he described the various rights, rituals,
and other secret knowledge of the order. Crowley wrote the
Book of Thought, a short essay of the Tarot of
(28:15):
the Egyptians, near the end of his life that was
in nint. It linked back to court Jbule night One writing.
Crowley had designed a tarot to accompany the text. He
had collaborated with artist FREDA. Harris, but that wasn't actually
published along with the book. Crowley's Thought tarot wasn't published
(28:36):
until nineteen sixty nine, at which point Crowley had been
dead for more than twenty years. So in the last
fifty years since that Crowley tarot was published, tarot cards
have become really mainstream. There are how two books available
in abundance. You can literally walk into a big box
store and buy them. Um decks are now made that
are themed with everything from famous works of art to
(28:57):
TV and film characters. Maybe an our Friday casual chat,
I'll talk about some of the decks I have because
I just like them, uh and the ways that people
have used them have also continued to diversify. So people
still use them for divination, people use them to meditate,
people just I collect them because I think they usually
have cool art. And within any of those there are
(29:19):
widely varied approaches to how people will use them. And
as we look at the long arc of tarot from
its beginnings as a game to becoming imbued with this
meaning over the centuries, how he wanted to close with
a quote from a book written in nineteen seventy by
Eden Gray on Taro. It's one of those mass market
(29:39):
paperbacks that has been a popular entry point for people
who want to learn about taro since its first publication. Yeah,
I kind of love this because it is a book
that teaches people how to use tarot cards. But her
discussion of it is so um frank in terms of
like what we do and don't of its actual history
(30:02):
and and how it has become this thing that it
was not initially that I really love the way she
wrote about it. She wrote, quote, the origins of tarot
are so veiled in the mists of time that it
is only natural for myths and legends to have grown up,
particularly around the major arcana. Superstition, flights of fancy and
speculation have added their own patterns to the rich and
(30:24):
colorful tapestry of Tara lore, and curiously enough, have only
deepened its aura of magic and mystery. Cults have grown
up around one or another historical theory, and sometimes their
adherents have become fanatical and proclaiming the one and only truth.
But the better informed investigators retain a certain amount of flexibility,
(30:45):
even skepticism, and make no iron clad assertions. Ah. I
love the way she put that. It was perfect. Yeah,
it's like you can study this and it is meat,
but like, we don't know a lot about it. Really,
we're adding our own ideas to this, and that's part
of what gives it meaning. But you can't assume that
(31:07):
this was handed down from some ancient god. Um. So
that is uh, a little bit of Tarot history, a
brief overview. Do you have some listener mail to take
us out of it? I have two pieces. Uh. One
is from our listener am and it's something that we
have heard before, but not in a while. So I
(31:28):
thought I would just float it up for fun. She wrote.
Hopefully this will make you laugh on a random day.
When you need it, I always need it. I have
listened to the podcast for a long time, through all
various hosts and on various phones and pods over time.
And while I have seen the podcast page showing your
pictures and listen to you both say your name's probably
thousands of times, I only just happened to be looking
(31:50):
at the page at the point of your podcast where
you say your names. And I've had your voices attached
to the wrong faces for years. Just from voices, I
would have sworn that it was trade See that had
purple hair and Holly who wore glasses. I was thoroughly
astonished to realize exactly who was who. I don't know
why I hadn't paid attention before, maybe because I'm usually
listening while walking or driving, but it made me giggle
(32:12):
to realize just how long I've had the opposite names
and bases connected. Thanks for all you do in providing
such a continuous source of knowledge and entertainment. Long time listener,
and and you are not the only one that happens
all the time. It always it always makes me chuckle
because of course Tracy and I know who we are,
but um, we sure, but it happens. I mean I've
done the same thing with audio only entertainment. Yeah. Uh,
(32:35):
and it's super common. I always love it. Back in
the before times when we would do live shows periodically
during meet and greet, someone would say, I'm freaking out
because I had you opposite the whole time. I had
your names backward, and I'm like, wow. Sometimes Tracy and
I are very tired when we record, and we will
say the wrong names ourselves. But that's a different issue.
We we don't actually think we're the other person. Um.
