The Artifact: The Tarot Deck

0:03 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

0:10 Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Artifact, a short-form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time. What do you think about when a deck of tarot cards is introduced? You know tarot cards, like these guys right here. your mind likely turns to divination, of course. A reading of the cards, major and minor arcana, and their various meanings.

0:39 The hanged man, for instance, is said to represent surrender and seeing things from a new perspective. Even death doesn't mean just an end. It can also mean a new beginning and a transformation. And when they're all laid out on the table by the cartomancer, they can create a subjective model of an individual's life, motivations, and impossible future, kind of just a model of associations that might just sort of nudge you in one direction or another, make you feel better about something that you're already considering, or make you feel even better about something you're avoiding. Given all of its occult connections, you might assume the tarot deck's origin is itself magical or religious, but as explored

1:23 in A History of Tarot Cards by Billingham Hibbard and Nardecchia for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the tarot was originally just another deck of decorated cards for use in trick-taking card games. In other words, no different than the French-suited standard 52-card deck of playing cards that still see use in games of poker, blackjack, go fish, and so forth. The exact origin of the tarot cards is uncertain. lost in the mists of history and sometimes linked to papermaking and card games of 12th century China and Korea or possibly elsewhere. We just don't know for sure.

2:03 What we do know, however, is that the cards we know as tarot first entered Europe in the 15th century via international trade and took on various symbols that would have resonated with both common and regal card players alike, including possibly Renaissance carnival processions and their associated moral lessons.

2:25 And so we had a highly decorative set of cards, full of symbols that easily interacted with each other in a kind of semiotic emergence. It wasn't until the late 18th century, however, that the cards were actually used in fortune-telling, with the cardomancer Etege credited with the creation of the first divination deck. Then swept up in the storm of occultism in Egyptomania, ancient Egyptian origins were attributed to the cards without evidence, Subsequent waves of occultism only intensified Tarot's role as a tool of divination under the influence of French occultist Eliphas Lévy, who also gave us the Goat of Mendes. Also, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn played a role in popularizing the tarot as a divination tool.

3:11 And people still continue to play actual games with the cards and still do. But the zeitgeist view of the cards has clearly shifted. Today, you'll find a near endless selection of designer tarot cards at your local crystal store or the occult section of your bookstore with far fewer playing options at the local game store. Though again, people still play games with tarot cards And they also use them as part of the gameplay mechanics of various tabletop role-playing games. I know I've used them in a solo game where the random drawing of tarot cards gives you a randomization and symbolic engine for use in the game.

3:52 But it's such a fascinating transformation, isn't it, to go from pure game to divination. I mean, imagine a game of Clue or, I don't know, Operation. Being used as such. Well, maybe not operation, but maybe clue. And definitely something like Pokemon. I was thinking about Pokemon cards being used for divination.

4:11 And I am excited to note that I am certainly not the first to think of this. If you do a search for Pokemancy, there are plenty of examples of this. People have already given this a lot of thought. And it makes sense. Just think of the symbols, the numbers. All of these systems interact with each other, and Pokemon themselves are full of deeper meaning, as we've discussed in the show before, often based on folkloric and pop culture symbols as well as animal forms. So certainly if there's a system of symbolism, there's room for expansion into the realm of divination. After all, one of the oldest models of divination, sortilage, consists of casting or drawing lots, essentially rolling the dice as a kind of uncertainty engine. helping

4:55 out our ancestors as they tried to make decisions when they felt frozen or unsure in their own decision-making. And we still turn to modes of divination like this, as well as other options out there, such as the opinions of other people in choosing the exact twists and turns in our path. Again, we may have a gut feeling we want to go this way or that way, but we just can't quite act. And we need something to point us in the right direction, something to kind of tell us that our gut is correct or to tell us our gut is incorrect. And that can come in many forms. It can come in the form, again, of someone's opinion, you know, a father figure or a religious leader advising you, or it can come in the form

5:37 of something like this, where you have a system of chance, a system of randomization that is standing in. And if given, you know, if given some sort of occult or supernatural flavoring, it takes on the form of divine message. Tune in to additional editions of The Artifact, The Monster Fact, or Animalia Stupendium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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