Researches on the Tarot
and on divination by Tarot cards.
by M. LE C. DE M.***
I.
The Book of Thoth.
The desire to learn develops in the heart of man as his mind acquires new knowledge: the need to preserve it, & the desire to transmit it, contrived the characters of which Thoth or Mercury was regarded as the inventor. These characters were not, in the beginning, conventional signs which expressed, like our present letters, only [the sound of] words; they were so many veritable images with which they formed pictures, which visually represented the things they wished to speak about. and on divination by Tarot cards.
by M. LE C. DE M.***
I.
The Book of Thoth.
It is natural that the inventor of these images was the first historian: indeed, Thoth is considered to have painted the Gods [1], that is, acts of the Omnipotence, or Creation, to which he joined the Precepts of Morality. This book appears to have been named A-Rosh; from 'A', Doctrine, Science; & from 'ROSCH', Mercury [2], which, joined to the article 'T', means Pictures of the Doctrine of Mercury; but as Rosh also means Beginning, this word Ta-Rosh was particularly dedicated to his cosmogony; just as Ethotia, History of Time, was the title of his astronomy; and perhaps that Athothes, who was taken for a King, Son of Thoth, is only the child of his genius, & the History of the Kings of Egypt.
This ancient cosmogony, this Book of Ta-Rosh, with a few slight alterations, seems to have reached us in the cards which still bear this name [3]; either greed for profit from an idle amusement or superstition has preserved from the ravages of time the mysterious symbols which, as once for the Magi, served to deceive credulity.
The Arabs communicated this Book [4] or Game/Deck to the Spaniards, and the soldiers of Charles V carried it to Germany. It is composed of three upper series, representing the first three ages, of Gold, Silver & Bronze: each series is made up of seven cards.[5]
But as Egyptian scripture was read from left to right, the twenty-first card, which has been numbered only with modern numerals, is nevertheless the first, and must be read as such for the understanding of the History; as it is the first in the Tarot pack, & in the kind of divination that one carries out with these images. Finally, there is a twenty-second card without number as without power, but which increases the value of the one that precedes it; it is the zero of magic calculations: it is called Madness.
1. The Gods, in scripture & in hieroglyphic expression, are the Eternal & the Virtues, represented in corporeal form.
2. Rosh is the Egyptian name of Mercury & his festival which was celebrated on the first day of the year.
3. Twenty-two pictures form a very small book; but if, as it seems likely, the first traditions were preserved in poems, a simple image that fixed the attention of the people, to whom the event was explained, was sufficient to help retain them, and the verses that described them.
4. Livret [booklet] aus Lansquenet, or Lands-Knecht, is still the term for the series of cards that are dealt (? - donne aux pontes).
5. Three times 7, mystical number, famous among Cabalists, Pythagoreans, & c.