The Meaning Of Tarot Cards

By Anne Durrel

The origin of Tarot cards is vague and puzzling! Single description of the "true" history of the tarot connects the cards to Egyptian mysteries, Hermetic philosophy, the Kabbalah, alchemy and just about every other mystical system known to mankind! What we do know certainly is that cards first seen in Italy and France in the late fourteenth century and that by the 15th century rich Italian patrons custom-built superb decks to be used in a well-liked card game. Tarot cards lastly became associated with the esoteric sometime in the eighteenth century.

Tarot is most frequently used for divination. It is assumed that the cards can be applied to obtain foretelling into the current problems and probable forthcoming's of the subject.

A few tarot readers trust the cards assist them tap into a collective unconscious or into their own creative, unconscious as others deem that with tarot they are able to communicate with the Divine.

Typically, a tarot reading involves a 'seeker', who shuffles the cards and cuts the deck and a 'reader', who lays out the chosen cards in a pattern called a spread. Each position in the spread has a meaning, and each card has a variety of symbolic meanings as well. The reader knows how to interpret these cards and combines these two meanings to shed light on the seeker's questions.

Contemporary tarot decks comprise 78 cards, of which 22 have images representing powers, characters, virtues, and vices. The residual cards are divided into four 'suits' of 14 cards each. Every suit has ten numbered cards and four court cards (king, queen, knight, and page). The court cards can denote unlike persons in a tarot understanding , with every suit's "nature" giving hints about the person's physical and emotional characteristics.

Nowadays' current playing cards all changed from these suit cards.

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