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105-423: Divination can be seen as an attempt to organize what appears to be random so that it provides insight into a problem or issue at hand. Some instruments or practices of divination include Tarot-card reading, rune casting , tea-leaf reading , automatic writing , water scrying , and psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms and DMT . If a distinction is made between divination and fortune-telling , divination has

210-595: A Greek fable about avarice . Although the ancient Egyptian language had not yet been deciphered, Court de Gébelin asserted the name "Tarot" came from the Egyptian words Tar , "path" or "road", and the word Ro , Ros, or Rog , meaning "King" or "royal", and that the word literally translated to "the Royal Road of Life". Subsequent research by Egyptologists found nothing in the Egyptian language to support Court de Gébelin's etymologies . Despite this lack of any evidence,

315-604: A dissertation on the origins of the symbolism in the tarot in volume VIII of work Le Monde primitif in 1781. He thought the tarot represented ancient Egyptian Theology , including Isis, Osiris, and Typhon. For example, he thought the card he knew as the Papesse and known in occult circles today as the High Priestess represented Isis . He also related four tarot cards to the four Christian Cardinal virtues : Temperance , Justice , Strength and Prudence . He related The Tower to

420-428: A general wanted to know if the omens were proper for him to advance on the enemy, he would ask his seer both that question and if it were better for him to remain on the defensive. If the seer gave consistent answers, the advice was considered valid. During battle, generals would frequently ask seers at both the campground (a process called the hiera ) and at the battlefield (called the sphagia ). The hiera entailed

525-411: A large number of signs that indicated the gods' approval or disapproval. These signs could be interpreted according to the appearance of the organs, for example, if the liver was "smooth, shiny and full" or "rough and shrunken". The Etruscans looked for the caput iocineris , or "head of the liver". It was considered a bad omen if this part was missing from the animal's liver. The haruspex would then study

630-426: A more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine . Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion. In its functional relation to magic in general, divination can have a preliminary and investigative role: [...]

735-571: A number of archeological artifacts depict Etruscan haruspicy. These include a bronze mirror with an image of a haruspex dressed in Etruscan priest's clothing, holding a liver while a crowd gathers near him. Another significant artifact relating to haruspicy in Ancient Italy is the Piacenza Liver . This bronze model of a sheep's liver was found by chance by a farmer in 1877. Names of gods are etched into

840-574: A popular form of divination from physiology. Stemming from Western influences, body reading or ninsou , determines personality traits based on body measurements. The face is the most commonly analyzed feature, with eye size, pupil shape, mouth shape, and eyebrow shape representing the most important traits. An upturned mouth may be cheerful, and a triangle eyebrow may indicate that someone is strong-willed. Methods of assessment in daily life may include self-taken measurements or quizzes. As such, magazines targeted at women in their early-to-mid twenties feature

945-409: A practitioner to "a physician trying to heal the sick with the help of the same natural principles." Divination was a central component of ancient Mesoamerican religious life. Many Aztec gods , including central creator gods , were described as diviners and were closely associated with sorcery . Tezcatlipoca is the patron of sorcerers and practitioners of magic . His name means "smoking mirror,"

1050-526: A reference to a device used for divinatory scrying . In the Mayan Popol Vuh , the creator gods Xmucane and Xpiacoc perform divinatory hand casting during the creation of people. The Aztec Codex Borbonicus shows the original human couple, Oxomoco and Cipactonal , engaged in divining with kernels of maize. This primordial pair is associated with the ritual calendar, and the Aztecs considered them to be

1155-463: A series of paintings between 1938 and 1942, owes much to Crowley's development of Thelema in the years following the dissolution of the Hermetic Order. While the deck follows Golden Dawn teachings with respect to the zodiacal associations of the major arcana and the associations of the minor arcana with the various astrological decans, it also: While Crowley managed to print a partial test run of

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1260-415: A standstill. “Negative poe” is when the flat sides fall downward and abruptly stop; this indicates "No". When there is a positive fall, it is called “Sacred poe”, although the negative falls are not usually taken seriously. As the blocks are being dropped the question is said in a murmur, and if the answer is yes, the blocks are dropped again. To make sure the answer is definitely a yes, the blocks must fall in

1365-474: A supernatural force or a mystical energy is guiding the cards into a layout. Alternatively, some practitioners believe tarot cards may be utilized as a psychology tool based on their archetypal imagery, an idea often attributed to Carl Jung . Jung wrote, "It also seems as if the set of pictures in the Tarot cards were distantly descended from the archetypes of transformation, a view that has been confirmed for me in

1470-434: A very enlightening lecture by Professor Bernoulli." During a 1933 seminar on active imagination , Jung described the symbolism he saw in the imagery: The original cards of the Tarot consist of the ordinary cards, the king, the queen, the knight, the ace, etc., only the figures are somewhat different, and besides, there are twenty-one [additional] cards upon which are symbols, or pictures of symbolical situations. For example,

