On the origin of tarot cards

by me

Abstract: A new theory of the origin of tarot cards hardly makes worldwide breaking news, especially as the origin of tarot is securely traced to the Visconti and Sforza families in 15th century Italy and only some minor questions remain unsolved. Yet, the history of playing cards has interest of its own and occasionally it can shed light on some historical events. Tarot cards started as playing cards without any occult or esoteric connections. The use of tarot cards for divination was commenced in 18th century France by Alliette and the association of tarot with Kabbalah dates to the 19th century Rosicrusians, notably to S. L. MacGregor Mathers and A. E. Waite. Though this is true, it is shown in this paper that tarot trump cards from the 15th century already have an internal structure that maps well to the Kabbalistic Sephiroth tree. The hypothesis presented in this paper is that the trump cards were redesigned in the time period 1447-1466 to have a Sephiroth structure in the place of the older trionflo structure from Petrarch poem I Trionfi. If this hypothesis is correct, it may give some insight to Christian knowledge of Zohar and its implications.          

There are special museums of playing cards, like the Deutsche Spiekartenmuseum, and some research is done in these institutes of the items on display, but the goal of such research is to find the historical setting of the items, not to create speculative scenarios. Yet, the real goal of all study of history is to find facts and theories that have relevance to our time. I will present one speculative scenario concerning tarot cards that may be of interest to some.  

            Tarot cards can be traced to 15th century Northern Italy to the Visconti and Sforza families. The Cary-Yale Visconti-Sforza deck, also called Visconti di Modrone deck, is considered the oldest. Giordano Berti [1] dates the deck between 1442 and 1447 because the coin pip cards show a golden florin that was issued by Filippo Maria Visconti and in use only during this period. Rafał T. Prinke [2] finds allusions to the coats-of-arms of Visconti and Pawia in the card and interprets the Cary-Yale card Lovers as describing the marriage of Bianca Maria Visconti, the daughter of Filippo Maria Visconti, to Franscesco Sforza. Prinke is not alone assuming that the deck was ordered by Franscesco Sforza: in this issue most tarot researchers agree. It is also quite likely that Lovers does describe the marriage of Bianca and Franscesco because this marriage had some special dramatic effects: Bianca was betrothed to Franscsco per procura in 1431, but Francesco Sforza changed sides in 1433 or 1435 and served Florence and Venice, enemies of Milan. In 1440 he was again on the same side with Filippo Maria Visconti and the marriage took place in 1441, but later Sforza was again fighting against Visconti.

            The face cards of the Cary-Yale deck include a female page and a female knight and in addition to the customary tarot face card set; page, knight, queen, king. One common explanation for having the extended face cards is that the deck was a present to a woman. If so, then it was a gift from Franscesco to Bianca. Many other researchers date the deck to a later time, to 1466, which is the year Franscesco Sforza died, but this dating seems too late for a loving gift. The best guess is to follow Berti: the deck derives from the time 1442 to 1447.

            The surviving deck has 39 pip cards, and originally there must have been 40. There are 17 face cards, but as each suit has six cards, there must have been 24. The question is whether there were 22 trump cards, or some other number. Twenty-two trumps imply an 86 card deck, while a 78 card deck implies 14 trump cards. There are eleven surviving trumps: Emperor, Empress, Lovers, Chariot, Charity, Faith, Fortitude, Hope, Death, Judgment and World. If there were 14 cards, then only three cards are missing. They can be easily identified since the surviving cards have four Church virtues (Charity, Faith, Fortitude, Hope) and later tarot cards have three Church virtues (Justice, Temperance and Strength replacing Fortitude). If follows that six Church virtues were included implying that almost certainly all seven Church virtues (Charity, Faith, Fortitude, Hope, Justice, Temperance, Prudence) were included in the Cary-Yale deck. As three (Justice, Temperance, Prudence) are not among the surviving eleven, they are the three missing from the fourteen. Seven Church virtues fit well to the idea of trionfi/trumps in Petrarch’s poem I Trionfi. The four cards Emperor, Empress, Lovers and Chariot may refer directly to Franscesco and Bianca, their marriage and their secret meetings. The seven virtues follow Petrarch’s structure of Trionfi. The last three cards (Death. Judgment, World) can also be seen as Petrarch’s Trionfi. If there were 14 trump cards, the deck followed Petrarch’s structure. If there were 22 trumps and cards like Hanged man and Tower/House of God, then the deck did not have any structure of this type. The conclusion is that the Cary-Yale deck most probably had 14 trumps.

