Major Arcana

The Major Arcana or trumps are a suit of twenty-two cards in the 78-card tarot
deck. They serve as a permanent trump and suits in games played with the tarot
deck, and are distinguished from the four standard suits collectively known as the
Minor Arcana.[1] The terms "Major" and "Minor Arcana" are used in the occult and
divinatory applications of the deck, and originate with Jean-Baptiste Pitois, writing
under the name Paul Christian.[2]

Michael Dummett writes that the Major Arcana originally had simple allegorical or
exoteric meaning, mostly originating in elite ideology in the Italian courts of the
15th century when it was invented.[3] The occult significance only began to emerge The Major Arcana by R. Viesi, deck
in the 18th century when Antoine Court de Gébelin (a Swiss clergyman and of 22 cards inspired by the Tarot of
Marseilles, but with the author's
freemason) published Le Monde Primitif. The construction of the occult and
graphic style.
divinatory significance of the tarot, and the Major and Minor Arcana, continued on
from there.[4] For example, Court de Gébelin argued for the Egyptian, kabbalistic,
and divine significance of the tarot trumps: Etteilla created a method of divination using tarot: Eliphas Lévi worked hard to break
away from the Egyptian nature of the divinatory tarot, bringing it back to the tarot de Marsailles, creating a "tortuous" kabbalastic
[2] The Marquis Stanislas de Guaita established the
correspondence, and even suggested that the Major Arcana represent stages of life.
Major Arcana as an initiatory sequence to be used to establish a path of spiritual ascension and evolution.[3] Finally Sallie Nichols, a
Jungian psychologist, wrote up the tarot as having deep psychological and archetypal significance, even encoding the entire process
of Jungian individuation into the tarot trumps.[5] These various interpretations of the Major Arcana developed in stages, all of which
continue to exert significant influence on practitioners' explanations of the Major Arcana to this day
.

Contents
List of the Major Arcana
Esotericism
Fortune telling
Mysticism
Current context
See also
Notes
External links

List of the Major Arcana

Each Major Arcanum depicts a scene, mostly featuring a person or several people, with many symbolic elements. In many decks,
each has a number (usually in Roman numerals) and a name, though not all decks have both, and some have only a picture. The
earliest decks bore unnamed and unnumbered pictures on the Majors (probably because a great many of the people using them at the
time were illiterate), and the order of cards was not standardized. Nevertheless, one of the most common sets of names and numbers
is as follows:
 Number Name
None (0 or 22) The Fool
1 The Magician
2 The High Priestess
3 The Empress
4 The Emperor
5 The Hierophant
6 The Lovers
7 The Chariot
8 Strength
9 The Hermit
10 Wheel of Fortune
11 Justice
12 The Hanged Man
13 Death
14 Temperance
15 The Devil
16 The Tower
17 The Star
18 The Moon
19 The Sun
20 Judgement
21 The World

Strength is traditionally the eleventh card and Justice the eighth, but the influential Rider-Waite-Smith deck switched the position of
these two cards in order to make them a better fit with the astrological correspondences worked out by the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, under which the eighth card is associated with Leo and the eleventh with Libra. Today many decks use this
numbering, particularly in the English-speaking world. Both placements are considered valid.

Prior to the 17th century, the trumps were simply part of a special card deck used for gaming and gambling.[3] There may have been
[3]
allegorical and cultural significance attached to them, but beyond that the trumps originally had little mystical or magical import.

