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THE MEANING OF THE SPREADS
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THE MEANING OF THE SPREADS
This is the easiest means of divining an answer, because there is only one card to look at. All you have to do is pick the card while thinking of your question, then intuitively pick one of the cards.  The 3 Card Spread (Positions and Subjects) This is also an easy layout, you only use 3 cards. Then while thinking of your question choose the 3 cards. To get a better understanding of what your Tarot card reading is telling you, read all the positions and let your intuition tell you what you need to know.
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HISTORY OF THE TAROT DECK
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Among those who use Tarot cards for divination purposes, the trumps are usually called Major Arcana, while the other cards are known as the Minor Arcana. (Arcana is the plural form of the Latin word arcanum, meaning "closed" or "secret".) The 14 cards in each suit consist of an Ace, nine cards numbered 2 through 10, and four court cards (not dissimilar from the structure of 52-card bridge/poker playing card decks, except that bridge/poker playing card decks have three court cards rather than four). The four court cards (or face cards) of the tarot deck traditionally consist of the King, the Queen, the Knight and the Page (or Knave). In bridge/poker decks, the court cards typically consist of the King, the Queen and the Jack. The Jack corresponds to the tarot deck's Page. In the present-day Anglo-American world, the Tarot is usually seen either as a means of divination, the practice of ascertaining information from supernatural or other sources, or, in a more modern view, as a psychological tool for accessing the unconscious. However, early references such as a sermon refer only to the use of the cards for game-playing and gambling; and in some European countries such as France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Germany, as Michael Dummett points out in Twelve Tarot Games (1980), Tarot games are still widely played. Early Tarot decks The relationship between Tarot cards and playing cards is well documented. Playing cards appeared quite suddenly in Christian Europe during the period 1375–1380, following several decades of use in Islamic Spain: see playing card history for discussion of its origins. Early European sources describe a deck with typically 52 cards, like a modern deck with no jokers. The 78-card Tarot resulted from adding 21 Trumps and the Fool to an early 56-card variant (14 cards per suit). A greater distribution of playing cards in Europe can with some certainty be given for the year 1377 and the following years. Tarot cards only developed some 40 years later, and they are mentioned, possibly for the first time, in the surviving text of Martiano da Tortona (it can be found in translation on the Web). Initially, tarot cards were only known as "trionfi" (triumphs). Only later did the name "tarocchi" appear. The likely date for da Tortona's text is between 1418 and 1425, since in 1418 the confirmed painter Michelino da Besozzo returned to Milan, and Martiano da Tortona died in 1425. It cannot be proven, of course, that Tarot cards did not exist earlier, but it seems improbable, because the date of the Martiano da Tortona text is at least 15 years earlier than other clear confirming documents. Da Tortona describes a deck similar to Tarot cards in specific points, but in other ways quite different. What he describes is more a predevelopment to Tarot than what we might think of as "real" Tarot cards. For instance, it has only 16 trumps; its motifs are not comparable to common Tarot cards (they are Greek gods); and the suits are not the common Italian suits, but four kinds of birds. What makes da Tortona's deck similar to Tarot cards is that these 16 cards are obviously regarded as trump cards in a card game, and that, about 25 years later, a nearly contemporary speaker, Jacopo Antonio Marcello, called them a "ludus triumphorum" — a term that is regarded as a relatively certain indicator of Tarot-similar objects when it appears in relation to playing cards. The letter in which Marcello uses this term is documented and translated on the Web. The next documents that seem to confirm the existence of objects similar to Tarot cards are two playing card decks from Milan (Brera-Brambrilla and Cary-Yale-Tarocchi) — extant, but fragmentary — and three documents, all from the court of Ferrara, Italy. The playing cards are naturally not precisely datable, but it is estimated that they were made circa 1440. The three documents are from 1 January 1441 to July 1442, with the term "trionfi" first documented in February 1442. All are documented on