1575-464: A “yes” position three times in a row. A more serious type of divination is the Kiō-á. There is a small wooden chair, and around the sides of the chair are small pieces of wood that can move up and down in their sockets, this causes a clicking sounds when the chair is moved in any way. Two men hold this chair by its legs before an altar, while the incense is being burned, and the deity is invited to descend onto

1680-412: Is a practice in which one would fast and keep themselves away from light in a room until midnight to then complete a set of complex events to interpret symbols encountered throughout the journey to foresee the coming year. In Islam , astrology ( ‘ilm ahkam al-nujum ), the most widespread divinatory science, is the study of how celestial entities could be applied to the daily lives of people on earth. It

1785-475: Is directly derived from Etruscan religion , as one of the three branches of the disciplina Etrusca . The Latin terms haruspex and haruspicina are from an archaic word, hīra = "entrails, intestines" (cognate with hernia = "protruding viscera" and hira = "empty gut"; PIE *ǵʰer- ) and from the root spec- = "to watch, observe". The Greek ἡπατοσκοπία hēpatoskōpia is from hēpar = "liver" and skop- = "to examine". The spread of hepatoscopy

1890-595: Is famous for arulvakku in Tamil Nadu . The people in and around Mangalore in Karnataka call the same, Buta Kola , "paathri" or "darshin"; in other parts of Karnataka, it is known by various names such as, "prashnaavali", "vaagdaana", "asei", "aashirvachana", and so on. In Nepal it is known as, "Devta ka dhaamee" or " jhaakri ". In English, the closest translation for these is, " oracle ." The Dalai Lama , who lives in exile in northern India, still consults an oracle known as

1995-426: Is important to emphasize the practical nature of divinatory sciences because people from all socioeconomic levels and pedigrees sought the advice of astrologers to make important decisions in their lives. Astronomy was made a distinct science by intellectuals who did not agree with the former, although distinction may not have been made in daily practice, where astrology was technically outlawed and only tolerated if it

2100-494: Is increasingly important for young Japanese, who consider personality the driving factor of compatibility, given the ongoing marriage drought and birth rate decline in Japan. An import to Japan, Chinese zodiac signs based on the birth year in 12 year cycles (rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog, and boar) are frequently combined with other forms of divination, such as so-called 'celestial types' based on

2205-503: Is mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel 21:21: For the king of Babylon standeth at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination; he shaketh the arrows to and fro, he inquireth of the teraphim , he looketh in the liver. One Babylonian clay model of a sheep's liver, dated between 1900 and 1600 BC, is conserved in the British Museum . The Assyro-Babylonian tradition

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2310-580: Is one of the clearest examples of cultural contact in the orientalizing period. It must have been a case of East-West understanding on a relatively high, technical level. The mobility of migrant charismatics is the natural prerequisite for this diffusion, the international role of sought-after specialists, who were, as far as their art was concerned, nevertheless bound to their father-teachers. We cannot expect to find many archaeologically identifiable traces of such people, other than some exceptional instances. The Babylonians were famous for hepatoscopy. This practice

2415-489: Is “based on the interpretation of figures traced on sand or other surface known as geomantic figures .” It is a good example of Islamic divination at a popular level. The core principle that meaning derives from a unique occupied position is identical to the core principle of astrology. Like astronomy, geomancy used deduction and computation to uncover significant prophecies as opposed to omens ( ‘ilm al-fa’l ), which were process of “reading” visible random events to decipher

2520-737: The Nechung Oracle , which is considered the official state oracle of the government of Tibet . The Dalai Lama has according to centuries-old custom, consulted the Nechung Oracle during the new year festivities of Losar . Although Japan retains a history of traditional and local methods of divination , such as onmyōdō , contemporary divination in Japan, called uranai , derives from outside sources. Contemporary methods of divination in Japan include both Western and Chinese astrology , geomancy or feng shui , tarot cards , I Ching (Book of Changes) divination , and physiognomy (methods of reading

2625-567: The Middle Ages . In the constitution of 1572 and public regulations of 1661 of the Electorate of Saxony , capital punishment was used on those predicting the future. Laws forbidding divination practice continue to this day. The Waldensians sect were accused of practicing divination. Småland is famous for Årsgång , a practice which occurred until the early 19th century in some parts of Småland. Generally occurring on Christmas and New Year's Eve, it

2730-683: The Piquet pack , as well as tarot cards likely derived from the Tarot de Marseille . Following her death in 1843, several different cartomantic decks were published in her name, including the Grand Jeu de Mlle Lenormand , based on the standard 52-card deck, first published in 1845, and the Petit Lenormand , a 36-card deck derived from the German game Das Spiel der Hoffnung , first published around 1850. The concept of

2835-673: The Rider-Waite-Smith tarot published by the Rider Company in London in 1909. Since, the practice of Japanese tarot has become overwhelmingly feminine and intertwined with kawaii culture. Referring to the cuteness of tarot cards, Japanese model Kuromiya Niina was quoted as saying "because the images are cute, even holding them is enjoyable." While these differences exist, Japanese tarot cards function similarly to their Western counterparts. Cards are shuffled and cut into piles then used to forecast