(32:58):
But just in case anyone's out there, Yeah, I have
purple hair. Tracy has glasses. I sometimes wear glasses, but
not all the time. Well, and at this point in
the in the pandemic, my my hair is closer to
a bluish black than my regular brown. It's not fairly
as dramatic as as the purple in your hair. Uh,
(33:19):
this is my natural color. Uh. And then I have
another email from listener Halle because I realized they didn't
make a direct connection in our Bram Stoker episode. Uh.
To me, it seemed obvious, but again that's because I
was in the middle of that material all the time.
Halle writes, at the beginning of the bram Stoker episode,
you said there was a fact you thought was crazy,
(33:41):
and we're texting your friends about all week. What was it?
Nothing seemed particularly crazy about his life. Thanks for all
you do, Okay, that obsession with Walt Whitman, he seemed crazy. Um,
and I just I don't I yeah, that seems bananas
to me. Just the idea that he spent years of
his life kind of obsessed with Walt Whitman and writing
(34:03):
him these really strange fan letters. Uh, that was That
was what it was. I never would have thought, you know.
I bet the guy who wrote Dracula wrote Walt Whitman
these really really emotionally raw yeah yeah letters about his life.
So I'm sorry that I didn't draw a more direct
(34:24):
line there, but that's what it was. Sorry to have
left you hanging. If you would like to write to us,
you can absolutely do that. You can do that at
History Podcast at i heeart radio dot com. You can
also find us on social media where Everywhere is Missed
in History, And if you would like to subscribe to
the podcasts, that is easy to do. You can do
that on the iHeart radio app at Apple Podcasts, or
(34:44):
wherever it is you listen. Stuff you missed in History
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, you've
seen plenty of tarot decks. I'm sure, I sure have.
Most people probably have these days. They're super uniform in
(00:24):
terms of what they contain, although the designs of decks
very greatly. Uh. There are normally four suits, which can
vary particularly regionally, but the ones that you commonly see
in North America are cups, coins, swords, and wands or staves.
Each of those suits has fourteen cards, so the pip
cards that number one to ten and then a King, Queen, Knight,
(00:45):
and Jack. Those suit cards make up what's called the
minor arcana, and then there are another twenty two cards
that make up what's called the major arcanum. And these
are the trump cards, so they include things like the Lovers,
the Sun, the Moon, the hanged Man, and death plus
the fool. Tarot cards show up all over the place
in entertainment, even if you've never seen a deck personally,
(01:06):
we have all seen that very dramatic moment on TV
or in a film when a person draws the death
card and there's that scary music sting. But if that
character knew the history of tarot cards, they probably wouldn't
be too worried about it, even if they just know
how that card is often interpreted today. Right, Yeah, we'll
(01:29):
get to that. Yeah. So that's what we're talking about
today is kind of a brief overview of tarot cards.
And I do want to level set you will not
walk away from this episode going I could do a reading, Um,
that's not this at all. I mentioned that I was
doing this to a friend and they were like, oh,
are you gonna explain? I was like, I would have
to have way, way more knowledge of that one to
(01:51):
do it anyway and to know, um no. But we're
going to talk about how they came to be used
as a divination tool, and a are things, but really
the start is pretty pretty benign and humble. Yep, yep. So,
as Holly just alluded to, if you say the word
tarot today, people usually think of mysticism and the occult,
(02:14):
but really this just started out as a card game.
There was no divination or meditative aspect to these cards use,
and games played with cards are believed to have originated
in China. There are references to games with suited cards
going all the way back to the ninth century in
Chinese texts, and we also know that card games were
(02:36):
played in the mam Look Sultanate of Egypt by the
thirteenth century. Their theories about whether or not cards traveled
from China or whether different cultures were developing these ideas,
but there are examples of these mem Look cards that
feature suits that are very familiar cups, coins, swords, and sticks.
From Egypt, card games traveled into Europe and we see
(02:56):
mentions of them starting in Italy and thirteen seventy Venice,
because of its status as a port city, was probably
the point of entry, and then from there it seems
like cards, which were very easily transported because of their
small size, spread pretty quickly. In thirteen seventy seven, a
game called Lutas Cartarum was invented by a German monk,
(03:18):
and almost as quickly as card games were introduced into Europe,
there was some suspicion about them. There are sermons that
you can find historically and ordinances forbidding card playing and
suggesting that it might lead to bad behavior. In some cases.
These are the things you would here, and even more
modern things about the vices of cards and the dangers
(03:40):
of being a card player. Those all developed right alongside
the spread of the games, so none of that is new.