the Web. The provenance of the document from January 1441, which used the term "Trionfi" not, might be regarded as insecure, however, certain circumstances make it plausible, that it already was a deck of this developing type (same painter: Sagramoro, same commissioner: Leonello d'Este as in the document of February 1442); this is discussed on the site. After 1442, a longer pause (seven years) occurred without any confirming material, which doesn't give any reason to assume a greater distribution of the game in these years. Till this time all relevant early documents point to an origin of the Trionfi cards (later Tarocchi cards) in the upper class of the society in Italy, and specifically to the courts of Milan and Ferrara. At the time, these were the most exclusive courts of their time in Europe. The number of existing decks might have been quite small. The game seems to gain in importance in the year 1450 - a Jubilee year in Italy, which saw many festivities and traffic of pilgrims. The following frequent documentary evidence of the decks in the period from 1450 to 1463 is documented on the Web at the same place. In the given context, it's obvious that the special motifs on the trumps, which were added to normal playing cards with a usual 4x14 - structure, were ideologically determined. They have been thought to show a specific system that could transport messages of different content; known early examples show philosophical, social, poetical, astronomical and heraldic ideas, for instance, as well as a group of old Roman/Greek/Babylonian heroes that could serve as content as in the case of the Sola-Busca-Tarocchi and the Boiardo Tarocchi poem. For example, the above-mentioned earliest-known deck, extant only in its description in Martiano's short book, was produced to show a Greek gods system (an ideological idea at a time when Greek content was taken in Italy with some enthusiasm). Very likely its production accompanied a triumphal festivity of the commissioner Filippo Maria Visconti, which means the deck had the concrete function of expressing and consolidating the political power in Milan (as common for the time also in other productions of art). The 4 suits showed birds, which appeared regularly in common Visconti-heraldic, and the used specific order of the gods gives reason to assume, that the deck partly should focus, that the Visconti identified themselves as descendants from Jupiter and Venus (which were - as in this time usual - seen not as gods, but as heroes, which were deified once). This first known deck seems to have had the usual 10 number cards, but kings only and only 16 trumps — the later standard (4x14 + 22) wasn't settled and still in 1457 a document is known, which speaks of Trionfi decks with 70 cards only. Till the Boiardo Tarocchi poem (produced at an unknown date between 1461 and 1494) and the Sola Busca Tarocchi (1491)[8] any confirming evidence for the final standard form with totally 78 cards is missing. Individual researchers' opinions formulate cause these facts in the current moment, that the Trionfi decks of the early time had mostly 5x14 cards only and that the row of trumps and fool were simply considered as a 5th suit with predefined trump-function. The oldest surviving Tarot cards are three early to mid-15th century sets, all made for members of the Visconti family, rulers of Milan. The oldest of these existing Tarot decks was perhaps painted to celebrate a mid-15th century wedding joining the ruling Visconti and Sforza families of Milan, probably painted by Bonifacio Bembo and other miniaturists of the Ferrara school. Of the original cards, 35 are in the Pierpont Morgan Library, 26 cards are at the Accademia Carrara, 13 are at the Casa Colleoni, 4 cards (the Devil, the Tower, the Three of Swords, and the Knight of Coins) being lost or possibly never made. This "Visconti-Sforza" deck, which has been widely reproduced in varying quality, combines the suits of Swords, Staves, Coins and Cups, and face cards King, Queen, Knight and Page with trumps that reflect conventional iconography of the time to a significant degree. For a long time Tarot cards remained privileged to the upper class of society. The Roman Catholic Church and most civil governments did not routinely condemn tarot cards during tarot's early history. In fact, in some jurisdictions, tarot cards were specifically exempted from laws otherwise prohibiting regular playing cards. However, some sermons inveighing against the evil inherent in cards can be traced to the 14th century. Later Tarot decks As the earliest Tarot cards were hand-painted, the number of the produced decks is considered to have been rather small. Only after the invention of the printing press mass production of cards became possible. Decks from this era survive from various