TAROT HISTORY Part 1

The history of Tarot remains mysterious and intriguing, despite having been the subject of endless research and countless books. There is hardly a book written on the subject of Tarot that does not touch on its origins in greater or lesser depth, and some are devoted to nothing else.

The first time I encountered Tarot as a child, albeit at a safe distance, was at the Nottingham Goose Fair, when I glimpsed a Gypsy card reader sitting behind a crystal ball in a multi coloured tent of the kind that might have been seen at a medieval joust. Pointy roof, stripey, dimly lit with bunting around, and a big sign with images of palms, and cards. It pulled me in and made me scared at the same time. My grandma said it was the gypsies, they read cards, they came from Egypt, they were not to be trusted, we wouldn’t go in there, she said.

Looking back, that momentary experience encapsulates my earliest beliefs around tarot cards, or anything remotely occult. It was enticing, mysterious, intriguing, I could feel my young self being drawn in and it made me quite curious; but it was not to be trusted, it was all nonsense and was possibly fraudulent. Decades later when I began to explore many aspects of spirituality and all things esoteric, it took me a long time to unravel those critical, deeply introjected, logical voices of my family.

The Tarot story goes (or at least, so it went in the 1960’s in my childhood) that the cards and the card readers had originated in Egypt in the dim, distant, forgotten past, and that now the gypsies travelled around in caravans using cards to read people’s fortunes. Today it is widely understood that gypsies, the Romany or travelling community, did not originate in Egypt but in Northern India. But what about the cards, the Tarot? The old story tells that over 2,500 years ago, there was a prophecy that all the wisdom of Egypt - the religion, the cities, the temples and the deep understanding of the soul’s journey through this life and the next - would all be lost. Everything from that vibrant culture would disappear into the sands and mists of time. The sages of ancient Egypt wanted to preserve their ancient secrets, and so to prevent their mysteries from being forgotten forever, they encoded their knowledge into a set of symbolic images. It was these images that would eventually be recorded onto the cards that became The Tarot.

That was the story then, and even today, some people believe that there is an undiscovered passage between the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza which is rich with wall paintings depicting this “original” tarot. Or that there is an underground Hall of Records near the Sphinx which contains the ancient Egyptians’ sacred knowledge of life, death, rebirth and all there is between. Given the ancient Egyptian’s astounding abilities to build huge monuments, their fascination with the afterlife and their complex spiritual beliefs, I admit that I do not find these theories completely incredible. They made records of very many things. Why not their deepest secrets of life itself, of their initiative path, too? However, I am in a tiny minority, possibly a romantic minority of one all by myself, on this point. Truthfully, I would just like this enchanting story to be real. It has a kind of nostalgic yet universal appeal:it is indeed tempting to think that there was some semi-perfect mythical past time when wise sages who knew more than us made efforts to guide future generations through life’s challenges, just as they had guided the youth of their own generations. Historically, and sadly for me, this beautiful and poignant story is not provable.

Here is what we do know about Tarot.

It is impossible for there to have been Tarot cards or any playing cards in Europe till roughly 13th Century AD because till then there was no paper or printing presses here - books were handwritten on parchment or vellum, wholly unsuitable for cards or card games. Ancient Egypt had no paper either, they used papyrus. So the argument goes that as they had no cards, they could not have had Tarot. (Personally I don’t think that argument holds water, as the images could have been memorised, or recorded on papyrus or in stone. The images didn’t necessarily have to have been on cards, but as I say, I’m in a minority here!). Paper making was first invented in China but it took over 1,000 years for it to reach Europe, eventually arriving in Toledo, southern Spain, in 1085. Why there? Because whilst almost all of Europe was Christian at this point, the south of Spain was occupied by the Moors. Apart from the Byzantine Empire, a last beleaguered outpost of Christianity geographically, everything East of Europe as far as China was Muslim. They had busy, existing trade routes into Europe, some to Venice and northern Italy but predominantly into Moorish Spain, which belonged to them. Thus paper, books and printing found their way west to Spain slowly but surely via trade routes operated by Muslims and Christians.

Christian Europe had no public libraries in the eleventh century - Moorish Spain had over 70. All of Europe had but 2 universities, Moorish Spain alone had 17, including a great university at Toledo. Toledo would have needed books, and paper. The Arabic world was highly literate, artistic and cultured, with famous scholars of mathematics, science, astrology, astronomy and philosophy. 99% of Europe was illiterate at this time, including kings and monarchs. The Moors with their universities, paper, and love of learning brought paper making initially to Toledo, and by 1350, paper making was established throughout Moorish Spain and northern Italy.

There was another thing the Moors had - playing cards.

The first playing cards in Europe, introduced by the Arabs, are known as the Mamluk cards. The Mamluks were ferocious slave-warriors of medieval Islam - Mamluk means “owned”. Boys would be captured from surrounding areas, trained to become an elite fighting force, and sold. Yes - it does remind you of the Unsullied slave army in Game of Thrones, without the castration part. In time, the Mamluks overthrew their masters, defeated the Mongols, defeated the Crusaders, established a dynasty and ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517. Warfare was their primary concern, but they made immense contributions to art and architecture, and also to the crafts of book making and illustration. The art of the armourer was highly prized due to the importance of battle, and their armour was highly and intricately decorated. Thy excelled in metal work and glass making, and in the decoration of otherwise utilitarian objects.