One Paris decree issued on January stated that working people
could not play tennis, bowl, play dice, play cards, or
play nine pins on a workday had to wait for
a holiday. But while the working man may have been
(04:02):
discouraged from playing cards, the wealthy were not only playing cards,
but they were also commissioning artists to make really beautiful
hand painted decks. In thirty two, Charles Poupar, who managed
the treasury for King Charles the sixth of France, is
said to have commissioned three guilt decks from painter jacquesmin
(04:23):
Green Guneus On behalf of the king. Earliest examples of
cards that look like what we might recognize as taro
or from Italy in the early half of the fifteenth century,
and these were primarily in Venice, Florence, Milan and Urbino.
So these seem to have been gaming decks that were
used in the Italian court and the houses of nobility,
(04:44):
and the reasons that these cards would have been a
pastime for nobles more so than anyone else. Was that
they were really expensive. The cards were all being hand painted. Initially, yeah,
those ones in France that were forbidden for common working
men to play with were like the more mass produced
when one, but the ones that start to look like tarot.
Really we're all very beautiful. Um and it sounds very
(05:05):
much too like a pack of modern playing cards. So again,
there were four suits, each with nu miracle cards, ace
to tend so cups, coins, batons, and swords. Batons you'll
sometimes see again as wands or staves. And then it
had the face cards Jack, Night, Queen, and King. And
in addition to this list, which is really close to
what you're probably very familiar with, there was also a
(05:27):
set of trump cards sometimes called Tarokei, depicting various figures
as well as a fool card. Although Italian decks are
the oldest examples that we have of these cards, there
were other and maybe older kinds of trump cards that
were being developed in Europe as well as early as
the fourteen twenties. A German card game called Carnival featured
(05:50):
these sorts of trump cards, and while there are some
similarities in Carnival and Taro in the game form, including
Carnival also being a trick taking game game. These are
believed to have developed independently. So going back to the
cards in Italy in the fourteen hundreds, the decks included
forty numerical suit cards, sixteen face cards, so those are
(06:12):
the court cards, twenty one trump cards and the fool.
As I said, a total of seventy eight, which is
the number you would have in a deck today. The
trumps were numbered with Roman numerals, and they included a
hierarchy of figures, not the same figures you would see today,
So like the Pope, the Emperor, the Son, and Death
were in there, but not all of the same lineups
(06:33):
that we would normally see in a modern deck. The
inclusion of the fool and this set of trump cards
is what sets these decks apart from regular playing cards
sets of the time and establishes the game of the
time that we would call tarot. Both the decks and
the games that they were used for grew in number
and they diversified pretty rapidly. There are examples of decks
(06:55):
that involved different numbers of cards, different breakdowns between the
numbered cards and the trump cards, and then different orderings
of the cards. The figures represented on the trump cards
were not consistent from deck to deck, and there were
different artistic styles and themes that the artists were using.
These were, as Tracy alluded to, a moment ago, primarily
(07:17):
games known as trick taking games, So that meant that
in each round of play or trick, the result was
that one of the players would win or take that trick.
We still have card games that are trick taking games today. Obviously,
some of the games that originated with these fifteen century
tarot decks are in fact still played today with a
deck that is basically a tarot deck, although not again
(07:38):
in the way that we would think of it in
associations with the occult or fortune telling. There are a
number of decks that were made in the fourteen hundreds
in Italy that are sometimes referred to collectively as the
Visconti Sforza decks. These decks are said to be the
work of court painter Benafaccio Bembo. The first of these
(07:58):
decks is a deck made or Philippo Maria Visconti that
was the Duke of Milan. Sixty nine of the decks
cards remain, and they are in the Biniki Rare book
in Manuscript Library at Yale. A deck made for Francesco Sforza,
who was a mercenary who married Philippo Visconti's only daughter,
is dated to sometimes shortly after fourteen fifty. This was
(08:20):
probably to mark the marriage. The deck is known as
the Visconti Sforza Deck. There are seventy one surviving cards,
although they are not all part of one collection. Thirty
five of them are in the collection of New York's
Morgan Library and Museum, and the other twenty three are
in Bergamo, Italy at the Academia Carrara, and thirteen of
(08:40):
them are privately held by the Colloni family. Another deck,
known as the Brambilla Deck, is part of a collection
in Milan, Italy, at the Pinotcoteca Debrera. This deck is
also believed to have originally been made for Duke Philippo
Maria Visconti. That name Brambilla is that of an owner
of the deck. Later. These decks changed hands a number
(09:00):
of times, and we're recognized pretty early as collector's items.