            There is another argument favoring 14 trumps. Pip cards in the Cary-Yale deck have silver background and are less valuable than trump or face cards. All but one pip card has survived, but many face and trump cards are missing. It is logical to assume that these cards were lost more often because of their value and the loss percentage of face and trump cards should be similar.  Seventeen face cards of twenty-four survived, i.e., 71%. If from fourteen trump cards had survived 71%, there would be ten surviving trumps. There are eleven. Had there been twenty-two trumps and as only eleven survived, then only 50% of trumps had survived. By this argument there were originally fourteen trump cards.

            I conclude that there were fourteen trump cards and a total of 78 cards in the Cary-Yale deck. Then two uncustomary (female) face cards from each of the four suits were removed. In order to keep the total number of cards as 78, the number of trump cards had to be upgraded to 14+8=22. The Pierpont Morgan Bergamo deck, probably painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza family in c. 1450, is an almost complete tarot deck. Only two pip cards and two trump cards (Devil and Tower) are missing. The deck has the same structure as a modern (classical) tarot deck. Only three of Church virtues remain: two in the original form as Justice and Temperance and Fortitude in a slightly changed form as Strength. No Petrarch-style Trionfi structure remains in the trumps. The painter, Bonifaction Bembo, must have replaced the original structure with a new structure. There must be some logic in the new structure as the idea in the old structure cannot have been replaced with a lack of any idea in the new structure. We only need to deduce what the new idea may have been.   

            Play cards of that time often presented some set with a common property, like the Church virtues or Roman gods. In the Pierpont Morgan Bergamo deck there is no such structure. Bembo most likely searched for some similar idea, but did not find it from the society, the Church or from the Greek-Roman religion. Let us try to imagine how Bembo might have proceeded.

            The Cary-Yale deck is a gift from a loving husband to his wife. The main theme is in the triplet Empress-Lovers-Emperor. This implies three pillars. Let us try to place the cards to three pillars, the right pillar being feminine, the left masculine and the middle pillar common to both. Lovers is in the middle pillar, but as the death and the last judgment face both sexes equally and both sexes are in the world, we put Death, Judgment and World to the middle pillar. Driving horses may be a more masculine hobby, though horse riding seems to attract young girls, but in the Cary-Yale deck the Chariot card has a woman driving, maybe Bianca driving to her husband. We place this card to the feminine pillar. Fortitude means courage in pain and adversity and has an antonym as womanishness. Clearly, it must be in the masculine pillar. Justice usually means punishing somebody and it is of the heartless masculine style. The three Teological virtues Charity, Faith and Hope do not seem to fit anywhere, or maybe they did not well characterize the families of Visconti and Sforza. We drop them and get the following structure:

            Empress              Lovers              Emperor

            Chariot                                        Fortitude

            Temperance                                Justice

                                       Death

                                       Judgment

                                       World

This structure only has nine cards. Bembo had to increase it to 22 cards. He could get far by creating a pair to existing cards, but there is one natural pair: the last judgment is over the world and we can group Judgment and World together. For other cards we invent a pair. A suitable pair for emperor is pope, and then for empress we need popess, though such did not exist. (Though, Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) was homosexual.) A Chariot has wheels. We can pair it with another wheel: the Wheel of Fortune. In the Cardinal virtues Temperance means restraining from impulsive behavior. A hermit goes to excesses and is not practicing temperance, but he shows strength in resisting the desires of the body. It is some kind of Fortitude, courage. To make it clear, we rename Fortitude as Strength and pair it with a new card Hermit. So, Hermit does not pair with Temperance. We have to pair for Temperance and also for Justice. Justice is often rather sad when it happens in ones own case. Let Justice be Moon and Temperance Sun. Then we can place Star between the Sun and the Moon. The structure is now:

            Empress                                   Lovers                          Emperor

            Popess                                                                         Pope

