Out of Africa: Tarot‟s Fascination With

Egypt
Helen S. Farley
Introduction
Mention „tarot‟ and images of an exotic and mysterious gypsy fortune-teller
spring unbidden to consciousness. Dark eyes flashing, she reveals the trumps
one at a time, each a strange portent, preternaturally speaking of life, love, loss,
and death. The gypsies, themselves enigmatic and of uncertain origin, were
allegedly charged with carrying the tarot deck from a doomed Egyptian
priesthood with the forethought to encode their most esoteric secrets in a game,
a seemingly harmless pastime. How often have we heard that tarot‟s difficult
birth occurred in an Egypt ancient and mystical? And though tarot scholars
have known about the real origins of the deck in the Renaissance court of a
northern Italian city for some two hundred years, still that link with Egypt
remains obdurate. This beguiling myth, never convincingly verified by its
perpetrators, began in the desire for pseudo-legitimacy through an ancient –
though false – lineage and the dogged persistence of a pre-Rosetta infatuation
with all things Egyptian. This article explores the origins of this persistent
belief.

Egyptomania in France
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, all of France was enraptured with
the exploits of their new leader, Napoleon Bonaparte. He had secured victory
for France across Western Europe and had consolidated French power in
Egypt. In the true spirit of the Enlightenment, Napoleon had taken a bevy of
scientists and archaeologists with him to this ancient land and they ensured a
steady stream of Egyptian artefacts and information about the distant locale
travelled back to France.1 Occultists were quick to incorporate Egyptian lore
into their schemes. There was a common belief that the land of the Nile was the

Helen S. Farley is Mission Leader (Mobility) at the Australian Digital Futures

Institute at the University of Southern Queensland.
A version of this article will also appear as „Tarot and Egyptomania‟, in Tarot in
Culture, ed. Emily Auger (Melbourne: ATS, 2011) [forthcoming].
1
John David Wortham, British Egyptology: 1549-1906 (Newton Abbot: David and
Charles, 1971), p. 49.

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Out of Africa

stronghold of Hermetic wisdom.2 The French fascination with all things Nilotic
fuelled their obsession with hieroglyphics, at that time still untranslated.
Investigators laboured under the belief that these intriguing inscriptions
concealed ancient magical knowledge.3 Horapollo‟s Hieroglyphica was a
major source of inspiration for these occultists even though the work had long
been shown to have little basis in fact.4 Jean-François Champollion‟s
translation of the Rosetta Stone in 18225 enabled the translation of
hieroglyphics, but occultists were slow to accept that, for the most part, they
did not spell out great wisdom. Even so, occultists still believed that alchemy
was born in an Egypt masked in antiquity;6 their Egyptomania fanned by Abbé
Jean Terrason‟s successful novel, Sethos, written in 1731.7
This allure also explained the French occultists‟ fascination with the
Corpus Hermeticum. It had been written by Greek writers who believed that
Egypt was the repository of a pristine philosophy and powerful magic.8 When
these documents were rediscovered and translated during the Renaissance, the
aspiring magi of the period took them literally and assumed they were works of
an ancient Egyptian provenance.9 It was not until 1614, when classical scholar
Isaac Casaubon was unsettled by the idea that pagans had predicted the coming
of Christ, that doubt was cast on the authenticity of the Hermetic texts.10 The
discovery of this deception was widely recognised, especially by the

2
James Stevens Curl, Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival: A Recurring Theme in
the History of Taste (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 225.
3
Charles Dempsey, „Renaissance Hieroglyphic Studies and Gentile Bellini‟s Saint
Mark Preaching in Alexandria‟, in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual
History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, eds Ingrid Merkel and Allen G.
Debus (Washington: Folger Books, 1988), p. 343.
4
Liselotte Dieckmann, Hieroglyphics: The History of a Literary Symbol (St Louis:
Washington University Press, 1970), pp. 26-27.
5
Rosalie David, The Experience of Ancient Egypt (London: Routledge, 2000), p.
72.
6
Dieckmann, Hieroglyphics, p. 228.
7
Wortham, British Egyptology, p. 47.
8
David S. Katz, The Occult Tradition: From the Renaissance to the Present Day,
(London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), p. 23.
9
Wouter Hanegraaff, „The Study of Western Esotericism: New Approaches to
Christian and Secular Culture‟, in New Approaches to the Study of Religion:
Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches, eds Peter Antes, Armin W. Geertz
and Randi R. Warne (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), pp. 492-493.
10
Clement Salaman, Dorine van Oyen, and William D. Wharton, The Way of
Hermes: The Corpus Hermeticum (London: Duckworth, 1999) p. 82.

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 Out of Africa

Protestants,11 but in largely Catholic France the enthusiasm for the texts
remained unabated.
Freemasonry, itself enormously popular in Napoleonic France, also
incorporated the rampant Egyptomania of the time. C. Friedrich von Köppen
(1734-1797) and Johann Wilhelm Bernhard von Hymmen (1725-1786)
anonymously published the Crata Repoa (1778), which told of a fictitious
initiation into the Egyptian mysteries consisting of seven rites enacted in
crypts, caves and secret chambers.12 Freemasons had apparently been the heirs
of the geometrical skills of the ancient masters who had inherited their learning
from Hermes Trismegistus.13 In 1784, Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (1743-
1795) revealed his Egyptian rite, a Masonic order formulated by the count.14
Visitors to his „Temple of Isis‟ in Paris were greeted by a servant dressed as an
Egyptian and ushered into the séance conducted by „le Grand Copht‟
Cagliostro.15
It was into this intellectually cluttered milieu that esoteric tarot first
made its appearance. The game of tarot was very popular across Europe and
was played throughout France in the seventeenth century, but by 1700 the
game was completely unknown in Paris, being played only in the eastern parts
of the country such as Alsace, Burgundy, Franche-Comté, and Provençe.16 For
the inhabitants of eighteenth-century Paris, the Renaissance imagery of the
tarot trumps appeared especially exotic.17 It was almost inevitable that the
mysterious card game, its symbolism denied its original relevance once
removed from its Renaissance context, should appear to contain promises of
forgotten esoteric lore when rediscovered by a people primed to discern such
knowledge in every object, sacred or mundane. The first to make this

11
Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin
Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. l.
12
Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett, A Wicked Pack of
Cards: The Origins of Occult Tarot (London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd.,
1996), p. 20.
13
Margaret C. Jacob, The Origins of Freemasonry: Facts and Fictions
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), p. 12.
14
Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1994), p. 80.
15
Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards, p. 21.
16
Michael Dummett and John McLeod, A History of Games Played with the Tarot
Pack: The Game of Triumphs, vol. 1 (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004), p. 39.
17
Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards, p. xi.

