There is a lot of disinformation and superstition about the origin and meaning of Tarot cards. Do a Google search and you will find that most of the histories place their origin sometime in the Middle Ages. But actually the Tarot cards were ancient even at the time of the Middle Ages. The Dark Ages had dropped their umbrage over Western Europe, which was now poor and dirt-bound after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Culture fled because there was no money to support it and few people able to read. The pagan ways of the invading barbarians added to a darkness that lasted hundreds of years.

The reason for the assertion that the cards came into being during the Middle Ages is because that is when the Tarot cards were rediscovered. Basically everything was rediscovered during the Middle Ages because everything had been lost during the Dark Ages. That is why they are called the Dark Ages. Islamic culture had basically taken over the stewardship of Greek and Roman heritage and culture during the latter Dark Ages. Europe had surrendered any hold it might have had on world dominance of culture due to its Roman pedigree. Europe had become the refuge of illiterate serfs, uneducated knights pursuing phantom chivalrous quests, and cash-starved nobles.

So the resurrected Tarot cards began to be imbued with meanings appropriate to the culture of the High Middle Ages when Europe began to awaken from its dark slumber. But much of the meaning from their more distant past had been forgotten and lost. That is one of the reasons that the ancient sages involved in the genesis of the cards used pictures. Pictures, proverbially worth a thousand words, can keep a meaning that oral legend might twist or lose. If wrong interpretations of the pictures enter in for decades or even centuries, the images still exist to reflect their original intentions. This is probably one of the reasons the great Eastern teacher Jesus was always teaching in parables. The parables, like the ancient images of the Tarot, keep alive their germ of truth that can resist the misinterpretations of whatever Pharisees are currently in power, controlling the intellectual climate of the times.

There is a train of evidence and tradition that traces the origin of the Tarot cards to the dawn of history, and to the earliest civilizations, including ancient Egypt. Many people in our day are awestruck by the amazing ability of the ancient Egyptians to build the pyramids. An incredible knowledge and technology must have been available to them that seem to have been lost along history's way. What is the source of this advanced knowledge? Where did it go? After the tremendously large pyramids of the Fourth Egyptian dynasty, highlighted by Pharaoh Cheop’s Great Pyramid, the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still standing, the quality of succeeding pyramids declines as if dropping off a cliff. Some kind of technological dark ages entered Egyptian history, a loss of architectural secrets probably alluded to in the ancient Tarot card called “The Thunderstruck Tower” where a pyramid with its top being blown off by lightning is pictured.

Another line of evidence for the antiquity of the tarot cards is the abundant appearance of stars on the cards. The sages of ancient Egypt taught, “As above, so below.” The important pyramids of Egypt are laid out according to the pattern of the stars in the constellation Orion and the Milky Way. See figure 1.

The three main pyramids of the Giza complex are a mirror image of the belt of Orion. Orion is Osiris, the important Egyptian deity. Laying out the pyramids to correspond with the belt of Orion was another way to insure that the dead king would reach his afterlife home in the heavenly constellation. Oral tradition has come down to our day, which insists that “heaven” is in the open space in the constellation Orion, where new galaxies seem to be being created.[i]

The Egyptians were dualists. Everything had its counterpart, as above, so below. Nothing was seen in isolation. The Giza pyramids were a replica of the destination of the king. Far from being a tomb, the pyramid was the starting point of the pharaoh’s journey back to the stars from where he came, back to the creation event, the First Time. See Figure 2, which shows how the stars of Orion in the heavens match the landscape in Egypt on the ground.

[i] This is a teaching of several conservative Christian groups including Jack van Impe and the Seventh-day Adventist denomination.

The very existence of the near-unanimous acceptance of the major star groupings worldwide, such as the constellation Orion, from ancient times, is an evidence of the existence of a singular source for their naming. Some scholars have pointed to the ancient Egyptians as that source.[i]

If there were endless varieties of Tarot cards, with little similarity, or endless and hopelessly different and contradictory names for stars and constellations at various times in history (as common sense and evolutionary logic would expect) then there would be no force to the preceding argument. But the most fastidious historians of the history of astronomy and mythology from different cultures and different time periods in the past witness to the remarkable unity of star names and groupings among widely different cultures and peoples.[ii]

One attempting to blunt the force of this argument would have to explain how it is that the following stars in the sky end up being defined as a certain constellation. See Figure 3.

[i] Audrey Fletcher writes, after looking at the names and meanings of various constellations and making correspondences with Egyptian theology: “No-one except the Ancient Egyptians could have contrived these star constellations…” http://ancientegypt.hypermart.net/records/index.htm

[ii] For example, Bailly, History of Astronomy; Dupuis, L’Origines des Cultus; Volney, Les Ruines; Roberts, Letters to Volney; Haslam, The Cross and the Serpent; Rolleston, Mazzaroth; or The Constellations; as well as the work of Albumazer, the great Arab astronomer and Aben Ezra’s commentaries on his work; Uluh Beigh, the Tartar astronomer; and what ancient zodiacs that are available such as the Dendera and Esne.

Looking at the pattern of stars in Figure 3., different people at different times in history could certainly have nominated it with a variety of images and names. I see a cat chasing a mouse here, but when I look again I see a baseball player running to first base. I could name the three stars close together as Tinker, Evers and Chance, and call the conglomerate Cubby, or they could be Moe, Larry and Curly, and be called The Three Stooges. They could be Proton, Neutron and Electron and called The Trinity, but they might have been called Porthos, Athos and Aramis, and named The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas in the 19^th Century. Or how about an hourglass? (See Figure 4.)