Esotericism
In the hands of freemasons, Protestant clerics, and the nobility of the day, the tarot became a "bible of bibles", an esoteric repository
of all the significant truths of creation.[3] The trend was started by prominent freemason and Protestant cleric Antoine Court de
Gébelin who suggested that the tarot had an ancient Egyptian origin, and mystic divine and kabbalastic significance.[2] A
contemporary of his, the Comte de Mellet, added to Court de Gébelin's claims by suggesting (attacked as being erroneous[2]) that the
tarot was associated with Gypsies and was in fact the imprinted book of Hermes Trismegistus.[2] These claims were continued by
Etteilla. Etteilla is primarily recognized as the founder and propagator of the divinatory tarot, but he also participated in the
propagation of the occult tarot by claiming the tarot had an ancient Egyptian origin and was an account of the creation of the world
and a book of eternal medicine.[2] Éliphas Lévi revitalized the occult tarot by associating it with the mystical Kabbalah and making it
a "prime ingredient in magical lore".[6] As Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett note, "it is to him (Lévi) that we owe its (the Tarot's)
widespread acceptance as a means of discovering hidden truths and as a document of the occult... Lévi's writings formed the channel
[6]
through which the Western tradition of magic flowed down to modern times."
As the following quote by P. D. Ouspensky shows, the association of the tarot with Hermetic, kabbalastic, magical mysteries
continued at least to the early 20th century.

The fact that we question the Tarot as to whether it be a method or a doctrine shows the limitation of our 'three
dimensional mind', which is unable to rise above the world of form and contra-positions or to free itself from thesis
and antithesis! Yes, the Tarot contains and expresses any doctrine to be found in our consciousness, and in this sense
it has definiteness. It represents Nature in all the richness of its infinite possibilities, and there is in it as in Nature, not
one but all potential meanings. And these meanings are fluent and ever-changing, so the Tarot cannot be specifically
[7]
this or that, for it ever moves and yet is ever the same.

Claims such as those initiated by early freemasons today find their way into academic discourse. Semetsky,[8] for example, explains
that tarot makes it possible to mediate between humanity and the godhead, or between god/spirit/consciousness and profane human
existence. Nicholson[9] uses the tarot to illustrate the deep wisdom of feminist theology. Santarcangeli[10] informs us of the wisdom
of the fool and Nichols[5] speaks about the archetypal power of individuation boiling beneath the powerful surface of the tarot
archetypes.

Fortune telling
In the popular mind, tarot is indelibly associated with divination, fortune telling, or cartomancy. Tarot was not invented as a mystical
or magical tool of divination.[3] The association of the tarot with cartomantic practice is coincident with its uptake by freemasons as a
fountain of eternal, divine wisdom.[11] Indeed, it was the very same people publishing esoteric commentary of the magical, mystery
tarot (e.g. Antoine Court de Gébelin and the Comte de Mellet) that also published commentary on the divinatory tarot. Be that as it
may, there is a distinct line of development of the cartomantic tarot that occurs in parallel with the imposition of hermetic mysteries
on the formerly mundane pack of cards, but that can usefully be distinguished. It was the Comte de Mellet who initiated this
development by suggesting that ancient Egyptians had used the tarot for fortune telling and provides a method purportedly used in
ancient Egypt.[2] Following MCM, Etteilla brought the cartomantic tarot dramatically forward by inventing a method of cartomancy,
assigning a divinatory meaning to each of the cards (both upright and reversed), publishing La Cartonomancie français (a book
detailing the method), and creating the first tarot decks exclusively intended for cartomantic practice. Etteilla's original method was
designed to work with a common pack of cards known as the piquet pack. It was not until 1783, two years after Antoine Court de
Gébelin published Le Monde Primitif that he turned his cartomantic expertise to the development of a cartomantic method using the
standard (i.e. Marseilles) tarot deck. His expertise was formalized with the publication of the book Maniere de se récréer avec le jeu
de cartes nommées tarots[12] and the creation of a society for tarot cartomancy
, the Société littéraire des associés libres des interprètes
du liver de Thot. The society subsequently went on to publish Dictionnaire synonimique du Livere de Thot, a book that
, when upright and reversed.".[13]
"systematically tabulated all the possible meanings which each card could bear

Following Ettielle, tarot cartomancy was moved forward by Marie-Anne Adelaid Lenormand (1768-1830) and others.[3] Lenormand
was the most famous and was the first cartomancer to the stars, claiming to be the confidante of Empress Josephine and other local
luminaries. She was so popular, and cartomancy with tarot became so well established in France following her work, that a special
deck entitled the Grand Jeu de Mlle Lenormandwas released in her name two years after her death. This was followed by many other
specially designed cartomantic tarot decks, mostly based on Ettielle's Egyptian symbolism, but some providing other (for example
biblical or medieval) flavors as well.[3] Tarot as a cartomantic and divinatory tool is well established and new books expounding the
mystical utility of the cartomantic tarot are published all the time.