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Out of Africa

connection between archaic wisdom and the tarot was Antoine Court de
Gébelin. A French Freemason, protestant clergyman and esotericist, Court de
Gébelin first made this connection just prior to the French Revolution.18 He
was well-versed in all of the esoteric currents that permeated French culture at
that time including Rosicrucianism, Hermeticism, Kabbalism, the works of
Emmanuel Swedenborg and esoteric Freemasonry. In addition, Basil Rákóczi
claimed that Court de Gébelin was also an initiate of the Martinists and that he
had been taught about the Book of Thoth – a legendary, lost corpus of magical
lore from Egypt – by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin himself.19
Between 1773 and 1782, Court de Gébelin published his nine-volume
opus entitled Le Monde Primitif Analysé et Comparé avec le Monde Moderne
of which the eighth volume was in part devoted to the origins of tarot. 20 Here
Court de Gébelin reported that some time in the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, he had come across some ladies playing the game of tarot. In Paris
these cards were unusual, and he had not seen them since he was a boy. He was
intrigued by the Hermetic mysteries of ancient Egypt and it occurred to him
that he was seeing a sacred Egyptian book,21 perhaps even the remnants of the
Book of Thoth. The trump cards he regarded as a disguised assemblage of
ancient Egyptian religious doctrines. For example, he identified the Popess as
„the High Priestess‟, the Chariot as „Osiris Triumphant‟, and the Star as „Sirius‟
or „the Dog Star‟.22 This Book of Thoth he supposed, must have been brought
to Europe by the gypsies, who had been safeguarding it since it had been
entrusted to them by Egyptian priests millennia ago. He deduced that the safest
way to preserve their ancient wisdom must have been to encode it as a game
and to trust that someday an adept would be able to decipher it. This honour he

18
Giordano Berti, „Il Libro Di Thot, Ovvero, L‟interpretazione Esoterica Del
Tarocco‟, in I Tarocchi: Le Carte Di Corte: Bioco E Magia Alla Corte Degli
Estensi, eds Giordano Berti and Andrea Vitali (Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1987), p.
186.
19
Charlene Elizabeth Gates, „The Tarot Trumps: Their Origin, Archetypal
Imagery, and Use in Some Works of English Literature‟ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University of Oregon, 1982), p. 78-79.
20
Thierry Depaulis, Tarot, Jeu et Magie (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1984), p.
131.
21
Stuart R. Kaplan and Jean Huets, The Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. IV (Stamford:
U. S. Games Systems, Inc., 2005), pp. 699, 702.
22
Christina Olsen, „Carte Da Trionfi: The Development of Tarot in Fifteenth
Century Italy‟ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1994), p.
266.

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 Out of Africa

claimed for himself.23 More recently, Arland Ussher elaborated this strategy
eloquently: “[i]f you intend that a thing shall last forever, do not commit it into
the hands of Virtue but into those of Vice.”24
The nature of the calamity that befell the Egyptians such that they must
encode their secrets to ensure their survival was not detailed. Charlene Gates
proposed that the Egyptian priests may have been forced to enact such
measures when the Persian king Cambyses invaded Egypt down to Nubia after
the death of the Pharaoh Ahmose in 525BCE.25 This timing would seem
appropriate as Egypt was experiencing a cultural revival with a surge of
patriotic and religious fervour under the Saite dynasty (664-525BCE).
Herodotus described the invasion as both ruthless and sacrilegious. If ever
there was a time that would necessitate the encryption of Egyptian wisdom in
order to hide it from marauding invaders, this would be it.26 Intimately
connected with the hypothesis of an Egyptian provenance for tarot was the idea
that the gypsies brought the deck to Europe. For many people, the image of the
gypsy card reader is their strongest association with tarot, and one that is
constantly reinforced by popular culture. Bizet‟s opera Carmen was a
stereotypical representation of this fantasy; the fiery Andalusian gypsy girl
Carmen reads her cards, turning them over one at a time until she reveals the
Death card in the climax of the scene.27 More recently, in Last Love in
Constantinople (Poslednja Ljubav u Carigradu), an unusual novel by Milorad
Pavic, tarot was described as being in use among the gypsies.28

23
Antoine Court de Gébelin, Monde Primitif: Analysé Et Comparé Avec Le Monde
Moderne, Considéré Dans L’histoire Naturelle De La Parole; Ou Grammaire
Universelle Et Comparative, 9 vols., Archives De La Linguistique Française;
No.95 (Paris: 1774).
24
Arland Ussher, The XXII Keys of the Tarot (Dublin: The Dolmen Press, 1969),
pp. 5-6.
25
Gates, „The Tarot Trumps‟, p. 99. For Herodotus‟ account of this invasion see
Herodotus, The Histories, ed. E.V. Rieu, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 206-210.
26
Gates, „The Tarot Trumps‟, p. 99.
27
Walter Starkie, „Carmen and the Tarots‟, American Record Guide, vol. 31, no. 1
(1964), p. 5.
28
Milorad Pavic, Last Love in Constantinople: A Tarot Novel for Divination, trans.
Christina Pribichevich-Zoric (London: Peter Owen, 1998), p. 5; Kaplan and Huets,
Encyclopedia of Tarot IV, p. 471. The progression of the novel is determined by
drawing tarot cards from a pack. Outlines of the cards are provided at the back of
the book.

