#12thcup

Oooo, let me get my Witchstorian hat....because there is some TEA here.

The association of tarot cards with various types of mysticism goes back to 18th-century France. The decks existed in Italy before then, as playing cards for various types of trump-style games, some of which are still played on the peninsula today. A French scholar by the name of Antoine Court de Gebelin, who is considered the grand-daddy of many later occultist philosophies, published a piece in 1781 on the allegedly-ancient origins of the symbols on tarot cards. He claimed that Ancient Egyptian priests had encoded their sacred text, The Book of Thoth, into tarot cards and that if a person knew how to read the symbols properly, they could unlock all of human knowledge.

Fun Fact: Gebelin knew precisely jack shit about Ancient Egypt. The language on the ancient papyri hadn't even been translated yet when he put forth these ideas (and once it was, none of it supported his claims). But Gebelin was very popular and he was a white guy in colonial academia, so nobody was asking inconvenient questions.

The same year, another French guy wrote an essay that posited that one could map the 22 Major Arcana cards onto the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This eventually led to members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn creating the Rider-Waite deck with Hebrew lettering and the tetragrammaton, because they were Ob.Sessed. with Jewish mysticism even though none of them were actually Jewish.

The Order created the first modern standard set and the rules for reading them in 1909-1910, and these were later expanded upon by Eden Gray in the 1960s, which gives us the tarot as we know it today.

There's a lot more to the story of tarot than this, but that's the TL;DR version of how the cards became mystical and why some decks include Jewish symbols. Which, quite frankly, they shouldn't, mystical associations or no.

If you're interested in the full story, you can check out the August 2021 episode of my podcast, Hex Positive - "The Trouble With Tarot." I wrote it in response to a then-prevalent argument that tarot originated with the Romani people and that the use of the cards was culturally protected. (Spoiler alert: they didn't and it's not, but I do address the connection in the episode.)

Personally, I don't feel like artistic decks water down the practical use of the cards anyway, but I do find that people connect more strongly to some decks. I love my Visconti-Sforza deck with its' classical artwork and old symbols, and I love my Golden Nouveau deck with all the flowery, flowy paintings. And I learned to read on the Faery Wicca tarot deck, which is exactly as fluffy and ridiculous as it sounds, but I love that one too.

So really, I think it's all a matter of personal preference. If the artwork and symbolism in a deck doesn't resonate with you, that's probably going to feel kind of useless to you personally. But somebody else might pick it up and go, "Wow! This is exactly what I've been looking for!" and have great success with their readings. To each their own.

See, that is easy to say, and it's true for some people.

But for me, they exist because they exist; no Divine, Universe, Highest Good, or Higher Self necessary.

Granted this answer is a gross oversimplification of my thoughts and feelings, but this is Tumblr, it's early in the morning, and I am dehydrated, so you're getting the cliffs notes version.

This is a Hot Take™ in some pagan circles, but I think transactional relationships with deity aren't inherently bad. Note that "transactional" is not the same as "reciprocal" -- a transactional relationship is any sort of exchange, but in a reciprocal relationship both parties are actively nurturing each other's growth. For me personally, reciprocity is always the goal of my work with any kind of spirit, but sometimes spirits show up who just.... want you to do them a solid and are willing to do you a favor in return. And I don't think that's necessarily bad, as long as you remember that the spirit is a person (for lack of a better term) with their own free will and you are respectful of that.

When it comes to deities, no mortal is going to make them do something they don't want to do. So the worst that will happen is you offer, Apollo isn't into it, and he leaves you on read. No harm no foul.

My advice would be to make an offering to Apollo and ask him if he'd be interested in that kind of relationship. You can use your divination method of choice to give him a chance to answer.

I also want to say I do still think it's important to honor a deity's original culture and the way that deity has historically been worshiped. If you're considering forming a relationship with a Hellenic deity you should probably read up on Hellenic ritual and make sure you're being respectful, even if that relationship is going to be transactional.

The Christian Cabala movement had less to do with Jewish and Christian theologians sharing knowledge and much more to do with Christians musing on Jewish mysticism which were meant to be a tool of debate with Jewish religious scholars and a method of trying to convince Jews to convert.

Trust and believe, there was very little happening in Christian circles during the Renaissance that was interested in giving Jews a voice or equal footing in those conversations.

And it has little to nothing to do with the mysticism included in the RWS deck because that was based on Hermetic Qabalah, which is a different system.

The point of all this is not whether Christians and Jews have ever shared knowledge. The point is that the use of Hebrew letters and symbols in tarot is inappropriate. The sacred meanings of the alphabet and the symbol of the tetragrammaton are supposed to be secret knowledge. The tetragrammaton in particular is not even supposed to be used in casual artwork because it contains one of the secret names of God.

what i mean when i say i dont like the symbolicism of the pre waite cards is just from reading his tarot book thing so it might be not the most objective but in it he describes a lot of interpretations, meanings and imagery of his time, and describes how he changed each if them to create more of a mystical and coherent system which i so respect.

it might sound like im into golden dawn but in reality im very meh about them and i only enjoy the tarot system they created. i find the kabbalistic motives within it quite necessary too. and from what i know they werent the ones who appropriated it, if we must use that word. wasnt it during renessaince when a lot of jewish and christian theologians shared a lot of informations between each other? with the creation of christian kabbalah and all that. from what ive learned the history is quite complicated but i dont really understand how jewish people sharing their understanding to further both parties intellectual and mystical understanding would count as appropriation

Except that's not at all what happened with tarot or the RWS deck.

Eliphas Levi, who was a contemporary of Waite, was the one who really pushed the connection between tarot, Hermeticism, and Qabbalah (his spelling). In fact, pretty much anything that was mystical, Levi attempted to claim was a result of Qabbalah, because according to him, that was the most ancient magical system in existence and was responsible for the creation of all the others.

Here's the thing - Eliphas Levi was not Jewish. He wrote about Jewish mysticism for pretty much his entire adult life but most of his writings are his own musings on the works of earlier occult authors like Gebelin. Waite and the Golden Dawn used his philosophies and these concepts in the creation of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. So yes, they DID directly appropriate those symbols, and they did so very loudly and openly. Just because they weren't the very first ones to do it does not mean they weren't still doing it.

This wasn't Jewish people sharing their knowledge. This was a bunch of rich white guys with way too much time on their hands circle-jerking over their own ideas of ancient mystical knowledge. Which, tbh, was a pretty common activity in the late 1800s.

You may find the RWS symbolism necessary, but I promise you - it is not in the least bit integral to the function of the deck.