            Chariot                                                                         Strength

            Wheel of Fortune                                                          Hermit

                                                            Death

            Temperance                                                                 Justice

            Sun                                          Star                              Moon

                                                            Judgment

                                                            World

As an indication that Bembo did something like this, look at the Lovers card in the Cary-Yale deck and in Bembo’s Visconti-Sforza deck. In Cary-Yale there are the two lovers, but in later tarot decks there are two women and one man. It does not fit a love relation, it fits Lover being between two pillars. There are seventeen trumps in our diagram. Five trump cards are missing from the modern tarot deck: Fool, Magician, Hanged man, Devil and Tower. Love is foolish and magical, so let us place these two as the first pair above Lovers and add Devil, Hanged man and Tower to the three nodes that do not have a pair. A reasonable pair for Hanged man is Death: Death follows Hanging. The Devil card has the Devil holding a man and a woman in a chain. It is similar to Lovers, where a man is surrendered by two women. We pair Devil with Lovers. Therefore Tower is the pair of Star. Let us change the order of Empress and Popess and number the cards from 0 to 21 as they are today numbered in tarot and:

                                                            Fool (0)

                                                            Magician (1)

                                                            ——– = 1

            Popess (2)                                Lovers (6)                    Emperor (4)

            Empress (3)                              Devil (15)                     Pope (5)

                                                            ——- = 21=3*7        

            Chariot (7)                                                                   Strength (8)

            Wheel of Fortune (10)              Hanged man (12)          Hermit (9)

                                                            Death (13)

                                                            ——- = 25

            Temperance (14)                      Tower (16)                   Justice (11)

            Sun (19)                                   Star (17)                      Moon (18)

            ——– = 55                            ——– = 33                ——– = 55
           

                                                            Judgment (20)

                                                            World (21)

Notice that the sum of the feminine and masculine pillars is 55 only because Justice (11) is in an unnatural place: if the numbering were logical, we would have Hanged man (11), Death (12) and Justice (13), but it is natural that Death is 13, the unlucky number. The sum of all numbers from zero to 21 is 231. It is divided as 110 in the outer two pillars and 121 in the middle pillar. In the middle pillar the World pair has the sum 41 and the other pillar sums to 80. The tower is the House of God destroyed by a lightning, while a star is a symbol of the Messiah (as in the Star of Bethlehem). The sum of Lovers and Devil is 21, which symbolizes trinity as 3*7, while the sum of Fool and Magician is one, a symbol of unity of God. The only partial sum (of those that are shown) is the sum of Hanged man and Death as 25, but Death=13 is a natural symbol. 

            The derived tarot tree structure resembles the Sephiroth tree:

                                                            Crown

                                                            (Kether)

            Wisdom                                                                       Understanding

            (Chokbah)                                                                    (Binah)

                                                            Vau knowledge

                                                            (Daath)

            Mercy                                                                          Severity

            (Chesed)                                  Beauty                          (Geburah)

                                                            (Tiphereth)

            Victory                                     Foundation                   Glory

            (Netzach)                                 (Yesod)                        (Hod)
           

                                                            World

                                                            (Malkuth)

There is only one difference. In the Sephiroth tree Wisdom (Chokbah) is Abba, Father, and Understanding (Binah) is Aima, Mother. Thus, in the Sephiroth tree, the Pillar of Mercy is masculine, under Abba, while the Pillar of Severity is feminine, under Aima. In the derived tarot tree the Pillar of Mercy is feminine and under Empress while the Pillar of Severity is masculine and under Emperor. Let us notice that the way the Sephiroth tree has it is in contradiction with a long tradition. Greeks, Gnostics and also Jews have Wisdom as a feminine principle and mercy is more often seen as a feminine approach, while justice is a masculine way. The confusion in the Sephiroth tree one an instance of seeing the woman as the source of evil in Judaism: Eva caused the fall. 

            Chariot in Hebrew is Merkabah, Jewish mysticism. Merkabah refers especially to the visions of God in the Book of Ezekiah, but as a complement of the law (Torah) it can mean all prophets. The law is Justice and in the Pillar of Severity (Geburah). Therefore Chariot is in the Pillar of Mercy, as it incidentally is in the derived tarot tree. 