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Out of Africa

Many people mistakenly believed the gypsies had migrated from Egypt,
and that the word „gypsy‟ was in fact an abbreviation of „Egyptian‟.29 Even
though gypsies had been resident in Europe for around four hundred years, it
was not until 1781, when Court de Gébelin espoused the idea that tarot was
from Egypt, that people linked tarot with this wandering people.30 Court de
Gébelin spoke of the gypsies as having retained the Egyptian mode of
divination by cards,31 and this idea was further elaborated by Comte de Mellet.
He believed that once the Egyptian priests had encoded their wisdom in the
tarot cards, particularly in the trumps, the deck was given to the gypsies for
safekeeping.32
This theory was reinforced by several authors who merely repeated the
hypothesis with or without further elaboration. In 1854, for example, Boiteau
d‟Ambly in Les Cartes à jouer et la cartomancie espoused the theory that tarot,
created solely for the purpose of fortunetelling, was transmitted to Europe by
the gypsies.33 Jean-Alexandre Vaillant, erroneously assumed to be the first to
espouse a gypsy involvement, published a classic study in 1857, Les Rômes,
histoire vraie des vrais Bohémiens, in which he detailed his theory of tarot
originating with this nomadic people.34 Vaillant was said to have lived for
many years among this much-despised people and was allegedly instructed by
item in their traditional lore. Much of the information he obtained was
elaborated in Les Rômes and reinforced in La Bible des Bohémien (1860) and
La Clef Magique de la Fiction et du Fait (1863).35 Another French occultist to
reinforce tarot‟s association with Egypt was Etteilla, his unusual name obtained
by simply reversing his surname: „Alliette‟,36 his given name being Jean-
Baptiste. Born in 1738, he was thought to have died in 1791. A long tradition
among occultists assigned him the profession of wigmaker, though in reality he

29
For example see Eden Gray, The Complete Guide to the Tarot (New York:
Bantam, 1972), p. 6.
30
Gates, „The Tarot Trumps‟, p. 87.
31
Court de Gébelin, Monde Primitif, p. 366.
32
Depaulis, Jeu Et Magie, p. 131.
33
Michael Dummett with Sylvia Mann, The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt
Lake City (London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd., 1980), p. 136-137.
34
Robert V. O‟‟Neill, Tarot Symbolism (Lima: Fairway Press, 1986), pp. 41-42.
35
Gérard Encausse, The Tarot of the Bohemians: Absolute Key to Occult Science;
the Most Ancient Book in the World for the Use of Initiates, trans. A. P. Morton
(Hollywood: Wilshire Book Company, 1971), p. 298.
36
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 106.

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 Out of Africa

was a seed seller and subsequently he sold prints.37 His book entitled Etteilla,
ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes (Etteilla, or a Way to Entertain
Oneself with a Pack of Cards), which was published in 1770 and subsequently
reprinted in 1773 and 1783, constituted the first evidence of cartomancy in
France.38
As early as 1782, Etteilla submitted a work to the royal censors, which
was the standard practice at that time, called Cartonomanie [sic] Egiptienne, ou
interprétation de 78 hierogliphes qui sont sur les cartes nommées Tarots
(Egyptian Cartonomania, or Interpretation of the 78 Hieroglyphs which are on
the Cards Called Tarots).39 Unfortunately, the manuscript was not permitted to
be published but there was no indication as to why.40 Finally, between 1783
and 1785, Etteilla produced Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes
nommées tarots (A Way to Entertain Oneself with the Pack of Cards Called
Tarots).41 In this work, which was published in four parts, Etteilla in common
with Court de Gébelin, ascribed an Egyptian origin to the tarot pack which he
believed was originally intended to be a book written in symbols or
„hieroglyphs‟.42 According to Etteilla, tarot was designed by a panel of
seventeen magi answerable to Hermes Trismegistus.43 It was originated 171
years after the Flood, some 3 953 years before Etteilla was writing.44 Again,
card-makers took the blame for corrupting the original Egyptian form of the
pack. Etteilla also maintained that all of the cards of the deck, not just the
trumps, should be numbered as with other books.45 He further designated that
they should bear Arabic numerals rather than the usual Roman ones, as it was
the Egyptians who invented the zero from which Arabic numerals were
derived.46
Even though Etteilla gave precise instructions as to how to render the
tarot trumps, he also suggested that an ordinary tarot card deck could be readily

37
Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards, p. 77.
38
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 106.
39
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 107
40
Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards, p. 83.
41
Christopher McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival (London:
Rider and Company, 1972), p. 51.
42
Roger Tilley, A History of Playing Cards (London: Studio Vista, 1973), pp. 100-
101.
43
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 107
44
McIntosh, Eliphas Lévi, p. 51.
45
Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards, p. 85.
46
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 108

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Out of Africa

modified.47 He directed the user to renumber the cards according to his scheme
spelt out in Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots. Then
the user was instructed to write the first meaning on the card, reverse it and
write the second meaning as directed in his book.48 Etteilla made frequent
references to the Pimander, one of the tracts of the Corpus Hermeticum.49 He
reasoned that as tarot was the Book of Thoth, and Thoth was otherwise known
as Hermes Trismegistus whose teachings were to be found in the Pimander,
then it must be possible to find Hermetic knowledge in the tarot deck.50 The
theory of tarot‟s Egyptian provenance was reinforced by other French
occultists such as Éliphas Lévi (1810-1875), Paul Christian (1811-1877)51 and
Gérard Encausse (popularly known as „Papus‟; 1865-1916).52 Egypt was
thought to be the source of all esoteric wisdom and the Egyptian hieroglyphics
an ancient magical language, but it was not just the French who fell under the
intoxicating spell of Egypt.

A Love of Egypt Across the Channel

A British fascination with foreign cultures was facilitated by improved
transport and communication, the ease of reproducing books and pamphlets,
and the development of the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology.
Topping this list of exotic cultures was that of Egypt. Even though the Rosetta
Stone, and hence hieroglyphics, had been translated, Victorian society
remained infatuated with all things Egyptian. One of the reasons was the
extensive archaeological excavations that had taken place, exposing the
grandeur and sophistication of Egyptian civilisation.53 For occultists, Egyptian
mythology held the double appeal of novelty and antiquity.54 The British
Museum, established by an Act of Parliament in 1756,55 possessed an
impressive collection of Egyptian antiquities built upon a group of artefacts

47
Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards, pp. 85-86.
48
Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards, pp. 85-86.
49
Katz, The Occult Tradition, p. 25.
50
Gates, „The Tarot Trumps‟, p. 40.
51
See Jean-Baptiste Pitois, The History and Practice of Magic, trans. James Kirkup
and Julian Shaw (London: Forge Press, 1952).
52
See Encausse, The Tarot of the Bohemians.
53
Tanya M. Luhrmann, Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in
Contemporary England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 40.
54
Kathleen Raine, Yeats, the Tarot and the Golden Dawn, ed. Liam Miller (Dublin:
Dolmen Press, 1972), p. 7.
55
Wortham, British Egyptology, p. 38.