cities in France at various times (the best known in this context being the city of Marseille, in southern France) perhaps from the early 16th century, though actual surviving examples are no earlier than the 17th century. At around the same time, the name "Tarocchi" appeared. A general farspread, now traditional, hypothesis stated that the final form of the Tarot with a (4x14)+22 structure was settled ca. 1450. This opinion is based on the suggestion, that the surviving 68 Bembo cards had in the "6 added trumps" only replacements for earlier "lost cards". An alternative view states that early Tarot decks would usually have 70 cards, and that the deck by Bonifacio Bembo only has two cards missing. Of worth for the situation of the development is the Tarot History Fact Sheet, which was composed on the base of the common ground of various researchers. The Fool is the unnumbered card in the deck. Esoteric views on the history of Tarot Since 1781, when Antoine Court de Gebelin published his "Le Monde Primatif", in which he claimed Tarot cards held the "secrets of the Egyptians", without producing any evidence to sustain his claims, Tarot cards have been written about by many esoterians who have advanced alternative views on the history of Tarot cards. From this mystical vantage-point, the origin and history of the Tarot is unclear and often idealized. Many Hermetic traditions, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which have made claims that the Tarot system was derived from ancient mystery religions as a visually encoded framework of the archetypal concepts seminal to the journey of enlightenment, have blossomed after the freemasonic writer (Court de Gebelin - with link to the online text in French) published his text about the Tarot, in which he incorporated some writing of the Comte de Mellet, in the year 1781. Naturally the playing card research conditions of the year 1781 were by far not comparable to the much better research situation of today, Gebelin's errors and partly wild speculations, which proved nonetheless as of some importance for the development of Western Esotericism, had been natural in his time cause of missing information. A good and informative timeline of the development short before and after Gebelin is given by the book author Mary Greer. The Hermetics were quick to point out that in a qabalistic analysis, Tarot is equivalent to Rota (Wheel) or Tora (Law) indicating they were a representation of the 'Wheel of the Law'. (Note that this theory, which tries to explain the name "Tarot", loses its value when one considers that "Tarot" is only the French variant on the original Italian name "tarocchi".) In less obtuse terms, the Tarot would then be a series of metaphysical 'facts' after the manner of the Zen Ox Paintings. From the first to the last of the Major Arcana ("Big Secrets") they are arranged as a series of lessons, or a parable of the passage of the soul. From the "Fool" 0, the tabula rasa, naive and artless child-mind, a quest is laid out which is meant for the spiritual edification of the student. A number of scholars of the western Hermetic or Magical traditions have made such claims of the Tarot having ancient roots and lessons. Look to the works of Robert Fludd or Albertus Magnus for deeper inspections. Another school of thought believes that the Roma people, travelling through many cultures, picked up this pictorial wisdom, and being inventive by nature, created a form of divination (and perhaps of card games) from it. The idea is that they understood and kept the knowledge of the mystery-lessons of the picture-cards in private, while in public they used the cards for profit through divination and card games. Use of Tarot cards in divination Since the Egyptianizing ruminations in Le Monde primitif by Antoine Court de Gébelin (1781) which soon inspired the occultism of "Etteilla" (Jean-Babtiste Alliette), it has been believed by many that the Tarot is far older than this. Based on purported similarities of imagery and reinforced by the added numbering, some claim that Tarot originated in ancient Egypt, Hebrew mystic tradition of the Kabbalah, or a wide variety of other exotic places and times. Such ideas, however, are speculative. In fact, although much of Tarot imagery looks mysterious or exotic to modern users, nearly all of it reflects conventional symbolism popular in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Nearly all of it may easily be interpreted as a reflection of the dominant Christian values of the times. Thus, the earliest Tarots may have been depictions of the carnival parades that ushered in the Christian season of Lent or the related motif of hierarchical powers found in Petrarch's poem I Trionfi. These trionfi or triumphs were elaborate productions which layered then-fashionable