There are only two surviving trump cards from this deck,
but the rest of them that still exists are the
numbered suit cards. So these decks are kind of talked
about collectively, but they're not identical, and the Visconti Tarot
the court cards are more numerous than in later iterations.
(09:22):
There are also masculine and feminine versions of all the
court card ranks, and this also incorporates faith, hope, and
charity in the trumps. But the Visconti Sforza deck is different.
Although we don't know if this was an evolution of
the game or a refinement of the game, or just
a change made for some other reason like maybe, oh,
this person likes these things will add a card for that,
(09:45):
we do not know. Because this deck is so similar
to a tarot deck that you might see today versus
the Visconti deck that preceded it, The Visconti Sforza deck
is sometimes called the oldest known tarot deck. The hierarchy
of cards and the Visconti Sforza deck is as followers.
This goes from the highest to the lowest rank world Angels, Sun, Moon, Star, Temperance, Death, Trader,
(10:12):
old Man, Wheel of Fortune, Fortitude, Chariot, Justice, Love, Pope, Emperor, Popes, Empress,
Mountebank and finally the full yes. Uh. The popes would
eventually evolve into high priestess like you could see where
these weren't all as uniform, and they slowly become the
(10:32):
things we're familiar with now. Um, that other deck, the
Brambia deck, is closer to this one, I believe. And
then there's another deck which was likely designed in Italy
and then made its way to France and became known
as a French deck, and that's the Tarot de Marseilles.
This deck was based on woodblock prints of the fifteenth
century and its design actually continues to be used today.
(10:56):
This deck, as the Italian ones we've been discussing, was
also a true gaming deck, with none of the association
with mysticism that would come later. And before we get
into that mysticism which is coming, we'll take a break
for a quick word for some sponsors. In the eighteenth century,
(11:19):
a Frenchman named Antoine Cour provided the pivotal moment in
Taro's historical identity. Court de Cheblin was born on January
seventy five in Name, France, and he became a French
Reformed Church pastor. He was a Protestant propagandist, a scholar,
and a supporter of the North American colonies in their
(11:41):
quest for independence from Great Britain. But in terms of
today's subject, the germain part of his story is that
cour de Jeblin wrote a multi volume book project in
the years from seventeen seventy three to seventeen eighty four.
This project was called The Primeval World Analyzed and Compared
(12:01):
to the Modern World. He died in May of seventeen
eighty four with this work unfinished, but he had already
published a lot. His writing, as this title suggests, had
a pretty wide focus. He wrote about calendar history, grammar,
the possibility of a universal language, and he also examined
mythology and in the volume of the work that was
(12:22):
published in seventeen eighty one, he wrote about Tarot. Cards
Court of Javelin linked Tarot to the Lost Book of Thoughts.
So Thoughts is an ancient Egyptian god linked to writing, wisdom,
and magic, and there have been multiple texts that have
been referred to with the name Book of Thought, in
each case suggesting that the information contained in them came
(12:43):
in some way from the god and the theory that
was put forth by Court of Jablin was that this book,
which contained information about ancient magic and wisdom, had been
entrusted to travelers rather than risk its destruction by enemies.
But Court of Jebalin leave that this book that had
made its way to Europe had been transformed into a
(13:04):
deck of tarot cards as a way to disguise it.
This is all totally supposition on his part. He had
no actual evidence to back it up. He also linked
the two trump cards of a tarot deck to the
twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. He was suggesting
that there was this linkage among multiple cultures through this
(13:25):
lost book, and that the true meaning of the cards
was a secret that had been shared only with a
trusted few. And at the time these ideas completely fascinated people.
It was an utterly captivating concept. It's worth noting to
set the scene of why this was the case that
this was the same time when Franz Mesmer, covered in
(13:46):
an episode of the podcast by previous hosts Sara and Dablina,
was living in Paris and the idea of his so
called animal magnetism had enthralled Parisian high society. Spiritualism was
having its first big aave of popularity as people grappled
with the new developments in the scientific world and how
those developments sometimes challenged long held religious and spiritual beliefs.