2940-605: The religion of ancient Rome , a haruspex was a person trained to practise a form of divination called haruspicy , the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals , especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and poultry . Various ancient cultures of the Near East, such as the Babylonians, also read omens specifically from the liver, a practice also known by the Greek term hepatoscopy (also hepatomancy ). The Roman concept

3045-459: The "one true God" and manipulated the divine for the diviner's self-interest. One of the earliest known divination artifacts, a book called the Sortes Sanctorum, is believed to be of Christian roots, and utilizes dice to provide insight into the future. Uri Gabbay states that divination was associated with sacrificial rituals in the ancient Near East, including Mesopotamia and Israel. Extispicy

3150-625: The Astral Light and according to Dummett, he claimed to be the first to: Lévi accepted Court de Gébelin's claims that the deck had an Egyptian origin, but rejected Etteilla's interpretation and rectification of the cards in favor of a reinterpretation of the Tarot de Marseille . He called it The Book of Hermes and claimed that the tarot was antique, existed before Moses, and was in fact a universal key of erudition, philosophy, and magic that could unlock Hermetic and Qabalistic concepts. According to Lévi, "An imprisoned person with no other book than

3255-464: The Mountain Dream Tarot of Bea Nettles , the first photographic tarot deck, released in 1975. The 1980s and 1990s saw the rise of a new generation of tarotists, influenced by the writings of Eden Gray and the work of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell on psychological archetypes. These tarotists sought to apply tarot card reading to personal introspection and growth, and included Mary K. Greer ,

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3360-615: The Revised New Art Tarot, by Manly P. Hall with art by J. Augustus Knapp , as well as Case's own deck. Executed by Jessie Burns Parke , the artwork of Case's deck, the B.O.T.A. Tarot , generally resembles that of the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, but the deck also shows influences from Oswald Wirth and the original design of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn tarot. Case promoted the deck in his 1947 book The Tarot: A Key to

3465-499: The Romani. In fact, there is "virtually no evidence" that Romani people used any form of playing card for telling fortunes until the 20th century. The first to assign divinatory meanings to the tarot cards was cartomancer Jean-Baptiste Alliette (also known as Etteilla ) in 1783. According to Dummett, Etteilla: Etteilla also suggested that tarot was: In his 1980 book, The Game of Tarot , Michael Dummett suggested that Etteilla

3570-757: The Rose-Cross (1888) served as the seeds for further developments in the occult tarot in France. The French occultist Papus was one of the most prominent members of these societies, joining the Isis lodge of the French Theosophical Society in 1887 and becoming a founding member of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross the next year. Among his 260 publications are two treatises on the use of tarot cards, Le Tarot des Bohémiens (1889), which attempted to formalize

3675-477: The Tarot was the first work to use the metaphor of the "Fool's Journey" to explain the meanings of the major arcana. The work of Eden Gray and others in the 1960s led to an explosion of popularity in tarot card reading beginning in 1969. Stuart R. Kaplan's U.S. Games Systems , which had been founded in 1968 to import copies of the Swiss 1JJ Tarot , was well positioned to take advantage of this explosion and reissued

3780-551: The Tarot pack as "the subject of the most successful propaganda campaign ever launched... An entire false history and false interpretation of the Tarot pack was concocted by the occultists; and it is all but universally believed". The belief in the divinatory meaning of the cards is closely associated with a belief in their occult properties, a commonly held belief in early modern Europe propagated by prominent Protestant Christian clerics and Freemasons . From its uptake as an instrument of divination in 18th-century France ,

3885-424: The Tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequaled learning and inexhaustible eloquence." According to Dummett, Lévi's notable contributions included the following: Occultists, magicians, and magi all the way down to the 21st century have cited Lévi as a defining influence. Among the first to seemingly adopt Lévi's ideas

3990-599: The Wisdom of the Ages , which also marked one of the first references to the work of Carl Jung by a tarotist. Esoteric use of the Rider–Waite–Smith Tarot was also promoted in the works of Eden Gray , whose three books on the tarot made extensive use of the deck. Gray's books were adopted by members of the 1960s counter-culture as standard reference works on divinatory use of tarot cards, and her 1970 book A Complete Guide to

4095-408: The attitudes of the gods and react in a way that would maintain harmony between the human and divine worlds ( pax deorum ). Before taking important actions, especially in battle, Romans conducted animal sacrifices to discover the will of the gods according to the information gathered through reading the animals' entrails. The entrails (most importantly the liver, but also the lungs and heart) contained

4200-544: The author of Tarot for Your Self: A Wookbook for the Inward Journey (1984), and Rachel Pollack , the author of Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (1980/1983). Tarot cards also began to gain popularity as a divinatory tool in countries like Japan, where hundreds of new decks have been designed in recent years. The democratization of digital publishing in the 2000s and 2010s led to a new explosion of tarot decks as artists became increasingly able to self-publish their own, with

