Ok, this is new for me. The only information ( by stories ) I had was that the cards originated from Morocco and indeed had the knowledge of the Book of Thoth in them.

www.levity.com/alchemy/labarinto.html

Yes, and the tarot cards were derived from playing cards, not the other way around. Apparently, the suits, pentacles, swords, cups, and wands were the original suits in the playing card deck. When playing cards were mass produced in France, the printers found it easier to do the suits we now know. Thus swords became spades, cups became hearts, pentacles became diamonds, and wands became clubs.

Yeh, then all the tarot deck was created for that game, and we had all the sensationalist propositions from France...

From what I know they date from Egypt, from where the Jews learned a lot.
The Tarot cards started as pictograms of Man / Kabbalah.

There shall still be many versions of the images & symbols to come!

ML.

It felt like the right time to post this. I had a wonderful Teacher who left me his notes. His name was Ditch Gault. He never got to make them into a book....I hope to do so one day, and to give profits to his widow. Anyway, this is from his notes (he was quite a "gypsy scholar"!!!):

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The oldest known Tarot deck is one reputed to have been painted by Jacquemin Grigonneur for Charles VI of France, about 1390 A.D. Seventeen of the designs remain in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. (Some scholars feel that these are beautiful Italian fakes of a later date!) The “Charles VI Deck” contains the following cards: The Fool, Emperor, Pope, Lovers, World, Temperence, Fortitude, Justice, Moon, Sun, Chariot, Hermit, Hanged Man, Death, Tower, Judgement and one solitary Page of Swords. The trumps are not numbered, so it is unlikely that the deck was ever intended for gaming.

(Snip!)

In order to give a history of where the Tarot came from, only speculation can fill the gaps. The tarot contains elements from many fields, but some elements can be said to be very strong: 1) Neoplatonism, and other western elements from ancient mystery religions; 2) Kabbalism, and other related forms of Jewish mysticism; 3) Islamic mysticism–Sufism; 4)Christian mysticism and heresy; 5) perhaps a smattering of far-eastern thought. These will allow us to trace a theoretical route taken by the elusive Tarot deck. In its last stop before completion lastly, it picked up a heavy dose of Celtic craziness.

I personally believe that the Tarot deck, or a Proto-tarot, was spread from Persia by various mystic sects in Islam. Secondly, I believe that it was brought into southern France by the Cathar Church. I also believe that this deck was probably a “mnemonic” teaching device, used by both Islamic and Christian mystics in Europe. The Religious Wars of Spain, the Heresy Pograms, and the Holy Office of the Inquisition may have irradicated both the people who used the deck and any gloss they may have left behind. It is also my opinion that the proto-Tarot entered Europe BEFORE the Crusades and the “Renaissance” of the 12th Century.

(NOTE: See Idries Shah’s book “The Sufis” for his reference to an Islamic origin of playing cards.) (Snip!)

By the 1400's, the Deck is already in Europe.

Sometime earlier, the deck was probably carried into Spain by a Sufi Mystic—where it made its way over the Pyrenees into the hotbed of heresy known as Provence. From about 960, Provencals had engaged in trafficking information with the Arab Intelligencia located mostly in Madrid. In 967 a cleric and mathematician named Gerbert (later Pope Sylvester II) crossed over into Spain for the express purpose of getting Arab Math manuscripts translated. His short stay coincides with the last years of the reign of Hakin II, the Spanish Caliph. This enlightened ruler encouraged scholarly eclecticism among Christians, Jews, and Islamic thinkers. His huge library of, perhaps, 400,000 volumes, was a haven for intellectuals at a time when there were only about 1,000 books in all of Christian Europe. When Gerber left Spain in 970, he made arrangements with a Christian, Llobert of Barcelona, for manuscripts to be translated and transhipped to him. He was especially interested in manuscripts on Mathematics and Astrology. Gerber proves, without a doubt, that there was a trade, perhaps underground, in arabic manuscripts into the Europe of the “Dark Ages.

In this century a serious Jewish scholar, G.G. Scholem, began to re-examine the history of Jewish Mysticism—Kabbalism. In his “Major Trends of Jewish Mysticism,” he makes a good case for manuscripts being importated BACK INTO SPAIN by the mid-1100's. The most famous of all Kabbalistic books is the “Sepher Zohar” (Book of Splendor), which was probably written by a Spanish Kabbalist Moses de Leon ni about 1275. . .What Scholem showed was the “Zohar” was based on an EARLIER book, “The Bahir.” “The Bahir” seems to have been written in Provence in the mid-1100's. He wrote: “...it is reasonable to assume that the Kabbalists of Provence who wrote or edited the book “Bahir” owe it to the influence of the catharists, the chief religious force in Provence until 1220, ie. during the years which saw the rise of Kabbalism.

