There is hardly anyone who was never tempted to ponder what the future holds for them. How their plans would work out? Which decision is better to take? And what if… (insert option here)?
Do you get shivers down the spine or at least slight nervousness and general unease, when it comes to fortune-telling business? It is not about being superstitious or sceptical, it is about the unknown. The unknown is the universal force to catch off guard even the most prepared for this life. It is that eerie feeling, when you walk about the fun fair and you spot the tent of the cunning old lady with the obligatory crystal ball and tarot cards.
This is a typical scenario of how we adopt various ready-made scripts and do not actually look past the popular belief.
The tarot cards, for example, are known to the general public to be a fortune-telling tool. One suggestion is that, rather than predicting the future, nowadays they are used to explain and put the present into perspective, to challenge the perception of a current situation and eventually give a new point of view, as an alternative psycho-therapeutic method to work with the subconscious and ultimately know ourselves better.
The word tarot was introduced into the English language in the 16th century as a direct borrowing from French. The word originated in Italian, deriving from the name of the playing cards tarocchi (singular tarocco), which seems to have originated in northern Italy around 14th century and according to one theory the name of the cards relates to the Taro river in the region.
Another theory links the etymology of the word to the Arabic turuq, which means ‘ways’.
Even if the etymology stays fairly unknown, the set of cards appears to have easily spread across Europe to be used for numerous games.
Initially, there was nothing obscure and occult about the tarot deck which numbers a total of 78 playing cards – 22 figured cards plus a set of 56 cards in four suits.
But two centuries later, we find a written evidence of the divination usage of the tarot cards in The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forlì book from 1540 where the cards are used to select a random oracle, yet have no meaning in themselves.
Half a century later, the word appears for the first time in print in a British source in its original meaning of playing cards. That happens in 1592, in De La Mothe’s work French Alphabet: “Will you play at Tables, at Dice, at Tarots, at Chess?.”
In 1770s, Antoine Court de Gébelin, a French-born Protestant pastor, published a dissertation on the origins of the symbolism in the Tarot relating its origin to the Ancient Egypt and the believe that the Tarot images represented the ancient Egyptian Theology.
With time, the Tarot cards started been praised as art by collectors, as The Fortnightly review – one of the most prominent and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England reports in 1899: “Piot..was..the first to collect ‘Tarots’, those valuable playing cards, which now fetch such a high price. “