4305-438: The bans that affected other games, continue throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, but there are no indications that the cards were used for anything but games . As philosopher and tarot historian Michael Dummett noted, "it was only in the 1780s, when the practice of fortune-telling with regular playing cards had been well established for at least two decades, that anyone began to use the tarot pack for cartomancy." Claims by

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4410-476: The basis for most of tarot interpretations by the Golden Dawn and its immediate successors, including such features as: The Golden Dawn also: The Hermetic Order never released its own tarot deck for public use, preferring instead for members to create their own copies of a deck designed by Mathers with art by his wife, Moina Mathers . However, many of these innovations would make their first public appearance in two influential tarot decks designed by members of

4515-758: The belief that the tarot cards are linked to the Egyptian Book of Thoth continues to the present day. The actual source of the occult tarot can be traced to two articles in volume eight, one written by Court de Gébelin, and one written by M. le C. de M.***, who has been identified as Major General Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce de Fayolle, Comte de Mellet. This second essay is "considerably more impressive" than de Gébelin's, albeit "as full of assertions with no basis in truth", and has been even more influential than Court de Gébelin's. The author makes no acknowledgement of de Gébelin and, although he agrees with all his main conclusions, he also contradicts de Gébelin over such details as

4620-472: The body to identify traits). In Japan , divination methods include Futomani from the Shinto tradition. Personality typing as a form of divination has been prevalent in Japan since the 1980s. Various methods exist for divining personality type. Each attempt to reveal glimpses of an individual's destiny, productive and inhibiting traits, future parenting techniques, and compatibility in marriage. Personality type

4725-399: The cards as a mystical key was extended by Éliphas Lévi . Lévi (whose actual name was Alphonse-Louis Constant) was educated in the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, and was ordained as a deacon, but never became a priest. Michael Dummett noted that it is from Lévi's book Dogme et rituel that the "whole of the modern occultist movement stems." Lévi's magical theory was based on a concept he called

4830-501: The central tenets of Serer religion in Senegal. Only those who have been initiated as Saltigues (the Serer high priests and priestesses) can divine the future. These are the "hereditary rain priests" whose role is both religious and medicinal. Tarot card reading Tarot card reading is a form of cartomancy whereby practitioners use tarot cards to purportedly gain insight into

4935-400: The chair. It is seen that it is in the chair by an onset of motion. Eventually, the chair crashes onto a table prepared with wood chips and burlap. The characters on the table are then traced and these are said to be written by the deity who possessed the chair, these characters are then interpreted for the devotees. Divination is widespread throughout Africa. Among many examples it is one of

5040-455: The common four-suit pack. These new packs were called carte da trionfi , triumph packs, and the additional cards known simply as trionfi , which became "trumps" in English. One of the earliest references to tarot triumphs is given c. 1450–1470 by a Dominican preacher in a sermon against dice, playing cards and 'triumphs'. References to the tarot as a social plague or indeed as exempt from

5145-648: The concept of language, specifically Arabic , as the expression of "the essence of what it signifies." Once the believer understood this, while remaining obedient to God’s will, they could uncover the essence and divine truth of the objects inscribed with Arabic like amulets and talismans through the study of the letters of the Qur’an with alphanumeric computations. In Islamic practice in Senegal and Gambia , just like many other West African countries, diviners and religious leaders and healers were interchangeable because Islam

5250-514: The contemporaneous empowerment of feminist, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized communities providing a ready market for such work. Tarot is often used in conjunction with the study of the Hermetic Qabalah . In these decks all the cards are illustrated in accordance with Qabalistic principles, most being influenced by the Rider–Waite deck. Its images were drawn by artist Pamela Colman Smith , to

5355-476: The diagnosis or prognosis achieved through divination is both temporarily and logically related to the manipulative, protective or alleviative function of magic rituals. In divination one finds the cause of an ailment or a potential danger, in magic one subsequently acts upon this knowledge. Divination has long attracted criticism. In the modern era, it has been dismissed by the scientific community and by skeptics as being superstitious ; experiments do not support

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5460-564: The early French occultists that tarot cards had esoteric links to ancient Egypt , the Kabbalah , Indic Tantra , or the I Ching have been frequently repeated by authors on card divination. However, scholarly research reveals that, having been invented in Italy in the early 15th century for playing games, there is no evidence of any significant use of tarot cards for divination until the late 18th century. In fact, historians have described western views of

5565-566: The end of the millennium in the Islamic calendar approached. Dream interpretation, or oneiromancy (‘ilm ta’bir al-ru’ya ), is more specific to Islam than other divinatory science, largely because of the Qur’an’s emphasis on the predictive dreams of Abraham , Yusuf , and Muhammad . The important delineation within the practice lies between “incoherent dreams” and “sound dreams,” which were “a part of prophecy” or heavenly message. Dream interpretation

5670-668: The esoteric tarot practices of the Golden Dawn in the United States was driven in part by the American occultist Paul Foster Case , whose 1920 book An Introduction to the Study of the Tarot made use of the Rider–Waite–Smith deck and assorted esoteric associations first adopted by the Golden Dawn. By the 1930s, however, Case had formed his own occult order, the Builders of the Adytum , and began to promote