In 1931, a nearly complete deck of medieval playing cards, dating from the mid-15th century, was found languishing in the Topkapi Museum of Istanbul. This deck, now known as The Mamluk deck, is absolutely beautiful. It’s highly ornamented, with gold leaf, intricate geometric patterns and designs, and every card is inscribed with poetry. It is also instantly recognisable as a deck of cards - you could play Bridge or Poker with it today, although there is is so much ornate patterning it is difficult to distinguish between the cards. There are the usual 52 cards, with 4 suits running from Ace to 10 plus 3 court cards in each suit. The court cards do not show persons, but have abstract patterns and calligraphy, due to Islamic proscriptions on depicting people.

Europeans adopted cards and card games with relish. The cards changed their faces somewhat to fit into their new Spanish, French and Italian homes. The suits in the Mamluk deck were Coins, Scimitars, Polo Sticks and Myriads. Scimitars became Swords, the curved scimitar not being in use by Europeans. Polo Sticks became Wands, or Batons, or Sceptres - just another type of wooden stick in effect, as Polo had not been introduced to Europe either at this stage. Myriads became Cups, but they had always been cups - there was a confusion somewhere out on the central asian steppes between similar sounding words, the word for cup in one language, “tumam”, sounding like the word for 10,000 (a Myriad) in another. And Coins - are universal, they stayed the same.

To this day, Italian cards have suits of Scimitars, Coins, Wands and Cups; Spanish have Swords, Coins, Batons and Cups. In England the suits eventually became Spades, Diamonds, Clubs and Hearts.

The court cards in the Mamluk deck are King, Viceroy and Deputy, sometimes translated as King, Deputy and 2nd Deputy (no queens). The arabic word for Deputy “Na’ib” became the first European name for playing cards, which are still called Naipes in Spanish.

The entrance of the playing card into Europe can be found in and dated by legal records: from 1370 there start to be references to the game of cards or game of Na’ibs/Na’ipes in legislation against gambling. Laws that previously prohibited games of dice suddenly began to include games of cards. Card games must have spread like a rash all over Europe because within a decade there were prohibitions against cards everywhere. It’s interesting that paper and paper making took over 1,000 years to reach Spain in 1058 AD, from China, and only continued to creep extremely slowly northwards. The first paper mills occurred in Russia in 1576; in 1490 in England (but not commercially successful till 1588) and Sweden in 1612. Yet cards rampaged across Europe in a decade! Possibly this says something about the human desire to play vs the desire to study. Or maybe its the need to play vs the ability to study, bearing in mind that plagues had ravaged Europe killing at least 50% of the population in the recent past centuries and people were constantly reminded of Death.

There are very very few remaining playing card decks from the 14th century. We know that the suit names were changed slightly as I mentioned above, to incorporate objects more familiar to Europeans. The court cards were changed to show actual people, with a King on his throne, a Knight on his horse, and a Page standing. There were still no queens. The aces remained very ornate, often with a hand outstretched to hold a crowned Sword, or a be-ribboned Wand/Sceptre. But paper cards wear out, they don’t last forever if used, and single cards can get lost making a deck unplayable. Once they became damaged its easy to assume cards were used for kindling, or for stuffing into cracks of walls to keep out the draught. Existing cards from this date are extremely rare.

Card games were trick taking games, “Trionfi”, like Bridge or Whist today, and they were immensely poplular. If you’ve played a game like this, you’ll know that there will be a group of people, probably 4, siting round a table and the idea is to win the “trick”, by playing the highest card of the suit in each turn. The suit is decided by the player who goes first in that turn, and if you don’t hold a card of that suit, you have to discard a low value card of a different suit. But, one suit will have been designated as Triumphs - Trionfi - from where we get our word Trumps. If you have even a low value card of the Triumph suit, you can play that card and trump everyone else.

It is quite entertaining to think of some 14th century Spanish merchants being taught Na’ibs, Trionfi games, in a tavern in Toledo or Venice by Moorish merchants or sailors. Easy to imagine the howls of despair at getting trumped, and the cries of delight when the trick is won, and the banter between new friends, and the wine as dusk falls, and the placing of bets and gambling on the game, and the losing of tempers when the bet and money is lost - I imagine all of that can not be so very different from a group of guys sitting in tavern, having a few drinks and playing cards today. Its not a stretch of the imagination to picture the fun, the gambling, and the fun getting a bit out of hand, and the neighbours complaining about the brawls, and the clerics complaining to the lawyers about the gambling and rowdiness and the debts. Until the boring council comes in and bans cards!

And how would you make this even more exciting? You could introduce a whole 5th suit of Triumphs, from 1-21 with ascending order of power, but with no numbers written on them so you would have to memorise the images and the order they go in, and you could have a 22nd Trump card with no number at all, not even an unwritten number, called The Fool, “El Mat”, and he has complicated rules all of his own because he is outside numbers; and you could have Queens because a king needs a queen so that makes 4 court cards instead of 3; and of your 4 normal suits you count the Long suits which are Swords and Wands from top to bottom, so ace, 2, 3 are low, and the round suits which are Cups and Coins you count from bottom to top, so Ace,2,3 are high; so 2 suits are normal and 2 are backwards, definitely harder to remember which way round after a drink or two, and that would make it all way more complicated and exciting and competitive and fun and worth gambling on, and now we have a new and much better trick-taking card game called…TAROT.

And, to have the time and leisure to play this game and the intelligent mind to memorise all the rules and images, and the money to pay for this large deck with the extra cards which means it can’t be mass produced at a printers because it has to be hand painted, we are going to have to be rich. Very rich.

Its time to meet The Dukes Of Milan.