This is the same set of stars as we saw in Figure 3. Did you see the hourglass when you looked at Figure 3? Probably not. But once you see the hourglass drawn as in Figure 4, it is a believable interpretation of those stars. Why didn't the ancients see that?

Why don’t we start calling this constellation Hourglass from now on? Will our name catch on? Why is it that almost all ancient zodiacs, and ours today, call this set of stars Orion, the mighty hunter? Whatever explanation is given must be a powerful one. Because in reasoning from cause to effect, the cause chosen must be sufficient to explain the effect. The effect is large and widespread; a near-unanimous agreement on what the constellations are, across time and civilizations. The explanation offered above has the power of simplicity coupled with that of sufficiency: a specific person or group named the constellation in the ancient past, and the name and configuration has stayed with the human race ever since.

So when that sage or group of sages from among the ancient Egyptians came to the stars in figure 3, what they came up with is pictured in Figure 5.

It is doubtful that anyone would have come up with such a picture without having some preconceived storyboard. Let’s be honest and say there is no way so many different cultures in different places would all look up at the stars in Figure 3 and say, “Hey look at that mighty hunter with the raised club, holding a lion skin.” If Figure 3 was shown to 1,000,000 fifth graders randomly, and if they were asked what this star pattern looked like to them, probably not one of the million would say they see a man raising a club (except if they happened to know the constellation already.)

THE GREAT UNANIMITY OF THE BASIC IMAGES IN THE TAROT DECK, AND BASIC CONSTELLATION NAMES AND PATTERNS IS A POWERFUL EVIDENCE FOR A SINGLE COMMON ORIGIN IN THE ANCIENT PAST FOR THESE PHENOMENA. There is a story in the stars, and there is a story in the Tarot cards. That is what this book is about.

Since the ancient Egyptian sages had the power to have the whole modern world following the naming of the constellations they created, it is not much of an extension to believe that the Tarot pictures which they also created could keep an amazing unity and similarity through so many succeeding centuries. This is especially true with Tarot cards. The stars in the sky have been the same and are the same throughout generations, but not so with the Tarot cards. There are sites on the web encouraging people to create their own cards. There could be a million different decks, but almost all the historic decks have the same number of major cards (22) with the same basic names.

The Tarot deck, like the mysterious pyramid shafts, and the ancient (and yet modern!) star groupings, are all windows back to the secrets and mysteries of the divinely inspired sages from the distant past. It is likely that the same sage or group of sages was responsible for the naming and meaning-infusion of the constellations, the building and meaning-infusion of the pyramids, and the creation and meaning-infusion of the Tarot cards.[i]

Oral and written legends[ii] say that these can be traced to Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian god Thoth. The Christian kabala claims that Hermes was the biblical patriarch Enoch. The Bible says that Enoch walked with God, and was translated to heaven without dying. He was possessed with storehouses of knowledge and used his intellectual gifts as a servant of God. There are indeed legends attributing to him the designing of the Great Pyramid, authoring the Tarot pictures as storyboards for future generations, and naming the constellations with Adam, the first man, and his gifted son Seth.[iii] This is as plausible an explanation for the origin and meaning of Tarot cards as any of the many esoteric and “secret society” attributions.

So there is reason to believe that Tarot cards, from ancient times, are shorthand messengers that shed light to true seekers even today. The objects pictured on the cards and their symbols have long been believed to be able to reveal secrets, and to show honest searchers, "The Way." The word "Tarot" means "the way," or “the royal road.”

When Jesus said, "I am the Way," he was no doubt making allusion to this widespread understanding. He was in a sense saying, “You are aware of the claims of the tarot cards and ancient teachings which claim they have the path to life, the way. I am that path embodied.” Many of the common people in his time were aware that ancient mystics and traditions as old as ancient Egypt had held before mankind the possible revelation of this "Way," or Jesus would probably not have used this expression. Like all good teachers he always seemed to start with what his hearers knew, (not what they did not know), to get them to things they did not indeed know—the way.

Whatever the exact path that brought the Egyptian tarot deck to us today, we would probably do well to follow the logic of the author of The Book of Thoth,[iv] a study of the Tarot of the ancient Egyptians: An obscure origin to the Tarot should not trump its utility; Einstein’s discoveries did not invent relativity, it was always there. The truths to which the Tarot cards point are eternal. While the past may be obscure, the present and future need not be. Let us walk in the light, while we have the light.

From here, the simple purpose of this book will be to take a simple walk through the "major arcana" (arcana means “profound secret”) of the ancient Egyptian tarot cards, the first 22 cards (from a usual deck of 78). We will examine the correspondences, major fulfillments, and explanations of the cards in hopes that truly, the 21st Century seeker can gain help in finding the Way.

You can get the book here.

[i] Carol Miller in her The Winged Prophet from Hermes to Quetzalcoatl, labors to show the tremendous similarities in sacred understandings between the Olmecs, Aztecs, and Incas on the one hand, with Egyptians, Chinese and Peruvians on the other. She mentions, for instance, that the Big Dipper and North Star were held to be sacred by every people on earth. She notes that the 22 major arcana Tarot cards correspond to the 22 lamatl cards that are part of the Borgia Codex used in ancient Mexica culture.

[ii] One resource on the web that gathers many of these is: http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/scripts/hermes.html

[iii] This idea is dealt with again in the explanation of card 15, Typhon, or, the Devil.

[iv] Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth; a Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians, Being the Equinox, Vol. III, no.V.