can anyone tell me? I heard they originated with tarot cards, but where did the idea of 52 of them, and kings, queens, jacks and aces come from? no one card? what’s with that?
Tha Tarot cards originated as an expression of Kabbalistic esoterism. They were designed around certain metaphysical principles: the four elements of fire, water, air, earth; and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
The clubs suit was originally Wands: fire.
The hearts suit was originally Cups: water.
The spades suit was originally Swords: air.
The diamonds suit was originally Pentacles: earth.
The Wand, Cup, Dagger, and Pentacle were the four elemental implements used in Magickal ritual.
In the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life is a diagram with ten spheres or sephiroth. Kabbalistic metaphysics posits four “worlds”, or levels of creation, with a Tree of Life in each one:
Atziluth—Archetypal World (World of Emanations) or Divine World
Briah—Creative World or World of Thrones
Yetsirah—Formative World
Assiah—Manifest World
The Four Worlds correspond to the four letters in Tetragrammaton, Yod Heh Vav Heh. The Tree of Life in the Four worlds was represented by the cards Ace to Ten in the four suits of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles, respectively. The Ace represented the first sephirah, Kether the Crown.
Originally there were four court cards to each suit: King, Queen, Prince, and Princess. They stood for a further subdivision of each suit as to fire, water, air, and earth, respectively.
Described above are the 56 Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana consisted of 22 trump cards depicting symbolic scenes, correlated with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the 22 paths connecting the sephiroth on the Tree of Life.
Although originally designed to represent Kabbalistic metaphysics, Tarot became a medieval card game called tarocchio in Italian (from the Arabic Turuq ‘paths’ or TarH ‘to throw’, related to the word maTraH from which we derive “mattress.”). As the card game got further and further away from its esoteric origins, the deck underwent alterations. All of the 22 trumps were discarded, except for Trump #0, The Fool, who is now called Joker. The Princesses were dropped, leaving a deck of only 52, and the Princes were renamed Knaves or Jacks. The French introduced the altered suits that we have today, further obscuring the mystical origins of the deck of cards.
Here’s a nice history of playing cards:
http://www.pagat.com/ipcs/history.html
Here’s a Google cache of one that I like even better, but looks like the site’s dead
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:8JrrUGPjWjI:www.usplayingcard.com/Tradition/CardHistory.html
Note that this site pegs the origin of Tarot-like decks (for gaming, not divination) at circa 1420 . . . subsequent to previous decks of playing cards.
Much of the stuff you read about the history of Tarot is backward-revisionist claptrap.
Here are links on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life:
The Tree of Life
The Four Worlds
and the correspondence of the Tarot to the Kabbalah:
The Tarot and the Kabbalah
that should make clearer the complex subjects I was discussing.
I agree that there are a lot of silly stories about the origin of the Tarot, but what we do know of it, that the name comes from Arabic via Italian, and its structure is mathematically aligned with the Hebrew Kabbalah, shows an interesting diversity behind it.
Podkayne wrote:
Aha! While I was pretty sure that playing cards pre-dated the Tarot cards, it never occurred to me that they were intended for games to begin with. It’s very interesting, and not too suprising, that cartomancy itself does not appear to date back to before 1750. A lot of things that are claimed to have dated back to antiquity arose around this time, including many of the tenents of cabalism, esotericism and masonry. It’s all the more amusing that the claims to Egyptian origin was based on the notion that it was introduced to Europe by the Gypsies – doubly spurious!
It’s something I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while, but never bothered to look up. Thanks.
Yeah . . . cruel friend of ours introduced to an incredibly French, incredibly evil card game by the name of Tarot. It uses a deck of four normal suits plus the “trump”, which has 22 cards like the Major Arcana, but there aren’t names on the trump cards; they’re simply numbered 1-21, plus the Joker (which takes the place of the Fool.) It’s pretty hard to get a hold of the cards in the US, but several variations are played in France, Italy, and other parts of Europe.
If you crave a headache, here are the rules:
http://www.pagat.com/tarot/frtarot.html
(That’s an awesome site, by the way . . . rules for tons and tons of card games.)