Graeco-Roman symbolism over a Christian allegory of sin, grace, and redemption. Notably, the earliest versions of the World card show a conventional image known from period religious art to represent St. Augustine's "Heavenly City", and it is not coincidence that it often closely follows the Judgement card. Several other early Tarot-like sequences of portable art survive to place the Visconti deck in context. Later confusion about the symbolism stems, in part, from the occult decks, which began a process of steadily paganizing and universalizing the symbolism to the point where the underlying Christian allegory has been somewhat obscured (as, for example, when the Rider-Waite deck of the early Twentieth Century changed "The Pope" to "The Hierophant" and "The Popess" to "The High Priestess"). It is notable that between 1450 and 1500 the Tarot was actually recommended for the instruction of the young by Church moralists. Not until fifty years after the Visconti deck did it become associated with gambling, and not until the 18th century and Gébelin and Etteilla with occultism. Tarot and mysticism The Tarot cards eventually came to be associated with mysticism and magic. This was actually a late rather than early development, as we can tell from period sources on card divination and magic. The Tarot was not widely adopted by mystics, occultists and secret societies until the 18th and 19th century. The tradition began in 1781, when Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Swiss clergyman and Freemason, published Le Monde Primitif, a speculative study which included religious symbolism and its survivals in the modern world. De Gébelin first asserted that symbolism of the Tarot de Marseille asserted represented the mysteries of Isis and Thoth. Gébelin further claimed that the name "tarot" came from the Egyptian words tar, meaning "royal", and ro, meaning "road", and that the Tarot therefore represented a "royal road" to wisdom. Gébelin asserted these and similar views dogmatically; he presented no clear factual evidence to substantiate his claims. In addition, Gébelin wrote before Champollion had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs. Later Egyptologists found nothing in the Egyptian language that supports de Gébelin's fanciful etymologies, but these findings came too late; by the time authentic Egyptian texts were available, the identification of the Tarot cards with the Egyptian "Book of Thoth" was already firmly established in occult practice. Although tarot cards were used for fortune-telling in Bologna, Italy in the 1700s, they were first widely publicized as a divination method by Alliette, also called "Etteilla", a French occultist who reversed the letters of his name and worked as a seer and card diviner shortly before the French Revolution. Etteilla designed the first esoteric Tarot deck, adding astrological attributions and "Egyptian" motifs to various cards, altering many of them from the Marseille designs, and adding divinatory meanings in text on the cards. Etteilla decks, although now eclipsed by Smith and Waite's fully-illustrated deck and Aleister Crowley's "Thoth" deck, remain available. Later Marie-Anne Le Normand popularized divination and prophecy during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. This was due, in part, to the influence she wielded over Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife. However, she did not typically use Tarot. Interest in Tarot by other occultists came later, during the Hermetic Revival of the 1840s in which (among others) Victor Hugo was involved. The idea of the cards as a mystical key was further developed by Eliphas Levi and passed to the English-speaking world by The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Lévi, not Etteilla, is considered by some to be the true founder of most contemporary schools of Tarot; his 1854 Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (English title: Transcendental Magic) introduced an interpretation of the cards which related them to Cabala. While Levi accepted Court de Gébelin's claims about an Egyptian origin of the deck symbols, he rejected Etteilla's innovations and his altered deck, and devised instead a system which related the Tarot, especially the Tarot de Marseille, to the Kabbalah and the four elements of alchemy. On the other hand, to this day some of Etteilla's divinatory meanings for Tarot are still used by some Tarot practitioners. Tarot became increasingly popular beginning in 1910, with the publication of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, which took the step of including symbolic images related to divinatory meanings on the numeric cards. (Arthur Edward Waite had been an early member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn). In the 20th century, a