The Esoteric Tarot

Ancient Sources Rediscovered In Hermeticism & Cabala.

That the Tarot originated in ancient Egypt as a divinatory tool is a romantic misconception.

Ron Deckers meticulous scholarship will surprise practitioners and academics alike, revealing the Tarot s true evolution and meanings as its inventor(s) understood it.

The Tarot consists of the Minor Arcana, four suits of cards similar to our modern deck, and the Major Arcana, twenty-two allegorical or trump cards.

Decker says the four-suit deck was invented in Asia Minor before AD 1000; Italian courtiers added the trumps in the 1400s.

But Tarot was first used as a game.

Tarot divination was only created in the 1700s by a Parisian fortuneteller who based the trump images on Hermeticism, which merges Greco-Egyptian alchemy, astrology, numerology, magic, and mysticism.

Today, the suit-cards are often traced to the ancient Jewish Cabala.

But, says Decker, they, too, acquired their meanings only in the 1700s, and he cites a lost numerical system based on Cabala at that time.

Decker  interpretation integrates three whole systems-astrological, arithmological, mystagogical (concerning initiation rites into the Mysteries).

His depth of knowledge makes the book a must-have for serious students of Tarot and esotericism.

By Ronald Decker.