5775-829: The false prophet . The eternal fire at Nymphaion in southern Illyria (present-day Albania ) also functioned as an oracle. The forms of divination practiced in this natural fire sanctuary with peculiar physical properties were widely known to the ancient Greek and Roman authors. The Oracle of Amun at the Siwa Oasis was made famous when Alexander the Great visited it after conquering Egypt from Persia in 332 BC. Deuteronomy 18:10–12 or Leviticus 19:26 can be interpreted as categorically forbidding divination. But some biblical practices, such as Urim and Thummim , casting lots and prayer , are considered to be divination. Trevan G. Hatch disputes these comparisons because divination did not consult

5880-522: The first British work primarily focused on the tarot in his 1888 booklet entitled The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune-Telling and Method of Play . The tarot was also mentioned explicitly in the Cipher Manuscripts that served as the founding document of the Hermetic Order, both implicitly and in the form of a separate essay accompanying the manuscript. This essay was to serve as

5985-578: The first diviners. Every civilization that developed in pre-Columbian Mexico , from the Olmecs to the Aztecs , practiced divination in daily life, both public and private. Scrying through the use of reflective water surfaces, mirrors , or the casting of lots were among the most widespread forms of divinatory practice. Visions derived from hallucinogens were another important form of divination, and are still widely used among contemporary diviners of Mexico. Among

6090-415: The first neo-occultist cartomantic deck (and first cartomantic deck not derived from Etteilla's Egyptian deck). Released in 1889 as Les 22 Arcanes du Tarot kabbalistique , it consisted of only the twenty-two major arcana and was revised under the title of Le Tarot des imagers du moyen âge in 1926. Wirth also released a book about his revised cards which contained his own theories of the occult tarot under

6195-589: The flat visceral side of the liver after examining the caput iocineris . Haruspicy in Ancient Italy originated with the Etruscans. Textual evidence for Etruscan divination comes from an Etruscan inscription: the priest Laris Pulenas' (250–200 BCE) epitaph mentions a book he wrote on haruspicy. A collection of sacred texts called the Etrusca disciplina , written in Etruscan, were essentially guides on different forms of divination, including haruspicy and augury . In addition,

6300-399: The forehead level. Once in this position, the blocks are dropped and the future can be understood depending on their landing. If both fall flat side up or both fall rounded side up, that can be taken as a failure of the deity to agree. If the blocks land one rounded and one flat, the deity indicates "Yes", or positive. “Laughing poe” is when rounded sides land down and they rock before coming to

6405-519: The future, for spiritual reflection, or as a tool for self-understanding. A common act of divination in Taiwan is called the Poe . “The Poe” translated to English means “moon boards”. It consists of two wood or bamboo blocks cut into the shape of a crescent moon. The one edge is rounded while the other is flat; the two are mirror images. Both crescents are held out in one's palms and while kneeling, they are raised to

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6510-442: The high demand for oracle consultations and the oracles’ limited work schedule, they were not the main source of divination for the ancient Greeks. That role fell to the seers ( Greek : μάντεις ). Seers were not in direct contact with the gods; instead, they were interpreters of signs provided by the gods. Seers used many methods to explicate the will of the gods including extispicy , ornithomancy , etc. They were more numerous than

6615-922: The highest concentration of personality assessment guides. There are approximately 144 different women's magazines, known as nihon zashi koukoku kyoukai , published in Japan aimed at this audience. The adaptation of the Western divination method of tarot cards into Japanese culture presents a particularly unique example of contemporary divination as this adaptation mingles with Japan's robust visual culture. Japanese tarot cards are created by professional artists, advertisers, and fans of tarot. One tarot card collector claimed to have accumulated more than 1,500 Japan-made decks of tarot cards. Japanese tarot cards fall into diverse categories such as: The images on tarot cards may come from images from Japanese popular culture, such as characters from manga and anime including Hello Kitty , or may feature cultural symbols. Tarot cards may adapt

6720-714: The idea that divination techniques can actually predict the future more reliably or precisely than would be possible without it. In antiquity, divination came under attack from philosophers such as the Academic skeptic Cicero in De Divinatione (1st century BCE) and the Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus in Against the Astrologers (2nd century CE). The satirist Lucian ( c. 125 – after 180) devoted an essay to Alexander

6825-515: The illustrations showed the influence of astrology as well as Qabalistic principles. The following is a comparison of the order and names of the Major Trumps up to and including the Rider–Waite–Smith and Crowley (Thoth) decks: Next to the usage of tarot cards to divine for others by professional cartomancers , tarot is also used widely as a device for seeking personal guidance and spiritual growth. Practitioners often believe tarot cards can help

6930-483: The images of Japanese historical figures, such as high priestess Himiko (170–248CE) or imperial court wizard Abe no Seimei (921–1005CE). Still others may feature images of cultural displacement, such as English knights, pentagrams , the Jewish Torah , or invented glyphs . The introduction of such cards began by the 1930s and reached prominence 1970s. Japanese tarot cards were originally created by men, often based on

