Esoteric Tarot

<p>That the Tarot originated in ancient Egypt as a divinatory tool is a romantic misconception. Ron Decker's meticulous scholarship will surprise practitioners and academics alike revealing the Tarot's true evolution and meanings as its inventor(s) understood it.</p><p>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</p><p>Decker's 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</p>