huge number of different decks were created, some traditional, some vastly different. Thanks, in part, to marketing by the publisher U.S. Games Systems, the Rider-Waite-Smith deck has been extremely popular in the English-speaking world beginning in the 1970s. Differences among Tarot decks Tarot cards serve many purposes, and this leads to a variety of Tarot deck styles. Traditionally, a variety of styles of Tarot decks and designs have existed. A number of tyical regional patterns emerged. Historically, one of the most important design is now usually known as the Tarot of Marseille (French: Tarot de Marseille). This standard pattern was the one studied by Court de Gébelin, and cards based on this style illustrate his Le Monde primitif. The Tarot of Marseille was also popularized in the 20th century by Paul Marteau. Some current editions of cards based on the Marseille design go back to a deck of a particular Marseille design that was printed by Nicolas Conver in 1760. Other regional styles include the "Swiss" Tarot; this one substitutes Juno and Jupiter for the Papess and the Pope. In Florence an expanded deck called Minchiate was used; this deck of 96 cards includes astrological symbols and the four elements, as well as traditional Tarot cards. Interestingly, some people view the older decks such as the Visconti-Sforza and Marseille as crude and limited when compared to some modern ones. This may reflect their belief that Tarot symbolism has evolved, especially since the early 20th century, so that it has become increasingly universal. An influential deck in English-speaking countries is the Rider-Waite deck (sometimes called simply the Rider deck). (See also discussion of the general expression "Rider-Waite-Smith" below, to indicate a category of decks that includes the "Rider-Waite" deck as well as decks which use the line drawings of the Rider-Waite deck, such as the Universal Waite deck.) (In contrast, in French-speaking countries, the Marseille deck enjoys the equivalent popularity.) The images were drawn by artist Pamela Colman Smith, to the instructions of Christian mystic and occultist Arthur Waite, and originally published by the Rider Company in 1910. While the deck is sometimes known as a simple, user-friendly one, its imagery, especially in the Trumps, is complex and replete with occult symbolism. The subjects of the trumps are based on those of the earliest decks, but have been significantly modified to reflect Waite and Smith's view of Tarot. An important difference from 'Marseille'-style decks is that Smith drew scenes on the numeric cards to depict divinatory meanings; those divinatory meanings derive, in great part, from traditional cartomantic divinatory meanings (e.g., Etteilla and others) and from divinatory meanings first espoused by The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of which both Waite and Smith were members. However, it isn't the first deck to include completely illustrated numeric cards. The first to do so was the 15th-century Sola-Busca deck; however, in this case, the illustrations apparently were not made to facilitate divination. Some individuals object to the Rider-Waite deck due to its relatively small selection of colors and "flat" appearance. However, several decks, such as the Universal Waite, copy the Smith's line drawings, but add more subtle coloring and three dimensional modeling. The limited number of colors and "flat" appearance in the original Rider-Waite-Smith decks were virtually unavoidable due to the limits of printing technology in the early 20th century. In Internet tarot discussion groups, the Rider-Waite deck and very similar decks, e.g., the Universal Waite, are sometimes referred to by the collective term "Rider-Waite-Smith", "RWS" or "Waite-Colman-Smith" (or similar expressions). Numerous other decks that are loosely based on Rider-Waite, have been published from the mid-20th century through today. They are sometimes called Rider-Waite-Smith clones; however, the term is misleading. They are not exact copies as the term clone would imply. Instead, they are variations. Symbolism The Tarot has a complex and rich symbolism with a long history. Such history is not impenetrable. Contrary to what many popular authors claim, its origins are not lost in the mists of time. In fact, much of the fog around the symbolism can be dispelled if one studies sources other than occultists with a vested interest in the occult interpretation of Tarot. We will do some dispelling further on; in the meantime, the most important thing to note is that modern, occult readings of the cards often have little to do with their meaning in their original context. Some people find that modern Tarot decks are more interesting, expressive, and psychologically resonant than their ancestors. We can know