7035-471: The individual explore one's spiritual path. People who use the tarot for personal divination may seek insight on topics ranging widely from health or economic issues to what they believe would be best for them spiritually. Thus, the way practitioners use the cards in regard to such personal inquiries is subject to a variety of personal beliefs. For example, some tarot users may believe the cards themselves are magically providing answers, while others may believe

7140-471: The instructions of Christian mystic and occultist Arthur Edward Waite , and published in 1911. A difference from Marseilles -style decks is that Waite and Smith use scenes with esoteric meanings on the suit cards. These esoteric, or divinatory meanings were derived in great part from the writings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn group, of which Waite had been a member. The meanings and many of

7245-448: The invisible realities from which they originated. It was upheld by prophetic tradition and relied almost exclusively on text, specifically the Qur’an (which carried a table for guidance) and poetry, as a development of bibliomancy . The practice culminated in the appearance of the illustrated “Books of Omens” ( Falnama ) in the early 16th century, an embodiment of the apocalyptic fears as

7350-407: The meaning of the word "Tarot" and in how the cards spread across Europe. Morever, he takes de Gébelin's speculations even further, agreeing with him about the mystical origins of the tarot in ancient Egypt, but making several additional, and influential, statements that continue to influence mass understanding of the occult tarot even to this day. He made the first statements proposing that the tarot

7455-529: The method of using tarot cards in ceremonial magic first proposed by Lévi in his Clef des grands mysteries (1861), and Le Tarot divinatoire (1909), which focused on simpler divinatory uses of the cards. Another founding member of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Cross, the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita , met the amateur artist Oswald Wirth in 1887 and subsequently sponsored a production of Lévi's intended deck. Guided entirely by de Guaita, Wirth designed

7560-518: The more common hallucinogenic plants used in divination are morning glory , jimson weed , and peyote . Theyyam or "theiyam" in Malayalam is the process by which a devotee invites a Hindu god or goddess to use his or her body as a medium or channel and answer other devotees' questions. The same is called "arulvaakku" or "arulvaak" in Tamil , another south Indian language - Adhiparasakthi Siddhar Peetam

7665-520: The occult tarot in France, but also its initial adoption in the English-speaking world. In 1886, Arthur Edward Waite published The Mysteries of Magic , a selection of Lévi's writings translated by Waite and the first significant treatment of the occult tarot to be published in England. However, it was only through the establishment of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888 that the occult tarot

7770-424: The oracles and did not keep a limited schedule; thus, they were highly valued by all Greeks, not just those with the capacity to travel to Delphi or other such distant sites. The disadvantage of seers was that only direct yes-or-no questions could be answered. Oracles could answer more generalized questions, and seers often had to perform several sacrifices in order to get the most consistent answer. For example, if

7875-433: The order of the trumps of Justice and Strength, but essentially preserved the traditional designations of the court cards. The deck was followed by the release of The Key to the Tarot , also by Waite, in 1910. The Thoth deck , first released as part of Aleister Crowley's The Book of Thoth in 1944, represent a somewhat different evolution of the original Golden Dawn designs. The deck, executed by Lady Frieda Harris as

7980-671: The order: the Rider–Waite–Smith deck and the Thoth deck . In addition, occultist Israel Regardie involved himself in two separate recreations of the original Golden Dawn deck, the Golden Dawn Tarot of 1978 with art by Robert Wang, and the New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot by Chic and Sandra Cicero , released, after Regardie's death, in 1991. The central document containing the Golden Dawn's Tarot interpretations, "Book T",

8085-678: The past, present or future. They formulate a question, then draw cards to interpret them for this end. A traditional tarot deck consists of 78 cards, which can be split into two groups, the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana . French-suited playing cards can also be used; as can any card system with suits assigned to identifiable elements (e.g., air, earth, fire, water). The first written references to tarot packs occurred between 1440 and 1450 in northern Italy, for example in Milan and Ferrara , when additional cards with allegorical illustrations were added to

8190-710: The planets (Saturn, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury, or Uranus). Personality can also be divined using cardinal directions, the four elements (water, earth, fire, air), and yin-yang . Names can also lend important personality information under name classification which asserts that names bearing certain Japanese vowel sounds (a, i, u, e, o) share common characteristics. Numerology , which utilizes methods of divining 'birth numbers' from significant numbers such as birth date, may also reveal character traits of individuals. Individuals can also assess their own and others' personalities according to physical characteristics. Blood type remains

8295-467: The reading of the conditions of the present moment. Skeptic James Randi once said that: For use as a divinatory device, the tarot deck is dealt out in various patterns and interpreted by a gifted "reader." The fact that the deck is not dealt out into the same pattern fifteen minutes later is rationalized by the occultists by claiming that in that short span of time, a person's fortune can change, too. That would seem to call for rather frequent readings if

