Queen of Tarot

The ancient wisdom of the cards

Tarot Articles

Cubical Dice

Tags: dice, astralgi, games

Cubical dice, descended from Astralgi or sheeps' knuckle bones, made their way from Sumeria throughout the world. They had arrived in India by the 600s, and China by the 700s.

The Game of Leaves

Tags: chinese, dice, china, history, 0827, asian

The game was often referred to as "gold speckled leaves", which does make it sound quite a lot like early gold-leaf Tarot cards. Many scholars will tell you that playing cards were invented in 827 because they have conflated these two games. If there is any relationship between these games, which I doubt, it is this:

Éliphas Lévi

Tags: france, occultists, kabbala, cartomancy

Alphonse Louis Constant (a.k.a. Éliphas Lévi Zahed) was a famous French occultist and kabbalist who revolutionized the field of cartomancy. Had it not been for Lévi, the theories of Court de Gebelin might never have become popular.

Etteilla

Tags: france, occultists, divination, cartomancy

Jean Baptiste Alliette (a.k.a. Etteilla) was an influential French occultist who helped establish the occult nature of the Tarot. Had it not been for Etteilla, the theories of Court de Gebelin might never have become popular. It was Alliette who made divination with the Tarot popular.

Papus

Tags: france, occultists, kabbala

Papus was a French doctor, hypnotist, and occultist, who founded the modern Martinist Order and helped to popularize occultism. He was born in Spain in 1865, but his family moved to Paris when he was four years old, and he received his education there. He wrote about the Tarot from a Kabbalistic perspective, and was an expert on the works of Éliphas Lévi.

Antoine Court de Gébelin

Tags: france, book of thoth, egypt, occultists

Antoine Court de Gébelin (c. 1719-1784) was a French pastor who initiated the rumor that the Tarot represented the remnants of the Book of Thoth, the wisdom of the ancient pharaohs. He was incorrect, but his theory gained widespread popularity and it has taken over two hundred years to truly dispense with his ideas. Even today, there are people who believe that the Tarot is the Book of Thoth.

Gamblers caught printing cards in China

Tags: chinese, china, playing cards, asian, 1294, history

On the twenty-third day of the sixth month in the thirty-first year of the zhiyuan period (17 July 1294), we caught Yan Sengzhu and Zheng Zhugou playing cards, and have also found wood blocks to print cards. Each person has admitted to the truth of the accusation. We have, according to the rules, passed judgement and punished correctly the organizer Lu Donger, accessory to gambling Zheng Zhugou, the owner of the premises Jiang Sier, and the block printer Ye Lin, and dispatched to the Ever-abundant Treasury for deposit the nine cards (zhipai) that were about to be destroyed, and...