            Notice that Daath is a pseudo-Sephiroth: there are ten Sepiroths and Daath. Including Daath there are eleven Sephiroths. There are 22 letters in Hebrew and according to Kabbalah God created everything with these letters, but he also created everything with the ten (or eleven) Sephiroth, thus there is some mapping between 22 and 10+1=11. One such mapping is 2*11=22. There are 22 trump cards and 22 Hebrew letters: this may be the reason why Bembo may have used the Sephiroth three as the new structure, but could Bembo have had any knowledge of the Sephiroth tree in 1450?

            Let us first notice that the date 1450 is not precise: it is derived by comparing the clothing in Bembo’s cards with what we know of medieval clothing fashion in that time. If Bembo was not especially fashion-oriented, the characters in his cards may be dresses in some fifteen years old style. We can very well move the dating of the Pierpont Morgan Bergamo deck later, up to 1466 when Franscesco Sforza died. This is true of other old decks too, such as the Goldschmidt deck (also dated to c. 1450, and having a sea serpent card, which may be the Devil trump showing the Devil as Levithan).

            Zohar was written in the end of the 13th century, thus the Sephiroth tree existed long before 1450s, but it was not known to Christians. There was a Jewish community in Bembo’s time in Ferrara, protected by Dukes of Este, and the tarot was developed in cooperation between the Visconti-Sforce family in Milan and the Este family in Ferrara. Many of the Jews in Ferrara must have known of Zohar and the Sephiroth tree, but Bembo’s tarot trumps are Christian: in the Judgment card in the Pierpont Morgan Bergamo deck Jesus is watching the uprising of the dead. Jews did not easily share their knowledge of Jewish writings, especially of Kabbalah or Merkabach, with Christians. Can we find any Christian person in North Italy, who was familiar with the Sephiroth tree?

            The answer is: probably not from the people known to history. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) is often considered as the founder of Christian Kabbalah. His family was closely connected with Sforza and Este families and lived in a small place close to Ferrara. Giovanni studied Jewish writings under Jew Elia del Medigo in Perugia (and maybe also in Padua) and learned his (quite meager) Kabbalah knowledge from Elia. Therefore, we have a good reason to assume that in 1480s the Sephiroth tree was known to Jews in Ferrara and also to some Christians in the same area where Bembo had painted his tarot cards, but 1480 is too late. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was born too late to be teaching the Sephiroth tree to Bembo before 1466. Pico’s teacher, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), also lived a bit too late, and mostly stayed in Florence. The teacher of Ficino, John Argyropoulos, came to Italy in 1456. John was in Padua also in 1443/4 getting his Doctor of Teology degree. However, there is no record of John being familiar with Kabbalah, though he kner Hebrew. However, not finding a known historical person who could have shown Bembo the Sephiroth tree does not prove that there was no such person. In Ferrara there were people, who knew of the Sephiroth, and just a bit later there were Christians who were interested in Kabbalah.

            Let us look at the five cards that we placed to the derived tarot tree only because they are in the later tarot decks: Fool, Magician, Hanged man, Devil and Tower. Tower is the easiest to explain. The name of this card is often the House of God and the house falls because of being hit by a lightning. In this time period there happened an event that shook the Christian world: Constantinoples, the protection of Christianity against Islam, fell in 1453. Let us assume the tower card refers to this historical event.

            Let us continue to the card Hanged man and find some event that it may refer to. This card is also called the traitor, but in the time period 1447-14466 there was no special case of a traitor in Northern Italy, apart from politics, changing sides and normal medieval crookedness. There was a historical event in 1462: the ritual murder case of Andreas Oxner von Rinn in 1462 in Tyrol, Austria. The card Hanged man may describe a ritual murder. According to the folk legend Oxner’s mother was found the boy’s body hanged in a tree, but Oxner was a small child of 3 years. The Hanged man card shows a man, not a three years old boy, but in a ritual murder case of Werner of Oberweisel from 1287 we have a hanged man: according to a Latin legend from 1338 Werner, aged 16, was hanged from his feet. Hanging from the feet is natural in a ritual murder for the purpose of collecting the blood. It is often stated that Hanged man is hanged from one foot because that is the way traitors were hanged in that time. This hardly can be correct. The body of a traitor might be hanged from feet, but the man in the card is shown as alive and hanging an alive person from feet does not kill him, unless you have cut the veins. It would be Roman style crucifixion and one would have to set a guard for several days to wait that the person hanged from feet dies of thirst or something else. The logical explanation for hanging from a foot is to draing the blood from cut veins. In some cards money is falling from the hands of the Hanged man. It is human blood, a very valuable trade article in the middle ages.    

