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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:
Tarot was an elite gambling card game in late medieval Europe. It consisted of four suits, just as there are in the modern 52 card pack, and also a number of trumps. These are equivalent to the modern joker card, but there were more of them. These trump cards could have all sorts of designs on them, and often included classical references, astrological symbols or allegorical images. I wouldn't say the meaning of these cards weren't occult, because in the 15th-17th century if you were interested in classicism or astrology you were into the occult almost by definition, but they weren't considered esoteric paraphernalia. They were playing cards for gambling. After printing technology spread so did cards, and a wide range of cheap sets were available, with countless regional variations. Various forms of tarot are still a popular game across much of continental Europe. At the same time as the game spread, so did the practice of telling fortunes by drawing cards. The potential for esoteric interpretations in the images on the trump cards may well have encouraged this practice, but it's also part of a wider set of divination traditions based in interpreting chance occurrences (like reading tea leaves or throwing knuckle bones). As far as I know this use of tarot cards wasn't really practiced in academic occult circles in the early modern period, but I might be wrong about that, because certain occultists did pay attention to folk magic and popular divination (like John Dee getting into scrying). Anyway in the 19th century occultists started to get super into tarot. They really liked the idea that it was both a form of folk magic, often done for money by cunning people and Romany fortune tellers, but it also had these clear references astrological and esoteric symbology. They particularly liked the trump cards in the tarot deck, because these were both the most iconographically dense. So at some point in occult circles people started to call the suited cards the minor arcana and trumps the [i]major arcana[i]. The trumps also get redrawn to emphasise occult interpretations. The devil starts to look like baphomet, the popess is renamed the high priestess, the juggler becomes the magus.
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May 4, 2020 18:12
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 18:48 |
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