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 Out of Africa

assembled by Dr Hans Sloane56 and the collection of travellers Colonel

William Lethieullier and Pitt Lethieullier.57 The collection was further
bolstered by the surrender of the Rosetta Stone and other artefacts by the
French after their defeat by the British in Egypt in 1801.58 E. A. Wallis Budge,
the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum
from 1894 until 1924, obtained many artefacts for the Museum including
cuneiform tablets, papyri and other manuscripts. His output of published works
exceeded that of any other Egyptologist.59 His Book of the Dead: The
Hieroglyphic Transcript into English of the Papyrus of Ani (1895)60 was to be
enormously influential with British occultists. Another reason for Egypt‟s
popularity was the Biblical narrative of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt
and many still believed in the literal truth of the Bible.61 In addition, Egypt
figured prominently in the works of classical historians and a person was not
considered educated without some knowledge of the classics. This interest was
fanned by the relative ease with which the Nile and the Egyptian monuments
could be explored. Finally, the discoveries made in the relatively new
discipline of Egyptology, including the ability to decipher hieroglyphics,
aroused controversy and interest.62
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn arose in England towards the
end of the nineteenth century as a reaction against the strict scientific
rationalism and the shortcomings of conventional religion of the period.
Although it never had more than three hundred members, its influence far
exceeded that of many larger occult groups. The Order was the crowning glory
of the occult revival, synthesising into a coherent whole a vast body of
disparate material including Egyptian mythology, Kabbalah, tarot, Enochian
magic, alchemy, Rosicrucianism and astrology. Suddenly anything was
possible and everything was knowable; every mundane action and reaction
could be reinterpreted in esoteric terms. People from all walks of life were
attracted to the promise of power and knowledge, among them the three who
would become the founders of the Golden Dawn; Dr William Wynn Westcott,

56
David, Ancient Egypt, p. 62.
57
Wortham, British Egyptology, p. 38.
58
Wortham, British Egyptology, p. 49.
59
Warren Royal Dawson and Eric P. Uphill, Who Was Who in Egyptology, ed. M.
L. Bierbrier (London: The Egypt Exploration Society, 1995), p. 71.
60
E.A. Wallis Budge, Book of the Dead: The Hieroglyphic Transcript into English
of the Papyrus of Ani (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1960 [1895]).
61
Wortham, British Egyptology, p. 92.
62
Wortham, British Egyptology, pp. 92-93.

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Out of Africa

Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Dr William Robert Woodman.63 The

Order came into being on 20 March 1888.64
The rituals and learning of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
were drawn from a mysterious manuscript of indefinite origin. It contained
fifty-seven pages written in a strange cipher alphabet that was created by Abbot
Johann Trithemius and appeared in his book Polgraphiae et Universelle
Escriture Cabalistique (1499).65 Once deciphered, the manuscript contained
brief outlines of five previously unknown rituals of a Rosicrucian nature in
English.66 Wynn Westcott, in the official history of the Golden Dawn, wrote
that he obtained the Cipher Manuscript from the Reverend Adolphus Frederick
Alexander Woodford.67 This was almost certainly a fabrication. Though it is
difficult to conclusively determine for which rite the rituals of the Cipher
Manuscript were intended, it seems probable that they were created by esoteric
Freemason and rabid ritualist Kenneth Mackenzie.68
Once the Cipher Manuscript was deciphered, William Westcott based
the grade structure of the Golden Dawn on the grade structure published in the
book Der Rosenkreuzer in seiner Blöße („The Rosicrucian in his Nakedness‟)
by Magister Pianco.69 The Order accepted women who were addressed as
Soror („sister‟).70 The Golden Dawn was actually only the first or Outer Order
of three orders. The Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis (R. R. et A. C.) was
the Second or Inner Order, while the Third Order remained unnamed to the
uninitiated. This Third Order was the realm of the guiding forces of the Order,
the „Secret Chiefs‟ or spiritual Masters whose mundane existence was hidden

63
Francis King, „The Origins of the Golden Dawn‟, in The Golden Dawn Source
Book, ed. Darcy Küntz (Edmonds: Holmes Publishing Group, 1996), pp. 123-124.
64
Darcy Küntz, „Introduction: From the Ashes of the Cipher Manuscript to the
Creation of the Golden Dawn‟, in The Golden Dawn Source Book, p. 15.
65
Carroll „Poke‟ Runyon, „An Analysis of the Cypher Manuscript‟, in Secrets of
the Golden Dawn Cypher Manuscript, ed. Carroll „Poke‟ Runyon (Silverado: C. H.
S., Inc., 2000), p. 38.
66
Francis King, Ritual Magic in England: 1887 to the Present Day (London:
Neville Spearman, 1970), p. 42.
67
William Wynn Westcott, „The Historical Lecture‟, in The Golden Dawn Source
Book, p. 48.
68
Francis King (ed.), Astral Projection, Ritual Magic, and Alchemy: Golden Dawn
Material by S.L. Macgregor Mathers and Others (Rochester: Destiny Books,
1987), p. 32.
69
Küntz, „Ashes of the Cipher Manuscript‟, pp. 16-17.
70
Ellic Howe, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a
Magical Order 1887-1923 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 11.

