Are tarot cards linked to occult orders?
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Image: history.com
Tarot cards were repurposed by occult orders like the Golden Dawn, not invented by them.
Summary
The mainstream historical account distinguishes tarot’s documented origins from its later occult associations. The cards emerged in Renaissance Italy as a game; divination and occult symbolism were added or emphasized centuries later. Occult orders helped systematize and popularize those meanings, but available evidence does not establish that tarot was originally created by, or for, such orders.
- Tarot originated as a fifteenth-century Italian card game, not as a documented product of an occult order.
- Tarot’s occult and divinatory significance developed later, especially during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century occult revivals.
- The Golden Dawn is a documented occult-order connection: its materials explicitly teach tarot divination and Qabalistic correspondences.
Deeper Insight
Tarot started as an Italian card game. Then the Golden Dawn, an occult order, rebuilt it into a map of hidden doctrine.
In fifteenth-century Italy, tarot was a game. Centuries later, occultists saw something else in the same cards. Arthur Edward Waite, an occult writer, argued they might carry a secret tradition of Qabalah, alchemy and theosophy. The Golden Dawn taught them as a system of correspondences. A game became a language. Maybe the meaning was put in. Maybe it was found.
- What it could changeIf the cards hold an older doctrine, tarot would be one of the most widely copied secret texts ever made.
- How it touches todayThe occult meanings the Golden Dawn set down still shape how readers interpret the cards.
- Our futureA tool for play can become a tool for meaning, and maybe that is how hidden knowledge survives.
- Arthur Edward Waite argued that tarot might preserve a secret tradition and contain allegorical, theosophical, Qabalistic, or alchemical doctrine.
- Golden Dawn teachings explicitly connect tarot with occult significance, fortune-telling, and Qabalistic interpretation.
- Some esoteric traditions claim tarot encodes ancient Egyptian or other primordial wisdom, but the cited scholarly discussion describes this lineage as unverified or mythic.
Sources · 9
Featured · Analysis · hermeticgoldendawn.org
The Tarot – The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn®
The Tarot – The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn® ### The Tarot: Its Occult Significance, Use in Fortune-Telling and Method of Play, Etc. ### By S. L. MacGregor Mathers [This small booklet by S. L. MacGregor Mathers was originally published by George Redway in 1888. It was designed as a basic instr
Read sourceAnalysis · juliettewood.com
Secret Traditions in the Modern Tarot: Folklore and the Occult Revival
Secret Traditions in the Modern Tarot: Folklore and the Occult Revival I first encountered the evocative images of the tarot, as no doubt many others have done, in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. This led to Pamela Coleman Smith’s tarot deck, and from there to the idiosyncratic writings of A.E. Waite
Read sourceAnalysis · exa.ai
A Sociology of Tarot
# A Sociology of Tarot The Canadian Journal of Sociology. Published: 2014-07-07. 12 citations. ## Authors - Mike Sosteric (Athabasca University): h-index 7; 341 citations; corresponding author ## Topics - Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices - Religious Tourism and Spaces - Culinary Culture and
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