The 22 Tarotcards in their meaning as the 22 steps of consciousness.
Already in the 14th century were in europe gamecards in circulation
with which the 22 Tarotcards were later mixed.
At the 25. Mai 1377 the Magistrat(City Council) of the italian city Florenz had
forbidden a card-game named "naibbe". This word for game-cards
exists still nowadays as "Naipes" in the spanish language. The first
description comes from the monk "brother Johannes" from Rheinfelden
near Basel (Germany/Suisse). In his "Tractatus de moribus et
disciplina humanae conversationis", which is now in the possession of
the British Museum in London, he mentions that "Anno Domini 1374 a
game came to us, named card-game, which describes the state of the
world in a miraculous way".
The oldest known european sets are from the 15.th century
( Visconti-Tarot, 1450), which were still painted
before the Tarot de Marseille and had neither numbers nor titles.
Within the last 100 years many sets of modern artists came out which are were mixed with personal inspiration but they do not represent the Tarot of initiation. Sets for initiation are the 22 cards of Oswald Wirth , the Marseille-Tarot and the Waite-cards. The symbolism of the 22 cards must represent the spiritual process, and therefore i only accept the tarotbook of E. Haich for initiation, which relies on Oswald Wirth.
The italian
Visconti-Tarot (ca. 1450) is the oldest set of Tarotcards and
contains neither numbers nor titles. Later editions like the Marseille-Tarot
and the Waite Tarot and the Wirth-Tarot contained titles and the 22 hebrew
letters and numbers.
The paintings of these decks hide the knowledge of the initiates about the steps of the
path into the divine spheres, about the "Opus Magnum", the big work of personal perfection, and about the path to the
Nirvikalpa-Samadhi,
which had to be hidden by the initiates because of the "Don't give what is holy
to dogs or throw your pearls to pigs"(Matthew 7:6) but also because of the church and the
governments.
After the appearance of the Waite-Tarot (Pamela Colman Smith ;Dezember 1909; Verlag Rider & Son) the US Games INC claimed to have the copyright. Since 1996 the copyright of the Waite-Tarot is probably outdated in the USA.
There have been many theories about the origin of the Tarot. He was ascribed to the gipsys who had brought it from egypt, but the genetic origin of the gipsys is india.
The symbolism of the cards had an exact predicate and most of the modern sets are products of phantasy
just like the interpretations of the cards.
Therefore i strongly recommend the tarotbook " E. Haich : Wisdom of the Tarot ".
It is not like the common tarotbooks and describes the Tarot from the sight of the initiates
aand relies on the cards of Oswald Wirth.
The secret spiritual symbolism was depending on the method and practices of the different cultures,
and the 22 visions of John-Revelation show how sophisticated and difficult it can be to understand
true spiritual visions.
These 22 cards describe the path of the evolution of the human consciousness.
Literature :
E. Haich : Haich Wisdom of the Tarot
Woldemar von Uxkull : Eine Einweihung im alten Ägypten (german)
Further a
Weblink about the multitude of modern sets.
A WIKI about the Tarot
The Tarotalbum