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 Out of Africa

from all who had not yet proved themselves worthy.71 Interestingly, all of the
temples of the Golden Dawn were dedicated to Egyptian gods.72 A separate
tarot lecture was also supplied to Golden Dawn initiates; its original form
being among the folios of the Cipher Manuscript.73 The trumps were referred
to as “atus or mansions of Thoth” though elsewhere in the manuscript they
were called „keys‟.74
On 26 November 1898 a new member entered the Isis-Urania Temple of
the Golden Dawn, introduced to the Order by alchemist George Cecil Jones
otherwise known as Frater Volo Noscere („I want to know‟).75 The newcomer
adopted the motto Perdurabo („I will endure‟) alongside his real name of
Aleister Crowley.76 Crowley had received his Neophyte initiation at Mark
Mason‟s Hall and it was evident that he was a highly gifted magician. From
Captain J. F. C. Fuller‟s account in the Equinox, it could be deduced that
Crowley advanced through the grades of the Golden Dawn quickly.77 Those
grades not formally separated by automatic delays he took at the rate of one a
month, and the succeeding ones at the prescribed intervals of three, seven and
nine months. By the time he had taken his Portal grade, Crowley‟s morals and
conduct offended those who were conducting Temple work in London and the
ruling Adepti refused to advance him further.78
Crowley‟s subsequent career was dogged by scandal and allegations of
abuse. In 1913, he became the head of the British Branch of the Ordo Templi
Orientis (O.T.O.), a German Society with links to the Martinists.79 This office
brought with it the grand title of „Supreme and Holy King of Ireland, Iona, and

71
Mary K. Greer, Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses (Rochester:
Park Street Press, 1995), p. 64.
72
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 150.
73
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 81.
74
Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, A History of the Occult Tarot: 1870-1970
(London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 2002), p. 81.
75
Israel Regardie, My Rosicrucian Adventure: A Contribution to a Recent Phase of
the History of Magic, and a Study in the Technique of Theurgy (Chicago: The Aries
Press, 1936), p. 22-23.
76
Robert A. Gilbert (ed.), The Golden Dawn Companion: A Guide to the History,
Structure, and Workings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
(Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1986), p. 3.
77
Decker and Dummett, History of the Occult Tarot, p. 107.
78
Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the
Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 191.
79
John Symonds, The Great Beast: The Life of Aleister Crowley (London: Rider
and Company, 1951), p. 121.

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all the Britains that are in the Sanctuary of the Gnosis‟; Crowley referred to
himself as „Baphomet‟.80 In the same year, he published the Liber Legis (The
Book of the Law), which contained material told to him some years earlier in
Cairo by a spiritual visitor called Aiwaz.81 Crowley believed Aiwaz was Horus
who was also one of the Golden Dawn‟s Secret Chiefs but simultaneously his
higher self and guardian angel.82 The text predicted the „Age of Horus‟, which
heralded the foundation of a new religion which would supplant all others.83
Crowley was urged to form a new movement of élite Thelemites. 84 The term
was originated by French Renaissance writer François Rabelais, whose hero
Gargantuan founded the Abbey of Theleme where all Christian values were
inverted. This ribald author was a strange source indeed for an Egyptian deity!
The tarot was mentioned within the Liber Legis with trump figures featuring in
some of the numerological puzzles posed by Aiwaz.85
Though Crowley had always been interested in and worked with tarot, it
was not until 1944 that he published the Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the
Tarot of the Egyptians.86 Limited editions of two hundred copies were released
simultaneously in London and New York. Crowley adhered to the Golden
Dawn system of symbolism and artist Lady Harris, having urged Crowley to
refine his tarot designs, subsequently painted them.87 The paintings were
unveiled on 1 July 1942 at the Berkeley Galleries in London.88 The Thoth
Tarot deck portrayed symbolism from a vast array of traditions and cultures;
Crowley was obsessed by the search for commonalities between divergent
systems and mythologies. This passion for syncretism was characteristic of

80
Owen, Place of Enchantment, p. 218.
81
The full title of the work is Liber L vel Legis sub figura CCXX, as delivered by
LXXVIII unto DCLXVI. See Aleister Crowley, „Liber L Vel Legis Sub Figura
CCXX, as Delivered by LXXVIII Unto DCLXVI‟, The Equinox vol. I, no. X
(1913). It is also available from the Sacred Texts website at http://www.sacred-
texts.com/oto/engccxx.htm. Accessed 24/04/11.
82
John Symonds, „Introduction‟, in The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An
Autohagiography, eds John Symonds and Kenneth Grant (London: Arkana, 1979),
pp. 19-20.
83
Owen, Place of Enchantment, p. 212.
84
Decker and Dummett, History of the Occult Tarot, p. 148.
85
Decker and Dummett, History of the Occult Tarot, p. 148.
86
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 159.
87
Gerd Ziegler, Tarot: Mirror of the Soul: Handbook for the Aleister Crowley
Tarot (York Beach: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1986), p. 3.
88
Colquhoun, Sword of Wisdom, p. 251.

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Victorian England, which sought to learn more about its own fundamental
nature by comparing itself to other cultures. It was a quest for the fundamental
truths which all esoteric systems and religions were thought to contain. The
deck was never published during the lifetimes of either Crowley or Harris.89 It
was not until 1969 that Major Grady L. McMurty, who had helped Crowley
publish his Book of Thoth, had the paintings photographed and published.
Unfortunately, the reproductions were of a poor quality. In 1977, Gerald Yorke
with the assistance of Stephan Skinner had the paintings photographed again.
These photographs form the basis of contemporary editions of Crowley‟s
Thoth Tarot,90 and the deck, taking its name from an Egyptian God, would
become one of the most popular decks of all time.