(14:10):
So Court of Jabulan's assertions about a deeper meaning to
a deck that people had been using to simply play
games with, We're completely enthralling. There was this certain romanticism
about the idea that they had been holding in their
hands images that were linked with ancient magic without ever
having realized it. I feel like someone making similar assertions
(14:31):
today would get a similarly captivated response. Yes, fortune tellers
worse in some cases, using decks of cards already as
tools of their work. Um, this was already being used
at this time in Europe. But this seems to have
been similar to the way tea leaves might have been interpreted.
Nobody really thought that tea itself was mystical. Similarly, it
(14:54):
wasn't so much about the cards themselves prior to Court
to Jablon's writing, was more about the person doing the interpreting. Yeah,
they did not think that there was hidden or magical
meaning in the cards. They were just kind of part
of a uh fortune teller's tools of how they could
help you perceive bigger ideas than you were accustomed to.
(15:17):
But the first person to gain widespread recognition for his
work with Tarot cards was Jean Baptiste Aliette, who went
by Etia, which is just his name backwards. Uh. More
than a decade before Court of jablin is writing about
Tarot cards, Aliette had published Etia, or A Way to
Entertain Yourself with a Deck of Cards in seventeen seventy.
(15:41):
But after Court of Jeblen's writing about the Tarot deck
was released, Elliott got to work on a new and
updated piece of writing of his own. Etia, or a
Way to Entertain Yourself with a Deck of Cards called
Tarot was released in seventeen eighty five, and in this
writing Elliott built on the ideas that court To Jeblin
(16:01):
had already introduced. The new writing claimed that the Tarot
was a book written by the God thought himself that
it was the oldest book in the world. Aliette also
shifted the order of the trump cards so that they
differed from court de Jaubulin's analysis. And to be clear,
this was all just like court to Jeblin's work conjecture.
(16:24):
But this book that Aliette wrote, is where a lot
of ideas about Tarot cards and their meaning which persists
today got their start. One of these was the idea
that a card that appears inverted has a shift in
its meaning. This is like a whole ball of wax
I dare not open. I know, if you talk to
people that actually like to use Tarot cards, some will
(16:44):
read inversions and some you can get a whole debate going. Um.
This is where the whole idea of that came up.
Another idea that he introduced was that the numbered cards
also called the pip cards we've been calling them Matt
also had meaning not just the trump cards of the
major arcana, and this was not the only instance of
(17:05):
the trump cards shifting position. Different writers and interpreters ever
since have debated the order of the cards and particularly
where the fool fits into the hierarchy. Remember too, that
the representations in every deck were not necessarily the same,
and that further opened up other interpretations. Yeah, I was
(17:25):
I can't remember exactly which deck it was, but there
was one that mentioned that there was a representation of
Nebuchadnezzar in it, and like how that changed the whole
thing and like basically, if an artist was doing their thematic,
it could significantly shift the way somebody who was used
to a different deck would look at that deck. Um
Etta also established first a society for discussion of Taro interpretation,
(17:50):
and then he opened a new school of magic. He
also developed a new deck of tarot cards that was
created not at all for gameplay, but expressly for use
in divination. The next figure who significantly influenced the development
of tarot cards is another Frenchman, la Fa Levi. Levi
was born in eighteen ten, so almost thirty years after
(18:11):
Court of Jebalance Tarot Analysis was published, and almost twenty
years after Elliott died. Levi was born Alphonse Louis Constant.
Levi's early vocation had actually been theology, although the week
before he was supposed to become a priest he abandoned
that path, but that background did inform his study and
exploration of spirituality and mysticism, though he didn't deeply embrace
(18:35):
his work in the occult until he was almost forty,
which was when he changed his name. Levi took Court
of Jebulan's connection of the tarot trumps to the Hebrew alphabet,
and then further refined that sorting the letters and their
associated cards into three groups of association, they were the elements,
the planets, and the zodiac. And Levia is interesting because
(18:57):
he acknowledged that the tarot cards were useful as a
divination tool, but he was not especially fond of their
use in that regard. He thought that the far more
important role of tarot cards was as a tool of
spiritual philosophy, being away for students of esotericism and the
occult to gain insight in wisdom through meditation and psychological
(19:19):
self analysis. Levi also believed that the tarot had been
part of a greater knowledge which had been universal to
all of the ancient world's cultures. Swiss occultist Joseph paul
oswald Worth built on Levi's work when he wrote the
book Lettero does maaggier du moye That's the Terror of
the Magicians. That was an eighteen eighty nine. Worth introduced
(19:41):
a deck to accompany it called Arcandu tero Cabalastique, which
was Arcana of the Cabalistic Tarot. This was not a
complete deck, It was just the twenty two major arcanic cards,
and this is the first instance where the game card
designs are really reimagined with clear occult symbolism and included yeah.