more about the symbolic intentions of the designer here, since he conveniently wrote many books on the subject on occultism and symbolism and a handbook specifically for this deck titled The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910). As with its Marseille-deck ancestor, the Strength trump shows a woman holding the jaws of a lion, but this picture is far more elaborate. The woman's hat of the Marseille card has frequently been interpreted as a lemniscate: the sideways-figure-eight representing infinity, or, according to Waite, the Spirit of Life. In the newer card, this symbol appears explicitly. Other symbols are included: a chain of roses symbolizing desire or passion, against a white robe symbolizing purity. The mountains in the background demonstrate another kind of strength. Even here there is room for interpretation: the card is sometimes considered as showing intellect triumphing over desire, sometimes as the equal union of intellect and passion, sometimes just as a symbol of mental strength or endurance. The twenty-two cards in the major arcana are: Fool, Magician, High Priestess [or La Papessa/Popess], Empress, Emperor, Hierophant [or Pope], Lovers, Chariot, Strength, Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, Devil, Tower, Star, Moon, Sun, Judgement, World. Each card has its own large, complicated and disputed set of meanings. Altogether the major arcana are frequently said to represent the Fool's journey: a symbolic journey through life in which the Fool overcomes obstacles and gains wisdom. This idea was apparently first suggested by tarot author Eden Gray in the mid-20th century. There is a vast body of writing on the significance of the Tarot. In many systems of interpretation based on that of the Golden Dawn, the four suits are associated with the four elements: Swords with air, Wands with fire, Cups with water and Pentacles with earth. The numerology is usually thought to be significant. The Tarot is often considered to correspond to various systems such as astrology, Pythagorean numerology, the Kabalah, the I Ching and others. Psychology Carl Jung was the first psychologist to attach importance to Tarot symbolism. He may have regarded the Tarot cards as representing archetypes: fundamental types of person or situation embedded in the subconscious of all human beings. The Emperor, for instance, represents the ultimate patriarch or father figure. The theory of archetypes gives rise to several psychological uses. Some psychologists use Tarot cards to identify how a client views himself or herself, by asking the patient to select a card that he or she identifies with. Some try to get the client to clarify his ideas by imagining his situation or relationship in terms of Tarot images: Is someone rushing in heedlessly like the Knight of Swords perhaps, or blindly keeping the world at bay as in the Rider-Waite-Smith Two of Swords? The Tarot can be seen as a kind of algebra of the subconscious (see Freud), allowing it to be analysed at the conscious level. Like most "New Age" therapies, however, Tarot cards are not widely used by mainstream psychologists. Although Jung and Freud are still seen as important innovators, the majority of psychologists today are quite critical of many aspects of their theories. Critics Some of the information in this article or section has not been verified and might not be reliable. It should be checked for inaccuracies and modified as needed, citing sources. Because of the association of Tarot cards with fortune telling, some Christian groups, mainly fundamentalist groups in the United States, such as The 700 Club and Focus on the Family oppose the use of Tarot cards as Satanic. In Western societies, some Christians believe that the use of cards for divination purposes is forbidden by God (based on Bible verses such as Deuteronomy 18:10 and the incident in Acts 16:16-18); by extension, these Christians believe that no one should own Tarot cards. Use of Tarot cards is thought by some to be a means of demonic possession of those who use or even consult the cards. The opposing end of this is a belief that one may cast lots to determine God's will, and that Tarot divination is a form of casting lots. This theory, however, is not theologically consistent with mainstream Bible interpretation. A number of Tarot/Tarock game players have also opposed the wide spread marketing of Tarot cards for exclusive use in fortune telling activities, as they feel the Tarot card game has been misrepresented to the public at large. Skeptics of the paranormal also express objections to "Tarot card readings" along with objections to psychics, astrology, and other claims of the supernatural, or claim that tarot readers commit fraud by cold reading. |
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