Scholem also finds it probable that the writings of John the Scott or Johannes Scotus Erigena (meaning John the Scott from Ireland?!) Had considerable influence on the Provencal Kabbalists who wrote the “Bahir.” John the Scott was an Irish mystic and scholar who was attached to the court of Charlemagne. In the period before the “Dark Ages” the Irish (Celtic) Catholic Church was the major power in Christendom in the west, outside of Rome. In matters of theology and scholarship, the Celtic Church was paramount. The Irish scholars were the only translators of Greek manuscripts in Western Europe, for example.

(Maggie’s note: It is interesting that Shirley McLaine (in her book “The Camino”) has written of a past life as a coffee-colored, dark-haired woman who walked “The Camino” as Charlemagne’s companion, and talked to him about mysticism!)

Shah’s point on Islamic origins is important, but his desire to debunk Kabbalistic and Christian elements may be due to his own zeal, rather than to reality. Shah knows well that long before 1,000 AD, Sufi doctrine had incorporated elements of both into its own beliefs and doctrines. The great alchemist Jabir Ibn Hayyan al-Sufi incorporated Kabbalistic number theory into his writings as early as the 700's. The Ishmaili Encyclopedists of Basra did much the same in the 900's. It is not difficult to trace their effect upon Spanish Sufis in the Middle Ages, like Ibn Arabi. The Islamic mystics and Kabbalists seem to have had close relations in Spain. An older mysticism from the Neo-platonic Celtic Church meets both Islamic and Jewish mysticism in Provence, and perhaps this interface resulted in something wholly new. One of these new things might be the European Tarot; another might be the Cathar Church of southern France.

The Cathar Church of Provence was the first major theological revolt that Christianity had suffered since the days of the early church. We really do not know when it began, except that the Church records mention the first burning of a Cathar in Piedmont, in Italy, in 1020 AD. The standard Catholic version of the Cathars sees them as a western version of the eastern Orthodox heresy known as the Bogomil Church. More recent writers such as Zoe Olderberg have argued that the Cathar church was a home grown product only superficially connected with the Bogomils. The Cathars eventually severed relations with the Manicheans of the east. They seem to have come to consider themselves as Christians in complete disagreement with Rome. Most records of the Cathars come from the Roman Church, so we should be warned that these records will present them in the worst possible light.

(Snip!)

The Cathar Church is NOT an isolated phenomenon. It is part of the entire cultural “Renaissance” which occured in Provence in the Middle Ages. Dante, as we recall, wanted to write “The Divine Comedy” in Provencal, but was convinced that he would be identified by authorities with the heresy there. Dante also built much of the mystic cosmology in the “Comedy” on the writings of Ibn Aribi, the Spanish Sufi. Among the independent thinkers of Italy in the 1300's, Provence was considered a rare haven of ecclecticism and freedom.

(Snip!)

In my opinion the Cathars are only a part of a magnificent and tragic flowering which took place, most noticiably, in Provence. Whole Multi-volumes have been devoted to the whys and wherefores of this flowering–so I can hardly clear up this historical problem in a short space. There was a new examination of Christian writings, discouraged by Rome. The writings of other people became available. There was a nostalgia for the “old religion” both Pagan and Celtic Christian. No doubt the unique similarities of various forms of mysticism, Pagan, Christian, Jewish, or Islamic, became apparent.

It is quite likely that the European Tarot deck came from the Provencal “Renaissance” as a result of the unique intercultural exchanges which existed there. The idea that the card deck originated in Islamic society seems likely, but it is also likely that the European Tarot incorporates much more than just information irroded from an original source. It is difficult to tell what is “pure” Sufism, when Sufism itself is full of borrowed elements in the first place! The idea that the Tarot we know originated with the Cathars, or similar sect, has plagued several commentators, such as Harold Bayley, A.E. Waite, and Medieval historian Steven Runciman.

The question remains open.



(From Maggie: The main thing Ditch always stressed to me was that the Tarot is not a “dead” piece of knowledge. It is a living, changing, growing thing! That is part of its vast beauty!)