Prior to that, they were still very much in the
(20:04):
old style where it looked a lot like the game.
Gerard and vincent Encos, known by the name Papus in
Esoteric circles, was a physician and occultist who founded the
Modern Martinist Order of Christian Mysticism. He studied the Kabbala, alchemy, magic,
and the occult taro in addition to medicine, and he
(20:27):
also connects to our recent episode on Madame Blavatsky. He
was a member of the French Theosophical Society, but didn't
really find that his interests and beliefs completely aligned with
the society's interest and approaching the occult through an Eastern lens. Papus,
who was born in eighteen sixty five, worked to further
the ideas that La Fas Levi had developed in his lifetime.
(20:51):
Like Levi, he sought to integrate a range of ideas
from many cultures into a unified spirituality around the tarot deck.
He developed a system that gay each trump card three
different meanings that you could use to interpret them. A
physical meaning, a magical astral meaning, and a divine meaning.
And he also expanded the number of ways the cards
(21:12):
could be laid out for divination. So a lot of
the layouts that you will see people using even today
are ones that he came up with. So coming up,
we're going to get into a couple of names that
might found pretty familiar to folks, as well as the
order that they belonged to. But first we're going to
take a quick sponsor break. So if a lot of
(21:36):
what we have talked about in those first two segments
so far sounds like it overlaps a lot, for example,
with Rosicrucianism, that is because it does uh. This so
called brotherhood, which is what it's usually called named for
the rose and cross design of its symbol, is organized
around the belief that esoteric wisdom possessed by people in
ancient times has been passed down through their order. This,
(22:00):
like the work of several of the people mentioned in
this episode, incorporates a number of occult ideas from different
religions and cultures into one sort of unified theory. In
the late eighteen eighties, the Rosicrucian society called the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn was founded in England. This
group based its organizational structure and rituals on a group
(22:21):
of documents known as the Cipher Manuscripts. That's a set
of five dozen folios containing writings that were related to Gobala,
Christian gnosticism, Egyptian magic, and other belief systems. These folios
were dated eighteen o nine and we should mention that
these are controversial documents. Their legitimacy has been argued about
(22:42):
for decades in terms of how they're relevant to tarot.
They were deciphered by a man named William Wynn Westcott,
and that was a key development that led to the
formation of the Golden Dawn, and the practice of and
ideology of tarot evolved signific frequently. Within the Golden Dawn.
The deck was linked, for example, to the Judaic Cabala
(23:05):
Tree of life. It was also seen not just as
a way to peer into the future possibly but also
as a means to manipulate and control it. The tarot
also became linked to Celtic concepts and symbols through the
work of one of Golden Dawn's most famous members, William
Butler Yates. There were changes to the deck itself as
well to reflect changing ideas about its symbolism. Spearheaded largely
(23:29):
by a member of the Golden Dawn named Samuel Liddell
McGregor Mathers. Mathers was British, and that McGregor in his
name was something that he added. He claimed that he
had ancestors from the Scottish Highlands, but there are no
actual records to back that up. Mathers linked suits, wand's cups,
swords and pentacles to conceptual meanings. He related them to
(23:52):
the ideas of father, mother, the masculine and the feminine,
with wands and cups representing, respectively, kings and queen means,
and the swords and pentacles sort of a tear below
them as princes and princesses. He also associated them with fire, water, air,
and Earth's. Arguably the biggest contribution that Mather's made to
occultism and tarot was through his translation work. He spoke
(24:17):
several languages and translated a number of occult texts into English.
He was a practitioner of ceremonial magic and also a
teacher of Alistair Crowley. Although the two men would eventually
become enemies. Yeah we'll tell you why in a minute.
But that brings us to the work of Crowley as
well as another man, Arthur Edward Waite, and these two
(24:37):
names are fairly commonly known as part of modern occult history. Uh.