The Name of Tarot

Just as theories of an Egyptian derivation for tarot have proven popular, so
have theories supporting an Egyptian derivation for the term „tarot‟. Antoine
Court de Gébelin wrote that the word was derived from an Egyptian phrase
„Ta-Rosh‟ meaning „the royal way‟ or the „royal road of life‟.91 Gérard
Encausse in The Tarot of the Bohemians (1889) stated that “the whole Tarot
was based upon the word ROTA, arranged as a wheel.” He equated TARO
with INRI (the initial letters of the Catholic monogram, Iesus Nazaraeus Rec
Iudeorum, and of the Freemasonic formula Igne Natura Renovatur Integra),
and with YOD-HE-VAU-HE, the Hebrew Tetragrammaton.92 Another theory
held that this Latin word for wheel, rota, demonstrated an Egyptian link as it
was no more than an anagram of the name of the Egyptian goddess „Ator‟, a
form of „Hathor‟. Some see evidence of this connection in the naming of the
tenth trump or „The Wheel of Fortune‟.93 Alfred Douglas exploited this
fascination with the alleged Egyptian origins of tarot, mentioning the term‟s
possible derivation from the name of Thoth, the ancient Egyptian god of
magic.94 Others maintained that it derived from „tarosc‟ in which the „t‟ was

89
Ziegler, Tarot: Mirror of the Soul, p. 3.
90
James Wasserman, Instructions for Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot Deck
(Stamford: U.S. Games Systems, Inc., 1978), p. 5.
91
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 104.
92
Encausse, The Tarot of the Bohemians, p. 11.
93
Cynthia Giles, The Tarot: History, Mystery and Lore (New York: Paragon
House, 1992), p. 4.
94
Gates, „The Tarot Trumps‟, p. 12.

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the article, the „a‟ meant „doctrine‟ or „science‟ and „rosc‟ represented Mercury
or Thoth, thus giving „the doctrine of Thoth‟.95
MacGregor Mathers also saw „tarot‟ as being derived from the Egyptian
word „táru‟ which allegedly meant „to require an answer‟ or „to consult‟; and
that the second „t‟ was added to denote the feminine gender.96 Mrs John King
van Rensselaer claimed that Egyptologist Sir John Gardner Wilkinson stated
that „tarot‟ was a derivative of „thror Tahar‟ which “were the parchment
records kept in the Temple, which are mentioned in the time of the 18th
Dynasty [and] that were written on skins.”97

Why Cannot It Be So?

The hypothesis of an Egyptian provenance for tarot can be discounted on
several grounds. First, the ancient Egyptians did not have paper or cardboard
with which to construct tarot cards. Some occultists explained away this
difficulty by insisting that the tarot images were painted on gold, ivory or on
wall panels.98 It is difficult to see how this could be consistent with the idea
that the Egyptian priests encoded their wisdom in a card game. Second, if tarot
cards were in fact created in Egypt, then we would expect that at least some
remnants would have been discovered. In addition it seems likely that the deck
would have been adopted by neighbouring countries and some record of them
or extant decks would be preserved there. Further, if they did contain Hermetic
information, this too would have survived among Muslim esotericists, common
in the cities of the Middle East at that time. Also, we would expect to discover
some evidence of their transmission to Italy, in trade logs or inventories.99
The most compelling reason we have to disregard this theory was that
Egyptian symbolism did not resemble that of the tarot. As more and more sites
were excavated and the images studies and catalogued, it became progressively
clearer that Egyptian iconology was radically different from that of the tarot.
As tarot scholar Robert O‟Neill stated;
[t]he gods are humans with animal heads. The icons are full of nature
figures: chicks, snakes, vultures, hawks, ibises. These natural figures
appear as elements of the hieroglyphics but are completely absent

95
Alessandro Bellenghi, Cartomancy, trans. Julie Almond (London: Ebury Press,
1988), p. 11.
96
Decker and Dummett, History of the Occult Tarot, p. 58.
97
Mrs John King van Rensselaer, Prophetical, Educational and Playing Cards
(London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd, 1912), p. 34.
98
Robert M. Place, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination (New York:
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2005), p. 9.
99
Decker and Dummett, History of the Occult Tarot, p. 178.

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from the tarot. None of the most important images or themes of

Egyptian knowledge are found in the Tarot. Horus as the hawk, the
scarab pushing the sun across the sky, the preoccupation with
preparing the soul for the journey to the afterlife.100
This theory of an Egyptian origin of tarot gained currency because of France‟s
pre-Rosetta infatuation with all things Nilotic and the subsequent adoption of
the ancient culture into esoteric lore. It was reinforced by the erroneous belief
that „Gypsy‟ was in fact a contraction of „Egypt‟. By the time the truth was
revealed, esotericists had already forged a permanent link between tarot and
Egypt that historical fact could not supplant.

Contemporary Egyptomania
In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, more recent sources also
maintain an Egyptian origin for tarot, an appealing example of which can be
found in the obscure books of prose poems written by Mrs Anna M. Fullwood.
The Song of Sano Tarot (1946) stated that the tarot was “the ancient Egyptian
doctrine of Equilibrium.” Fullwood received all of her information from
clairvoyant visions.101 William Lindsay Gresham in his novel Nightmare Alley
(1947), had Zeena, a clairvoyant and mystic in a travelling circus, ascribe an
Egyptian origin to the tarot.102 Interestingly, a significant number of
contemporary New Age sources, in spite of the speciousness of this Egyptian
theory, still maintain that tarot was born in the sands of Egypt and that the tarot
deck contains all the wisdom of humankind.103
The New Age is an intoxicating mix of East and West, where Buddhist
Tantra bumps up against Native American shamanism, crystal healing, and
past-life regressions. Auras are examined, angels are consulted, and groups
gather to meditate for peace and environmental healing. Tarot is an integral
part of this worldview, its symbolism confidently projecting each of these
apparently divergent streams to emerge as the New Age tool par excellence.
Previously, occultists looked for the one true tarot; they „rectified‟ or

100
O‟Neill, Tarot Symbolism, p. 57.
101
Though attributed to Nancy Fullwood, this book was allegedly channelled by
Mrs Anna M. Fullwood. See Gates, „The Tarot Trumps‟, p. 41.
102
William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley (London: William Heinemann Ltd,
1947), pp. 59-60.
103
David Allen Harvey, „Beyond Enlightenment: Occultism, Politics, and Culture
in France from the Old Regime to the Fin–De–Siècle‟, The Historian, vol. 65, no. 3
(2003), p. 676.

