The Tarot (Folklore History Series)

By D. F. Ranking

The history of tarot cards and card reading has a long and unexpected history. From ancient Egypt to the fashionable salons and backrooms of 1800's Paris. This fascinating book has something for the newcomer to tarot as well as the already initiated. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781446548622

Book preview

—THE TAROT

Were we to hear that there exists day a work of the Ancient Egyptians, one of their books which has escaped the flames which devoured their superb libraries, and which contains their purest doctrine on interesting subjects, every one would, without doubt, be anxious to know a book so precious, and so extraordinary. Were we to add that this book is widely spread through a large part of Europe, and that for several

MODERN SCHAFFHAUSEN TAROT CARDS

centuries it has been in the hands of every one, surprise would certainly be increased. Would not this surprise be at its height if it were asserted that no one has ever suspected that it was Egyptian, that people possess it as if they did not possess it, that no one has ever sought to decipher a page of it, and that the fruit of a subtle wisdom is looked upon as a collection of extravagant designs having no meaning in themselves? Would not people think that one was trying to amuse oneself with, and to play upon, the credulity of one’s hearers?

‘Yet the fact is perfectly true: this Egyptian book, the sole remnant of their superb libraries, exists in our days. It is even so common that no savant has thought it worthy of his attention; no one before ourselves having suspected its illustrious origin. This book is composed of seventy-seven leaves or pictures, or rather of seventy-eight, divided into five classes, which each offer objects as varied as they are amusing and instructive: this book is in a word the pack of tarot cards, a pack unknown, it is true, in Paris, but well known in Italy, in Germany, and even in Provence, and as extraordinary from the designs shown by each of its cards, as from the number of the cards themselves.’

So, in Le Monde Primitif (vol. viii. p. 365), writes M. Court de Gebelin, the first, so far as I have been able to ascertain, to give any description of the curious pack of cards known as TAROTS, or to attempt to explain the mysterious symbols known as the keys of the tarot. Le Monde Primitif was published in 1781, and since that time some ten or a dozen writers have dealt with the subject, but, so far as my reading has extended, no one of these has given us any new facts with regard to these mysterious cards. Theories there are in abundance, as I shall show later, but there is still a wide field of investigation which, I venture to think, may prove worthy of the attention of some of the members of the Gypsy Lore Society. The points which seem to me