Mysticism
By the early 18th century Masonic writers and Protestant clerics had established the tarot trumps as authoritative sources of ancient
hermetic wisdom and Christian gnosis, and as revelatory tools of divine cartomantic inspiration, but they did not stop there.[2] In
1870 Jean-Baptiste Pitois (better known as Paul Christian) wrote a book entitled Historie de la magie, du monde surnaturel et de la
fatalité à travers les temps et le peuples. In that book Christian identifies the tarot trumps as representing the "principle scenes" of
ancient Egyptian initiatory "tests".[14] Christian provides an extended analysis of ancient Egyptian initiation rites that involves
Pyramids, 78 steps, and the initiatory revelation of secrets. Decker
, Depaulis, and Dummett write:

"At one stage in the initiation procedure, Christian tells us...the postulant climbs down an iron ladder, with seventy-
eight rungs, and enters a hall on either side of which are twelve statues, and, between each pair of statues, a painting.
These twenty-two paintings, he is told, are Arcana or symbolic hieroglyphs; the Science of Will, the principle of all
wisdom and source of all power, is contained in them. Each corresponds to a 'letter of the sacred language' and to a
number, and each expresses a reality of the divine world, a reality of the intellectual world and a reality of the
[15]
physical world. The secret meanings of these twenty-two Arcana are then expounded to him."

Christian attempts to give authority to his analysis by falsely attributing an account of ancient Egyptian initiation rites to Iamblichus,
but it is clear that if there is any initiatory relevance to the tarot trumps it is Christian who is the source of that information.[3]
Nevertheless, Christian's fabricated history of tarot initiation are quickly reinforced with the formation of an occult journal in 1989
entitled L'Initiation, the publication of an essay by Oswald Wirth in Papus's book Le Tarot des Bohémiens that states that the tarot is
nothing less than the sacred book of occult initiation,[3] the publication of book by François-Charles Barlet entitled, not surprisingly,
L'Initiation, and the publication of Le Tarot des Bohémians by Dr. Papus (a.k.a. Dr. Gérard Encausse).[3] Subsequent to this activity
the initiatory relevance of the tarot was firmly established in the minds of occult practitioners.

The emergence of the tarot as an initiatory masterpeice was coincident with, and fit perfectly into, the flowering of initiatory esoteric
orders and secret brotherhoods during the middle of the 19th century. For example, Marquis Stanislas de Guaita (1861–1897)
founded the Cabalistic Order of the Rosy Cross in 1888 along with several key commentators on the initiatory tarot (e.g. Dr Papus,
François-Charles Barlet, and Joséphin Péladin).[2] These orders placed great emphasis on secrets, advancing through the grades, and
initiatory tests and so it is not surprising that, already having the tarot to hand, they read into the tarot initiatory significance.[3] Doing
so not only lent an air of divine, mystical, and ancient authority to their practices, but allowed them to continue to expound on the
magical, mystical, significance of the presumably ancient and hermetic tarot.[16] Be that as it may the activity established the tarot's
significance as a device and book of initiation not only in the minds of occult practitioners, but also (as we will see below) in the
minds of new age practitioners, Jungian psychologists, and general academics.

Current context
The history of the tarot and the tarot arcana is the history of Western esotericists and freemasons writing hermetic, cartomantic,
cabbalistic, and gnostic significance onto a thing that was originally nothing but a game of cards. The standard skeptical approach
dismisses tarot as a self-delusional failure, as Michael Dummett does.[3] While no historical evidence may be invoked to justify any
of the esotericists' claims made for tarot during the course of its 200-year evolution, the notion that the tarot has occult, mystical,
cartomantic, and magical significance has persisted to the present day, where it enjoys a certain degree of popularity and acceptance
among believers.[17] Such believers say the tarot is variously a tool for therapy, something that can facilitate the process of
"individuation",[18] an instrument capable of "heal[ing the] human psyche and lift[ing the] human spirit",[19] even offering
transcendence, transformation,[20] and self-awareness.[5] Among the more sophisticated apologists for tarot, the claimed
understandings are sometimes connected to Jung's equivocal statement about tarot: "If one wants to form a picture of the symbolic
process, the series of pictures found in alchemy are good examples.... It also seems as if the set of pictures in the Tarot cards were
[21]
distantly descended from the archetypes of transformation."