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„corrected‟ the deck in accordance with their beliefs.104 They believed that the
one true tarot had either been purposefully altered to conceal its true purpose
and meaning, or it had been carelessly copied resulting in an inadvertent loss of
significance. With the advent of the New Age, tarot designers felt able to „re-
imagine‟ the deck, no longer afraid to experiment, comfortable with creating
links to other cultures or to create decks that fulfilled roles other than
divination.105 Though the broad history of tarot has been well established, New
Age authors tenaciously cling to the erroneous histories presented as fact by
esotericists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Egypt is still frequently
cited by authors as being the „home‟ of tarot, where the deck was crafted in
order to conceal all manner of magical and spiritual secrets. It is not
uncommon for New Age tarot books to perpetuate the idea that tarot definitely
or possibly originated in Egypt.106 Consequently, there are many tarot decks
that utilise an Egyptian theme thereby continuing the traditional association of
esoteric tarot with Egypt, a constant theme since its inception in eighteenth-
century France.
The Egipcios Kier Tarot (1984) deck serves as an educational device,
elaborating the beliefs, practices, and social hierarchies of Egyptian culture.107
The trump cards show human figures rather than the gods and goddesses. For
example, the card of the High Priestess shows the priestess of Isis rather than
Isis herself.108 The cards depict various professions such as the Charioteer or
Labourer, but also cards that serve as a commentary on social conditions such
as Magnificence, which describes how nobles set up their homes.109 The major
arcana cards are each marked with a hieroglyph, an alchemical sigil, a letter

104
Rachel Pollack, „An Overview of the Variety of New Tarot Decks: Emphasis on
European Decks‟, in New Thoughts on Tarot: Transcripts from the First
International Tarot Symposium, eds Mary K. Greer and Rachel Pollack (North
Hollywood: Newcastle Publishing, 1989), p. 124.
105
Pollack, „Overview of the Variety‟, p. 124. Some authors also encourage
„seekers‟ to create their own decks. See Antero Alli, „The Neuro-Tarot: Designing
Your Own Deck of Cards‟, Whole Earth Review, no. 72 (1991).
106
Stuart Kaplan takes a detailed look at the place of Egypt in tarot lore. See „The
Ancient Egyptian Temple‟, in Kaplan and Huets, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. IV,
pp. 699-720.
107
Emily E. Auger, Tarot and Other Meditation Decks: History, Theory,
Aesthetics, Typology (Jefferson: McFarland & Company Inc., 2004), p. 104.
108
Rachel Pollack, The New Tarot (Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1989), p.
107.
109
Pollack, The New Tarot, p. 106.

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derived from a magical alphabet found in the Key of Solomon the King that had
been translated by MacGregor Mathers, a planetary symbol, an astrological
sign, and also a Hebrew letter. The minor arcana cards do not follow the
traditional structure and instead are numbered twenty-three to seventy-eight,
each card bearing an allegorical picture without a suit sign.110
The Tarot of Transition deck presents the major arcana as the gods and
goddesses of Ancient Egypt. The order of the trumps is rearranged to illustrate
the mythological journey of the soul after death.111 Hence, the deck directs the
querent to enact the soul‟s appearance before its judges after death rather than
the traditional fortunetelling or psychological interpretations normally ascribed
to tarot consultation.112 The Tarot of Transition court is populated by the
Pharaoh, the Queen, the Charioteer and Ushabti.113 Their task is to assist the
querent in the Land of the Dead. Similarly, the four suits are redesigned to
align with Egyptian symbolism; they become Ankhs (the key of life, Swords),
the backbone of Osiris (Wands), Heset (the communion chalice, Cups) and
Khepera (the Sun, Coins).114 Other examples of tarot dominated by „Egyptian‟
imagery include the Ibis Tarot (1991) by Josef Machynka,115 the Egyptian
Tarot (I Tarocchi Egiziani) (1996) designed by M.O. Wegener and Silvana
Alasia,116 Clive Barrett‟s Ancient Egyptian Tarot (1994), the Barath Egyptian
Serigraphs (1980) by Victorino del Pozo and the artist Suarez,117 the Book of
Doors Tarot by Athon Vegi,118 the Scarab Tarot (1981) of Kathleen Binger,119
and the Egyptian Tarot 22 (1987) of Yoshio Karashima.120
Inexorably linked with the supposed Egyptian origins of tarot is the idea
that gypsies took the deck to Europe and wherever else they travelled. This
theory can be dated to when gypsies were thought be of Egyptian origin;

110
Stuart R. Kaplan, The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. III (Stamford: U.S. Games
Systems, Inc., 2002), p. 578.
111
Pollack, „Overview of the Variety‟, p. 135.
112
Pollack, The New Tarot, p. 105.
113
Pollack, The New Tarot, p. 106.
114
Pollack, The New Tarot, p. 106
115
Auger, Tarot and Other Meditation Decks, p. 104.
116
Auger, Tarot and Other Meditation Decks, p. 104.
117
Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. III, pp. 92-93.
118
Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. III, pp. 111, 15.
119
Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. III, pp. 470, 72-73.
120
Kaplan and Huets, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. IV, p. 631.

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„gypsy‟ being a contraction of „Egypt‟.121 There are several decks that seek to
make this connection explicit. The Zigeuner Tarot (1982) was painted by
Walter Wegmuller, a self-professed Rom (Gypsy) and the imagery has been
imported from Romany culture. For example, the Chariot is pulled by a goat
and a chicken, animals commonly found in a Romany camp.122 Another tarot
designer that exploits this theme is Tchalaï Unger with her Tarot Tzigane
(1984).123 Not only is the Romany way of life expressed through the tarot
symbolism but a discussion of the history is contained within the
accompanying booklet.124 There are only thirty-eight cards in this deck with
twenty-two of them loosely resembling the traditional major arcana cards, with
the addition of sixteen pip cards including a court of Father, Mother and Child
and four Aces.125 The suit signs are linked to the four main Romany branches:
the Kalderash of Central Europe, the Manush of Northern Italy, the Gypsies of
Ireland and the Gitanos of Andalusia.126 The suits are further linked to four
tools that correspond more or less to the traditional tarot suits: knives or
scalpels (Kalderash, Swords); coins (Manush, Coins/Pentacles); pots, hoods, or
containers (Gypsies, Cups); and wooden sticks or musical instruments
(Gitanos, wands).127 The trump sequence details a version of the history of the
Romany as formulated by the Rom themselves. It begins with their descent
from the Rajput Princes who were displaced from their kingdom, forming
different bands.128 It also encompasses the Rom belief that their people were
from the stars and will ultimately return there. The penultimate trump, O
Geape Vimanaki, shows a lingam and yoni figure representing the union of
male and female elements. It also displays the spaceship, Vimana, which will
return the Romani to their stellar home. The last trump, Tataghi (Heart of Fire),

121
For example see Eden Gray, The Complete Guide to the Tarot (New York:
Bantam, 1972), p. 6.
122
Pollack, The New Tarot, p. 94.
123
Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. III, p. 641.
124
See Tchalaï Unger, Preface to the Tzigane Tarot (Tarot of the Roms), trans.
Josee Noel (Paris: Ets J. M. Simon, 1984).
125
Pollack, The New Tarot, p. 97.
126
Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. III, p. 641.
127
Pollack, The New Tarot, p. 97.
128
Pollack, The New Tarot, p. 96.