If you have brushed up against any of this subject matter,
you have seen those names. And both of them were
members of Golden Dawn. Wait was thirty four when he
joined the Brotherhood in one although initially he did not
stay with the group for very long. He quit but
joined once again five years later. Wait's name is well
(25:00):
known today because of the tarot deck that he designed,
known as the Rider Wait Tarot, the most popular deck
of all time and is still being produced today. The
Writer in the name is for the Writer Publishing Company,
and one of the big changes in this deck is
the pip cards being illustrated with their own imagery that
was intended for divination, and this kind of takes them
(25:22):
completely away from gameplay decks. And indeed, by the early
twentieth century, there was very little, if any association between
games and tarot cards in most popular culture, with two
big exceptions as being England and a lot in France,
where the game version persisted. You can still play Tarot
in France. The game it is like one of the
(25:43):
most popular card games um. The Rider Wait Deck featured
illustrations by a woman named Pamela Coleman Smith, who was
also a member of Golden Dawn. She is also fascinating
and I would love to do an episode on her.
At some point, uh Wait characterized the deck as a
quote spiritual history of man, following along the idea that
the tarot connected to the esoteric knowledge of many cultures.
(26:06):
This was not the first time the suit cards were illustrated.
There's a version of the game Tarot called the Solo
Busca Tarot that features illustrated pip cards. These do appear
to have been a source of direct inspiration for the
Rider Wait Deck, but the fifteenth century Solo Busca Deck,
while it was visually really rich, was still intended for
(26:29):
game play, although modern recreations have been used for divination
and interpretation. And then we get to Alistair Crowley, who
was born Edward Alexander Crowley. He changed his name at
the age of twenty three years later in eight he
joined the Golden Dawn and Crowley is a fascinating figure.
He could easily be the topic of an episode all
(26:49):
his own, and he's kind of close to the top
of the list. We'll see at Halloween time next year. Maybe. Um.
His good fortune in being born very wealthy meant that
he was afforded really a life of indulgence, even after
he just kind of dropped out of university without a
degree and decided he would travel and write poetry. In
the Golden Dawn, Crowley found a rivalry with Yates, but
(27:12):
that's really a trifle compared to the conflicts that he
would be part of throughout his life. Eventually, he had
burned through his inheritance and he started traveling less. He
became a captivating figure after his death, but during his
lifetime most views of him were pretty unfavorable because of
his association with black magic, including the death of one
(27:32):
of his followers in Sicily that led to him being
kicked out of Italy permanently, and the rift between Crowley
and Mathers, which also led to his really bad reputation,
began with the publication of Crowley's book Lebor seven seven
seven in nineteen o nine, and in this book he
shared details of the connection between the Hebrew alphabet and
(27:53):
the major arcana of tarot cards. That was information that
was considered a secret among the members of the Olden Dawn,
and divulging that secret was just the beginning. Crowley also
started publishing articles in which he described the various rights, rituals,
and other secret knowledge of the order. Crowley wrote the
Book of Thought, a short essay of the Tarot of
(28:15):
the Egyptians, near the end of his life that was
in nint. It linked back to court Jbule night One writing.
Crowley had designed a tarot to accompany the text. He
had collaborated with artist FREDA. Harris, but that wasn't actually
published along with the book. Crowley's Thought tarot wasn't published
(28:36):
until nineteen sixty nine, at which point Crowley had been
dead for more than twenty years. So in the last
fifty years since that Crowley tarot was published, tarot cards
have become really mainstream. There are how two books available
in abundance. You can literally walk into a big box
store and buy them. Um decks are now made that
are themed with everything from famous works of art to
(28:57):
TV and film characters. Maybe an our Friday casual chat,
I'll talk about some of the decks I have because
I just like them, uh and the ways that people
have used them have also continued to diversify. So people
still use them for divination, people use them to meditate,
people just I collect them because I think they usually
have cool art. And within any of those there are
(29:19):
widely varied approaches to how people will use them. And
as we look at the long arc of tarot from
its beginnings as a game to becoming imbued with this
meaning over the centuries, how he wanted to close with
a quote from a book written in nineteen seventy by
Eden Gray on Taro. It's one of those mass market
(29:39):
paperbacks that has been a popular entry point for people
who want to learn about taro since its first publication. Yeah,
I kind of love this because it is a book
that teaches people how to use tarot cards. But her
discussion of it is so um frank in terms of
like what we do and don't of its actual history
(30:02):
and and how it has become this thing that it
was not initially that I really love the way she
wrote about it. She wrote, quote, the origins of tarot
are so veiled in the mists of time that it
is only natural for myths and legends to have grown up,
particularly around the major arcana. Superstition, flights of fancy and
speculation have added their own patterns to the rich and
(30:24):
colorful tapestry of Tara lore, and curiously enough, have only
deepened its aura of magic and mystery. Cults have grown
up around one or another historical theory, and sometimes their
adherents have become fanatical and proclaiming the one and only truth.