8400-534: The regions it demarcates." As a historian, Dummett held particular disdain for what he called "the most successful propaganda campaign ever launched", noting that "an entire false history, and false interpretation, of the Tarot pack was concocted by the occultists; and it is all but universally believed." Many Christian writers discourage divination, including tarot card reading, as deceptive and "spiritually dangerous", citing, for example, Leviticus 19:26 and Deuteronomy 18:9–12 as proof texts . Extispicy In

8505-506: The same title the year following. Outside of the Kabbalistic Order, in 1888, French magus Ély Star published Les mystères de l'horoscope which mostly repeats Christian's modifications. Its primary contribution was the introduction of the terms ' Major Arcana ' and ' Minor Arcana ', and the numbering of the Crocodile (the Fool) XXII instead of 0. The late 1880s not only saw the spread of

8610-468: The same titles as those who did. From the beginning of Islam, there "was (and is) still a vigorous debate about whether or not such [divinatory] practices were actually permissible under Islam,” with some scholars like Abu-Hamid al Ghazili (d. 1111) objecting to the science of divination because he believed it bore too much similarity to pagan practices of invoking spiritual entities that were not God. Other scholars justified esoteric sciences by comparing

8715-406: The seer slaughtering a sheep and examining its liver for answers regarding a more generic question; the sphagia involved killing a young female goat by slitting its throat and noting the animal's last movements and blood flow. The battlefield sacrifice only occurred when two armies prepared for battle against each other. Neither force would advance until the seer revealed appropriate omens . Because

8820-558: The seers had such power over influential individuals in ancient Greece, many were skeptical of the accuracy and honesty of the seers. The degree to which seers were honest depends entirely on the individual seers. Despite the doubt surrounding individual seers, the craft as a whole was well regarded and trusted by the Greeks, and the Stoics accounted for the validity of divination in their physics . The divination method of casting lots ( Cleromancy )

8925-509: The standalone deck using seven color plates included in The Book of Thoth , it was not until the 1960s, after Crowley and Harris's deaths, that the deck was first printed in its entirety. Two of the earliest publications on tarot in the English language were published in the United States, including a book by Madame Camille Le Normand entitled Fortune-Telling by Cards; or, Cartomancy Made Easy , published in 1872, and an anonymous American essay on

9030-724: The surface and organized into different sections. Artifacts depicting haruspicy exist from the ancient Roman world as well, such as stone relief carvings located in Trajan's Forum . In southwest Ethiopia and adjacent area of South Sudan , a number of ethnic communities have had the practice of reading animal entrails to divine the future. Some of the groups that have been documented as having this practice include Suri , Mursi , Topsa , Nyangatom , Didinga , Murle , Me'en , Turkana , Konso , Dime , Karamojong , Dodoth , Kalenjin people Haruspication has also been practiced in Kenya, such as

9135-461: The symbol of the sun, or the symbol of the man hung up by the feet, or the tower struck by lightning, or the wheel of fortune, and so on. Those are sort of archetypal ideas, of a differentiated nature, which mingle with the ordinary constituents of the flow of the unconscious, and therefore it is applicable for an intuitive method that has the purpose of understanding the flow of life, possibly even predicting future events, at all events lending itself to

9240-421: The system is to be of any use whatsoever. Tarot historian Michael Dummett similarly critiqued occultist uses throughout his various works, remarking that "the history of the esoteric use of Tarot cards is an oscillation between the two poles of vulgar fortune telling and high magic; though the fence between them may have collapsed in places, the story cannot be understood if we fail to discern the difference between

9345-682: The tarot published in The Platonist in 1885 entitled "The Taro". The latter essay is implied by Decker and Dummett to have been written by an individual with a connection to the occult order known as the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor . While it is not clear to what extent the Hermetic Brotherhood used tarot cards in its practices, it influenced later occult societies such as Elbert Benjamine's Church of Light , which had tarot practices (and an accompanying deck) of its own. Adoption of

9450-401: The tarot to ancient Egypt , divine hermetic wisdom, and the mysteries of Isis . The first was Antoine Court de Gébelin , a French clergyman, who wrote that after seeing a group of women playing cards he had the idea that tarot was not merely a game of cards but was in fact of ancient Egyptian origin, of mystical Qabalistic import, and of deep divine significance. Court de Gébelin published

9555-495: The tarot went on to be used in hermeneutic , magical , mystical , semiotic , and psychological practices. It was used by Romani people when telling fortunes, as a Jungian psychological apparatus for tapping into "absolute knowledge in the unconscious", a tool for archetypal analysis , and even a tool for facilitating the Jungian process of individuation . Many involved in occult and divinatory practices attempt to trace

9660-417: The then out-of-print Rider–Waite–Smith Tarot in 1970, which has not gone out of print since. Tarot card reading quickly became associated with New Age thought, signaled in part by the popularity of David Palladini's Rider–Waite–Smith-inspired Aquarian Tarot, first issued in 1968. Artists soon began to create their own interpretations of the tarot for artistic purposes rather than purely esoteric ones, such as