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depicts the ultimate meaning of this journey, the return of the Rom to the place
of their cosmic and divine origin.129
The Buckland Romani Tarot (2001) also explores the alleged link
between tarot and gypsies.130 Raymond Buckland was the son of a gypsy and
in the book accompanying the Romani Tarot he describes his fascination with
the deck of cards that his grandmother spent so much time poring over.
Buckland directed artist Lissane Lake to paint the deck, thereby casting his
ideas into material form.131 The symbolism of the deck closely resembles that
of the Colman-Waite pack with some notable exceptions: the Magician is
female, supposedly because the majority of gypsy „magicians‟ are female;
likewise the Priestess of trump II becomes the Puridai or matriarch of the tribe.
The figures on the cards are depicted as gypsies. On trump VIII – Strength, a
beautiful woman opens the jaws of a performing bear rather than a lion.132
The persistence of this erroneous association of tarot with gypsies
eloquently illustrates the New Age fascination with other cultures, and in
particular, the romance associated with this wandering race. In part, this
fascination derives from the portrayal of gypsies in the media as mysteriously
dark and beautiful, frequently associated with divination, folklore, and magical
practice. To most people even now, the origins of gypsies are obscure, as they
keep to themselves or are kept to themselves by discrimination and persecution
within the wider community, enabling New Age seekers to form their own
romantic notions of this race, which rarely resemble reality. Most
contemporary users of tarot are completely unaware of the deck‟s true origin in
the courts of northern Italy and are more likely to assign an Egyptian or gypsy
provenance to the deck. They are also ignorant of tarot‟s original function as a
deck for game playing. The alteration of the structure of many New Age packs
renders them completely unsuitable for this original purpose. Tarot has become
the New Age tool par excellence. It is easily accommodated within the shifting
patterns of use, which has seen the focus of divination move from „fortune-
telling‟ to that facilitating self-development and healing. Indeed, many modern
decks have been designed specifically to enable spiritual as well as physical
healing which have become inexorably linked, the symbolism displayed on the
cards reflecting this function.

129
Pollack, The New Tarot, p. 96. Interestingly through this deck, Unger shows an
awareness that gypsies came from India, even if their ultimate origin did lie in the
stars.
130
Kaplan and Huets, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. IV, p. 250.
131
Kaplan and Huets, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. IV, p. 250.
132
Kaplan and Huets, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. IV, pp. 252-253.

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Almost Right
This article has examined the persistent association of esoteric tarot and Egypt,
examining the cultural milieu in which this connection arose to reveal that this
idea was largely grounded in the pre-Rosetta infatuation with all things
Egyptian in France. This link was to prove durable, also being adopted by
esotericists in England besotted by the emerging field of Egyptology and
immersed in the exploration of cultures removed in both geography and time.
Once firmly established, modern day tarotists, with more access to esoteric
texts than scholarly journals, have perpetuated this erroneous idea of an
Egyptian origin for tarot.
But perhaps they are almost right. The playing-card deck first appeared
in Europe towards the end of the fourteenth century.133 Almost by a process of
elimination, it becomes likely that the immediate progenitor of the regular
European playing-card deck was from the Islamic world, as Europe had little
direct contact with countries not mediated by Islam. The cards could have
entered Europe via Muslim Spain or via Italy. In fact, the commercial
privileges of Venetian traders were protected by a treaty negotiated with the
Mamlūk Empire of Egypt and Syria in 1302134 and again in 1345.135 In 1939,
archaeologist L.A. Mayer stumbled across an almost complete pack of cards
from the Egyptian Mamlūk Empire in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum in Istanbul.
The deck was dated as being from the fifteenth century by comparison with
Egyptian illuminated manuscripts of this period.136 Of fifty-two cards, forty-
eight had survived consisting of four suits: Swords, Polo-Sticks, Cups, and
Coins, each composed of ten numeral cards and three court cards headed by the
King.137 The Mamlūk suits translated into the corresponding Italian suits with
the exception of Polo-Sticks that became Batons,138 probably because polo was

133
Gherardo Ortalli, „The Prince and the Playing Cards: The Este Family and the
Role of Courts at the Time of the Kartenspiel-Invasion‟, Ludica: annali di storia e
civilta del gioco, vol. 2 (1996), p. 175.
134
Robert Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate
1250-1382 (London: Croom Helm, 1986), p. 117.
135
Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages, p. 130.
136
Detlef Hoffmann, The Playing Card: An Illustrated History, trans. C.S.V. Salt
(Greenwich: New York Graphic Society Ltd, 1973), pp. 18-19.
137
Dummett with Mann, The Game of Tarot, p. 39; Olsen, „Carte De Trionfi‟, p.
37.
138
Auger, Tarot and Other Meditation Decks, pp. 2-3.

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not popular in Europe at that time.139 So even though the origins of the tarot
deck itself have been traced to the Visconti court of Milan, its progenitor, the
regular playing card deck, did in fact have its origins in the ancient land of
Egypt.

139
Various authors have stated that polo was unknown in Europe at this time but
this is not true. The Crusaders took the game back to France in the twelfth century
though it did not become popular until much later. See H.E. Chehabi and Allen
Guttmann, „From Iran to All of Asia: The Origin and Diffusion of Polo‟, The
International Journal for the History of Polo, vol. 19, no. 2-3 (2002), p. 390.

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