If life is a game of cards, we are born without knowledge of the rules. Yet we must play our hand.

Is the tarot only a card game, or is there a philosophy behind it? I am convinced that the cards contain an important message.The origins of the tarot are shrouded in mystery. It seems that the high priests of ancient Egypt transmitted their secret knowledge by means of pictorial symbols and that these symbols were the twenty-two Major Arcana of the tarot pack. It is believed that Moses brought these cards with him to Israel, having received them from the high priests of Egypt.That explains why the Hebrew cabala is linked to the twenty- two cards (tarot - tora - rota).

The first tarot cards we know of were found in Italy, designed by Bonifacio Bembo in the fifteenth century for the Visconti family of Milan. Later the cards became popular at all levels of society. Used as normal playing cards, they eventually lost their original significance. It was not until the eighteenth century that Antoine Court de Gébelin rediscovered their esoteric meaning. These same cards, with the same symbols, were and are found all over the world.

The Major Arcana are engraved In stone inside the dome of Siena. These depictions date from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a period when many church leaders, including some popes, were interested in alchemy and astrology. This explains the presence of tarot symbols in the dome of Siena. Andrea Mantegna too, was interested in the tarot and made some beautiful engravings of its symbols. They are now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

The tarot has given me a greater understanding of the spiritual world and of life's problems, and also the awareness that each difficulty must be overcome, so that one can go on to the next hurdle and finally reach inner peace and the garden of paradise.

The Magician  /   The High Prestess  /   The Weel of Fortune  /   Strength  /   The Sun  /   Death  /   The Devil  /   The World  /   The Fool  /   The Hierophant  /   The Hanged Man  /   Justice  /   The Choice (the lovers)  /   The Hermit  /   The Falling Tower  /   The Emperor  /   The Empress  /   The Chariot  /   The Star  /   The Judgment  /   Temperance  /   The Moon