Christ, the World and Sin

Jean-Michel David www.fourhares.com Unless living in continental Europe and knowing what to look for and where, it is only since the nineteen-eighties that images from older decks became easily accessible with Kaplan’s first volume of his now four volume (and I hear soon-ish to be five) Encyclopedia of Tarot. Even with the first two volumes [...]

Petrarch’s Triumphs and the creation of tarot

by Robert Mealing forum.tarothistory.com Years ago, when I first started exploring tarot history, I came to the conclusion that Petrarch’s Triumphs were probably a key element in the creation of tarot. Petrarch was a major influence on his time, and tarot was born not too long afterward. To see this connection wasn’t a new or [...]

Tarot Trumps and Hebrew Letters:
variety and divergence

Jean-Michel David www.fourhares.com In looking through various decks and reading across a reasonably broad variety of books on tarot, divergent claims are made for trumps and various correlations. One of the most persistent is the claim that somehow trump cards and letters of the alphabet have correlations. If the earliest extent tarot cards have any [...]

Review: Jean Payen Tarot 1743 / 2008

Jean-Michel David www.fourhares.com There are a small number of decks which many amongst us have longed to see re-printed or make it to publication. The Jean Payen Tarot is one of those, and that for a variety of reasons, not least of which it forms an important link in the lineage of tarot during one [...]

Tarot and Freemasonry: an amorous chasm

Jean-Michel David www.fourhares.com I’ll begin boldly: modern Tarot arises in France in the mid-17th century; whereas modern Freemasonry arises in England in the early 18th. Neither knows of the other and the two are not seen in any manner as related nor as connected. I suppose I should justify a little my dates as they [...]

A History of Egyptian Tarot Decks

Mark Filipas In 1781, the French author Court de Gébelin referred to the Tarot as a book preserving the pure wisdom of ancient Egypt. This is the first written suggestion that occult wisdom had been encoded in the cards – in spite of the fact that they had already been in use for over 300 [...]

Whither Directing Your Course?

Jean-Michel David If the ‘Whence come you?’ can be said to often be asked of tarot, its complementary question seems often overlooked. Painting upon a broad canvas the development of tarot, we find its genesis in the region that is now Northern Italy, amidst influences from neo-platonism and neo-aristotelean thought. During the 19th century, its [...]

Twenty Years of Tarot:
The Lo Scarabeo Story.

Pietro Alligo et al, 2007 – review by EC Publishers Lo Scarabeo arouse a variety of feelings among tarot aficionados. Their decks are immensely popular, but have their detractors; some feel they are too “commercial”; some feel their decks “stray too far” from “true tarot” – whatever that is; some feel their decks are too [...]

The Boiardo Poem (15th century)

Tarotpedia translation > www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Boiardo Some time between circa 1460 – 1494, Count Matteo Maria Boiardo wrote a poem about cards, the structure of which either mimics or anticipates tarot: apart from the brief opening and closing sonets, the first four ‘chapters’ (of five) have fourteen parts, and the fifth twenty-two. This mirrors precisely tarot as [...]

Inquiries into Tarot
& on divination by means of tarot cards (Part 1)

by M. C. de M*** trans. by Jean-Michel David For this translation, I was very much aided by the various (often provisional) translations of Mary Greer and Jack Meier, Jess Karlin, Donald Tyson and those who contributed to Tarotpedia’s entry (especially Stephen John Mangan / kwaw). Each different translation provided thoughts for different nuances, for [...]