But the better informed investigators retain a certain amount of flexibility,
(30:45):
even skepticism, and make no iron clad assertions. Ah. I
love the way she put that. It was perfect. Yeah,
it's like you can study this and it is meat,
but like, we don't know a lot about it. Really,
we're adding our own ideas to this, and that's part
of what gives it meaning. But you can't assume that
(31:07):
this was handed down from some ancient god. Um. So
that is uh, a little bit of Tarot history, a
brief overview. Do you have some listener mail to take
us out of it? I have two pieces. Uh. One
is from our listener am and it's something that we
have heard before, but not in a while. So I
(31:28):
thought I would just float it up for fun. She wrote.
Hopefully this will make you laugh on a random day.
When you need it, I always need it. I have
listened to the podcast for a long time, through all
various hosts and on various phones and pods over time.
And while I have seen the podcast page showing your
pictures and listen to you both say your name's probably
thousands of times, I only just happened to be looking
(31:50):
at the page at the point of your podcast where
you say your names. And I've had your voices attached
to the wrong faces for years. Just from voices, I
would have sworn that it was trade See that had
purple hair and Holly who wore glasses. I was thoroughly
astonished to realize exactly who was who. I don't know
why I hadn't paid attention before, maybe because I'm usually
listening while walking or driving, but it made me giggle
(32:12):
to realize just how long I've had the opposite names
and bases connected. Thanks for all you do in providing
such a continuous source of knowledge and entertainment. Long time listener,
and and you are not the only one that happens
all the time. It always it always makes me chuckle
because of course Tracy and I know who we are,
but um, we sure, but it happens. I mean I've
done the same thing with audio only entertainment. Yeah. Uh,
(32:35):
and it's super common. I always love it. Back in
the before times when we would do live shows periodically
during meet and greet, someone would say, I'm freaking out
because I had you opposite the whole time. I had
your names backward, and I'm like, wow. Sometimes Tracy and
I are very tired when we record, and we will
say the wrong names ourselves. But that's a different issue.
We we don't actually think we're the other person. Um.
(32:58):
But just in case anyone's out there, Yeah, I have
purple hair. Tracy has glasses. I sometimes wear glasses, but
not all the time. Well, and at this point in
the in the pandemic, my my hair is closer to
a bluish black than my regular brown. It's not fairly
as dramatic as as the purple in your hair. Uh,
(33:19):
this is my natural color. Uh. And then I have
another email from listener Halle because I realized they didn't
make a direct connection in our Bram Stoker episode. Uh.
To me, it seemed obvious, but again that's because I
was in the middle of that material all the time.
Halle writes, at the beginning of the bram Stoker episode,
you said there was a fact you thought was crazy,
(33:41):
and we're texting your friends about all week. What was it?
Nothing seemed particularly crazy about his life. Thanks for all
you do, Okay, that obsession with Walt Whitman, he seemed crazy. Um,
and I just I don't I yeah, that seems bananas
to me. Just the idea that he spent years of
his life kind of obsessed with Walt Whitman and writing
(34:03):
him these really strange fan letters. Uh, that was That
was what it was. I never would have thought, you know.
I bet the guy who wrote Dracula wrote Walt Whitman
these really really emotionally raw yeah yeah letters about his life.
So I'm sorry that I didn't draw a more direct
(34:24):
line there, but that's what it was. Sorry to have
left you hanging. If you would like to write to us,
you can absolutely do that. You can do that at
History Podcast at i heeart radio dot com. You can
also find us on social media where Everywhere is Missed
in History, And if you would like to subscribe to
the podcasts, that is easy to do. You can do
that on the iHeart radio app at Apple Podcasts, or
(34:44):
wherever it is you listen. Stuff you missed in History
Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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