Overview#
Tarot is a family of playing-card traditions that also became important in occult divination. The V&A’s account traces early tarot cards to fifteenth-century Italy and discusses their use in games and their imagery. The history of the cards should be separated from later assertions that their original purpose was secret occult instruction.[1]
The standard familiar modern deck has seventy-eight cards, although historical packs and artistic adaptations require attention to their own form.[1]
Images before modern divination#
Early imagery drew on religious, social, and literary worlds recognizable to its users. Courtly figures, virtues, and images of mortality can carry meaning without proving that the pack encoded one universal esoteric system.[1]
That distinction prevents later interpretations from replacing the material history. A modern reader can find a spiritual pattern in the cards while acknowledging that the pattern is a reading developed in a particular period.
Waite and occult interpretation#
Arthur Edward Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot is an influential source for a modern occult approach. It offers interpretations of the images and methods of reading them. It is primary evidence for Waite’s teaching, rather than independent proof of an ancient Egyptian origin for tarot.[2]
The imagery associated with the Rider–Waite–Smith tradition encourages attention to individual scenes. A reader’s interpretation may depend on the interaction between an image, a question, and the card’s position. Other decks can change that interaction substantially.
Reading as a practice#
A tarot reading can be used for prediction, religious inquiry, conversation, or reflection. These functions should be named instead of treating every use as the same kind of claim. The difference matters when a reader asks whether an interpretation has been successful.
Keeping a contemporaneous record helps separate the original reading from later recollection. The broader importance of records in occult study is explicit in Liber E. A tarot journal can apply that principle without adopting the entire system of the source.[3]
Tarot in Satanist and esoteric settings#
Tarot is not inherently Satanic. A Satanist or Luciferian reader may adapt it to a particular theology, while another reader may use the same deck without supernatural commitments. Images of a devil within a pack belong to its visual and interpretive structure; their presence does not establish the religious identity of everyone using it.
Tarot as spiritual study#
Builders of the Adytum treats Tarot and Qabalah as central to its instruction, with cards serving sustained contemplation as well as interpretation.[4] This gives the deck a place in religious education beyond the familiar practice of asking a divinatory question. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn supplied another influential correspondence system.
See also#
References
- Victoria and Albert Museum, A history of tarot cards · Museum account of fifteenth-century cards, games, imagery, and later divination. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
- Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) · Primary modern occult account of tarot; evidence for Waite’s interpretation, not for ancient Egyptian origins. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
- Aleister Crowley, Liber E vel Exercitiorum · Primary occult instruction, especially section I on the magical record. A record of experience is not independent proof of its interpretation. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
- Builders of the Adytum, About Us · Primary organizational account of its own teaching or practice. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