            The case of Andreas Oxner (allegedly) happened in 1462, just in the time period of interest, so let us see if Bembo could have heard of it. The assumed murder place, Judenstein, was a place of pilgrimage and there were the remains of a body. The remains were moved to a church in Rinn in late 17th century. In 1985 the remains were again moved to the churchyard of Judenstein, so clearly, there are remains of a body.

            Some try to deny that this ritual murder even existed. According to the English language Wikipedia “Research suggests that a child named Andreas Oxner perhaps never existed” and that the cult was created in 1619 by Hyppolyte Guarinoni, who allegedly heard of the story of a boy murdeded by Jews and dreamt that he was killed in 1462, but this is a bit problematic as the Italian language Wikipedia says the following about Andrea Oxner da Rinn: “In seguito al presunto omicidio rituale di Simonino di Trento la storia del piccolo Andrea Oxner iniziò ad essere conosciuta in tutta Europa. Diversi pellegrini, incluso l’imperatore Massimiliano I d’Asburgo, si recarono a pregare sulla tomba del piccolo martire.” That is, Massimiliano I dÁsburgo, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire during 1493-1519, had heard of Andrea Oxner long before 1619. Oxner was a folk saint in late 15th century and the legend gives his year of death as 1462.

            There is more reason to question the claim that there was no evidence in the Oxner case: in 1758, Cardinal Ganganelli (later Pope Clement XIV, 1769–1774) prepared a legal memorandum rejecting all ritual murder allegations since the 13th century (the famous cases in England were in the 12th century) with the exception of Simon of Trent and Andreas Oxner. The Jewish encycklopedia [3] suggest this was because Simon of Trent and Andreas Oxner were canonized, but they were never canonized, only beautified. Werner of Oberwesel, died 1287, was also venerated as a saint, but rejected by Ganganelli. Apparently there was more evidence of the cases of Simon of Trent and Andreas of Oxner.

            If the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire heard of the Oxner case at the time of the trial of the accused in the Simon of Trent case, then very possibly the story was known in the Visconti-Sforza family in 1460s and Bembo could have known it. Tyrol may be a bit far, but there were similar cases also in Northern Italy: Simon of Trent in 1475 and Lorenzino Sossio in 1485. It is very possible that ritual murders were discussed in Northern Italy at the time Bembo designed the new tarot cards. The Hanged man card fits very well to the Latin legend from 1338 of the murder of Werner of Oberweisel and this legend may well have been known in Northern Italy.

            Bembo may also have heard of the Sephiroth tree: kings and the Pope protected Jews in practically all ritual murder trials as Jews paid them money, but Jewish manuscripts were very probably investigated – there usually was an investigation. Though most Christians could not read Hebrew, diagrams, such as the Sephiroth tree, were easy to notice and the few words in those diagrams could easily be translated by scholars with some Hebrew knowledge. Some knowledge of the Sephiroth tree may have been common knowledge in Bembo’s times.

            The remaining cards to be explained are Fool and Magician. Though lover may be foolish and love can be magical, the explanation of these cards should be the same that is used to explain Devil, Tower and Hanged man. Fool and Magician do not refer to God, as they do in the Sephiroth tree. Fool is shown as a foolish young man and it may mean exactly that: some people are fools. Kether, the highest Sephiroth, means the Crown. The Fool card can mean that the Crown is a fool with these wandering people who often are magicians. If this is the interpretation, tarot trums were not only a for a passtime card game. They had a message that may not have been allowed at that time when kings and popes protected Jews.