9765-530: The trumps). Batons (wands) become Scepters, Swords become Blades, and Coins become Shekels. However, it wasn't until the late 1880s that Lévi's vision of the occult tarot truly began to bear fruit, as his ideas on the occult began to be propounded by various French and English occultists. In France, secret societies such as the French Theosophical Society (1884) and the Kabbalistic Order of

9870-433: Was Jean-Baptiste Pitois . Pitois wrote two books under the name Paul Christian that referenced the tarot, L'Homme rouge des Tuileries (1863), and later Histoire de la magie, du monde surnaturel et de la fatalité à travers les temps et les peuples (1870). In them, Pitois repeated and extended the mythology of the tarot and changed the names for the trumps and the suits (see table below for a list of Pitois's modifications to

9975-454: Was "The Book of Thoth " and made the first association of tarot with cartomancy. Meanwhile Court de Gébelin was the first to imply the existence of a connection between the Tarot and Romani people , although this connection did not become well established in the public consciousness until other French authors such as Boiteau d'Ambly and Jean-Alexandre Vaillant began in the 1850s to promote the theory that tarot cards had been brought to Europe by

10080-410: Was a common example, where diviners would pray to their god(s) before vivisecting a sacrificial animal. Their abominal organs would reveal a divine message, which aligned with cardiocentric views of the mind. Both oracles and seers in ancient Greece practiced divination. Oracles were the conduits for the gods on earth; their prophecies were understood to be the will of the gods verbatim. Because of

10185-575: Was also adopted in Hittite religion . At least thirty-six liver-models have been excavated at Hattusa . Of these, the majority are inscribed in Akkadian, but a few examples also have inscriptions in the native Hittite language , indicating the adoption of haruspicy as part of the native, vernacular cult. Roman haruspicy was a form of communication with the gods. Rather than strictly predicting future events, this form of Roman divination allowed humans to discern

10290-428: Was always tied to Islamic religious texts, providing a moral compass to those seeking advice. The practitioner needed to be skilled enough to apply the individual dream to general precedent while appraising the singular circumstances. The power of text held significant weight in the " science of letters " (‘ilm al-huruf ), the foundational principle being "God created the world through His speech." The science began with

10395-447: Was attempting to supplant Court de Gébelin as the author of the occult tarot. Etteilla in fact claimed to have been involved with tarot longer than Court de Gébelin. Mlle Marie-Anne Adelaide Lenormand outshone even Etteilla and was the first cartomancer to people in high places, through her claims to be the personal confidant of Empress Josephine , Napoleon and other notables. Lenormand used both regular playing cards, in particular

10500-551: Was closely related with esoteric practices (like divination), which were responsible for the regional spread of Islam. As scholars learned esoteric sciences, they joined local non-Islamic aristocratic courts, who quickly aligned divination and amulets with the "proof of the power of Islamic religion." So strong was the idea of esoteric knowledge in West African Islam, diviners and magicians uneducated in Islamic texts and Arabic bore

10605-451: Was employed in public. Astrologers, trained as scientists and astronomers, were able to interpret the celestial forces that ruled the "sub-lunar" to predict a variety of information from lunar phases and drought to times of prayer and the foundation of cities. The courtly sanction and elite patronage of Muslim rulers benefited astrologers’ intellectual statures. The “science of the sand” ( ‘ilm al-raml ), otherwise translated as geomancy ,

10710-513: Was executed by Pamela Colman Smith , a fellow Golden Dawn member, and was the first tarot deck to feature complete scenes for each of the 36 suit cards between 2 and 10 since the Sola Busca tarot of the 15th century, with certain designs likely based in part on a number of photographs of them held by the British Museum. The deck followed the Golden Dawn in its choice of suit names and in swapping

10815-449: Was first published openly, if not under that title, by Aleister Crowley in his occult periodical The Equinox in 1912. The volume was later republished independently in 1967. The Rider–Waite–Smith deck , released in 1909, was the first complete cartomantic tarot deck other than those derived from Etteilla's Egyptian tarot. ( Oswald Wirth 's 1889 deck had only depicted the major arcana. ) The deck, designed by Arthur Edward Waite ,

10920-462: Was to become established as a tool in the English-speaking world. Of the three founding members of the Golden Dawn, two, Samuel Liddell Mathers and William Wynn Westcott , published texts relating to the occult tarot prior to the founding of the order. Westcott is known to have made ink sketches of tarot trumps in or around 1886 and discussed the tarot in his treatise Tabula Bembina, sive Mensa Isiaca , published in 1887, while Mathers had published

11025-749: Was used by the remaining eleven disciples of Jesus in Acts 1:23–26 to select a replacement for Judas Iscariot . Therefore, divination was arguably an accepted practice in the early church. However, divination became viewed as a pagan practice by Christian emperors during ancient Rome . In 692 the Quinisext Council , also known as the "Council in Trullo" in the Eastern Orthodox Church , passed canons to eliminate pagan and divination practices. Fortune-telling and other forms of divination were widespread through

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