The Tarot deck is used in modern computer game series Shin Megami Tensei, and spin-off Persona series. The games use the major
arcana to sort different mythical beings into categories, and also have in world characters represent specific cards. Persona 5 for
example has a character represent of the Major arcana in game, with the exception of The World.[22] And, going further, Persona 3
uses the minor arcana suits of swords, batons/wands, coins and cups to represent the likelihood of a weapon, money, health or
experience points being dropped after battle.
See also
Minor Arcana
Tarot de Maléfices

Notes
1. Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, History of the Occult Tarot, London: Duckworth, 2002ISBN 978-0715631225
2. Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett. A Wicked Pack of Cards. The Origins of the Occult a
Trot.
New York. St. Martin's Press, 1996
3. Michael Dummett. The Game of Tarot. London: Duckworth, 1980.ISBN 0715631225
4. See Divinatory, esoteric and occult tarotfor a detailed history of the construction of the occult tarot.
5. Sallie Nichols. Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey. San Francisco: Weiser Books, 1980. ISBN 9780877285151.
6. Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett. A Wicked Pack of Cards. The Origins of the Occult a
Trot.
New York. St. Martin's Press, 1996. pp. 174
7. P. D. Ouspensky. The Symbolism of the Tarot: Philosophy of occultism in pictures and numbers. Dover Publications.
1976, pp. 12-14
8. Inna Semetsky. Re-symbolization of the Self: Human Development and arot
T Hermeneutic. (2011) Rotterdam:
Sense Publishers. ISBN 9460914195
9. Christina Nicholson. How to Believe Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Irigaray
, Alicer, and Neo-Pagan
Negotiation of the Otherworld.Feminist Theology, 2003. 11: 362-74.
10. Santarcangeli, Paolo (1979). The Jester and the Madman, Heralds of Liberty andruth.
T Diogenes 27: 28-40.
11. There is recent evidence that the tarot may have been associated with divination early
, perhaps as early at the 15th
century in Bologna. See Franco Pratesi. T arot in Bologna: Documents from the University Library
. The Playing-Card,
Vol. XVII, No. 4. pp 136-146.http://trionfi.com/pratesi-cartomancer
12. A scanned version of the original text isavailable (http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM
-62272)
13. Michael Dummett. The Game of Tarot. London: Duckworth, 1980. pp. 110ISBN 0715631225
14. Michael Dummett. The Game of Tarot. London: Duckworth, 1980.ISBN 0715631225
15. Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett. A Wicked Pack of Cards. The Origins of the Occult a
Trot.
New York. St. Martin's Press, 1996, pp. 206.
16. Michael Dummett. The Game of Tarot. London: Duckworth, 1980. pp. 127ISBN 0715631225
17. For example Rachel Pollack, Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of a
Trot. 1980 Wellingborough: Aquarian
Press.
18. Gad, I. 1994. Tarot and individuation: Correspondences with cabala and alchemy. York Beach, ME: Nicholas-Hays.
19. Semetsky, Inna (2010a). When Cathy was aLittle Girl: The Healing Praxis of Tarot Image. International Journal of
Children's Spirituality. 15(1): 59-72.
20. Bala, Michael (2010): The Clown, Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, 4:1, 50-71.
21. C. J. Jung. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton N.J. Princeton University Press.ol.
V 9:1, para
81. 1981. ISBN 0691018332
22. "Persona 5 Social Links - Where to find them.."(http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2017/04/guide_persona_5_social
_links_-_where_to_find_all_confidants_and_how_to_rank_up_fast)Push Square. Retrieved November 17, 2017.

External links
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