            Today all medieval ritual murder accusations against Jews are called antisemitic canards. Kabbalism developed form Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism. It may be interesting to quote a Gnostic text from Nag Hammad: “(50) God eats people. This is why people are (sacrificed) to Him.” Gospel of Philip. The writer introduces himself as “(6) When we were Hebrews, we were orphans as we only had a mother. When we become Christians we got both father and mother.” Gospel of Philip. That is, this Gospel is written by Jewish converts to Christianity. Of course, it is also a canard to claim that Jews sacrificed humans in the first to third century AD. But, in medieval times people did not consider the ritual murder claims as canards and they heard of more cases than we now find from the Web. Bembo may have placed the Hanged man and the Devil card to the tarot structure as a message that the Kabbalistic system is ruled by the Devil and the rites include a human sacrifice.

            The return of Jews to the Promised Land could only happen when the Messiah arrives. There were some Talmudic calculations of this time. Talmudic Jews set the beginning of the world to 3761 BC. There are two 2000 year times (time before the law and the time of the law) before the messianic era of 2000 years starts. Thus, the Messiah could not have come before 240 AD=3761 BC +2*2000 years. There were also to years, 440 AD and 471 AD calculated from Sanh. 97b and Ab. Zarah 9b respectively. As the Messiah did not come in those times, new possible times are easily obtained by adding one thousand years: three possible years are 1240, 1440, 1471. The new tarot trump structure was created in the period 1447-1466. It must have been a period of messianic fervour in Jewish Kabbalistic circles.

            Jews were expelled first from Triani in 1280, then from Naples in 1288, England 1290 and France 1306, These expulsions were rather soon after 1240. Ritual murder cases started in England in 1144, then 1168, 1181, 1255 and we can add Werner of Oberwesel 1287. This was the first messianic period in the last milennia. This period had one messianic candidate: Abraham Abufilia. The second messianic period was in the end of the 15th century. Jews were expelled from Perugia 1485, Gubbio 1486, Ravena 1491, Spain 1492, Sardinia and Sicilia 1492, Portugal 1496 and Naples and Rome 1510 and 1541. We already mentioned some ritual murder cases: 1462, 1475, 1485. In this period there was a messianic candidate: Asher Lemlein. This messianic period lasted for a long time with Isaac Luria and other kabbalists. There even were supporters of a Zionistic program of moving Jewsw to Palestine, notably Doña Gracia Nasi (1510-1596).  But Jews did not move to Palestine in large numbers.

            The old Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. III, 266, lists 113 cases up to the year 1900. There were 6 cases at the end of the 12th century, 15 during the 13th century, 10 for the 14th, 16 for the fifteenth, 13 for the sixteenth, 8 for the seventeenth. Here we see an increase in the thirteenth century, thas is, close to the year 1240. There is also an increase in the fifteenth century, close to the years 1440 and 1471. Then comes the time of Freemasonry and pre-Zionism that want to take Jews to Palestine, expectedly we find an increase in the cases: 15 for the eighteenth and 39 for the nineteenth century.

            Notice there are only few cases in the seventeenth century even though Shabbatai Zevi had the largest following of all messiah candidates. This is easy to understand: a ritual murder was a sacrifice for redemption of sins so that the Jews could return to the Promised Land, but there was a massacre of Jews before Shabbatai Zevi (Khmelnytsky pogroms) and it gave the redemption. Likewise there was no need for ritual murders when Jews did return to Palestine as there was the Holocaust.

            As results of this brief look at early tarot cards we can conclude that there is a Sepharoth structure in tarot trumps, whether accidental or intended. I think it is intended and if so, then it seems to relate to the fall of Constantinoples and to ritual murder cases c. 1462. Some Christians seem to have been familiar with the Sepharoth tree, though nothing shows that they knew the Kabbalistic interpretation.

References:

[1]     Giordano Berti, The history of the tarot. Trues and Legends about the most mysterious Cards on the World, Mondadori, Milano 2007.

[2]     Rafał T. Prinke, Tarot, dzieje niezwyklej talii kart, Wyd. Głodnych Duchów, Warszawa, 1991.

[3]     CLEMENT XIV. (LORENZO GANGANELLI): By: Joseph Jacobs, Isaac Broydé Jewish encyclopedia.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4411-clement-xiv-lorenzo-ganganelli