Prophetical, Educational and Playing Cards

by Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer

CHAPTER VIII

SOME OLD ITALIAN TAROTS

It is practically impossible to bridge the chasm between the abandonment of the actual and open worship of Mercury in his own temples to the transference of his heraldic emblems to the unbound leaves of a book that could be concealed on the persons of his priests, for doubtless the rites of Mercury were practised privately for many years by people who had every motive for concealment; and since there was no law against these secret practices, there is no record of their having been broken, no ordinance concerning games of cards or fortune-telling, and no official record pointing directly to cards under the name now generally given them. What may be recorded concerning the priests of the cult of Mercury remains to be discovered.

Nor can we date the period when these same leaves came to be regarded as affording amusement, or from being wholly in the hands of initiated persons and regarded as a vehicle for consulting the wishes of the deities, they fell into the possession of soothsayers or unscrupulous fortune-tellers, who did not hold the interpreting key and made improper uses of the ancient Book of Thoth.

Nor, again, is there any record of when cards became the tools of gamblers, who used them for games of chance, although their consultation might always have partaken of the elements of “chance,” but in a very different way.

However, it is well known that the introduction of Christianity into Rome gradually caused the deities of Olympus to be disregarded, so that those who still worshipped the gods of their ancestors did so in secret, and when St. Paul set foot at Pozzuoli, close to the temples of Osiris and Mercury, the first step was taken towards the downfall of the ancient rites.

It is quite natural, therefore, that writers on the origin and history of Playing Cards have found no record of their invention, no monument to their inventor, and no cradle at their birthplace, since they looked solely for the cards that were familiar to them and for games played with those cards, while they failed to recognise that the cards were part of a cult and were the heraldic emblems of Mercury (as displayed on the pip cards) and those of ancient Egyptian gods (as depicted on the Atouts), and, therefore, these writers declare that no link exists between the Italian Tarots of the present day and the great Book of Thoth Hermes Trismegistus, while they acknowledge that Playing Cards owe their invention to the Egyptians, who, having inherited the “men portrayed upon the walls” from the Babylonians and the traditions of Nebo, “the one who writes the tablets of fate,” elaborated the ceremonies, simplified their code, and introduced them to Europe, first through the priests of the Serapeon, and then, by means of the Tarots, to other parts of the world.

Some claim that the gypsies were originally the initiates of the temple of Thoth, and that it was they who carried Playing Cards as a means of divination through Europe. One of their customs is to demand that the palm of the right hand be crossed with a piece of money before beginning to read a fortune; and by some this custom is supposed to date from the time when the fortune-teller demanded from his clients an oath of secrecy, which was ratified by making the sign of the cross. Unless there was some such meaning originally attached to the custom, there would seem to be no reason for this performance being enacted in connection with fortune-telling with cards, and as far as is known with no other transaction in the commercial or nomadic world.

There are many signs suggesting that the gypsies were able to translate the symbols on the cards at an early date, soon after they appeared in Europe, and it is certain that for several centuries these nomads have used Playing Cards for telling future, past, or present events, and have done it with so much self-confidence that it would seem that they possessed a key to the occult mysteries. It is, therefore, unwise to discard this theory entirely, for the gypsy tribes scattered over Europe certainly aided in widely distributing the cards. Nor does the connection of gypsies with the ancient mysteries quarrel with the statement that cards were part of the worship of Mercury, since no man can say that these people were not the original priests of the temple who were cast out of their shrines and forced to wander about the world. In England these nomads are frequently called the Egyptians, while their own name for themselves is Romany.

Spain has contended with Italy for the honour of originating Playing Cards, but without proving her case, for Spain preserved only a mutilated pack of pip cards, showing the symbols of Mercury, indeed, but unaccompanied by the emblematic Atouts that were the first volume of the book; these have never been known in that country. But, then, Spain was not the home of the gods of Olympus, nor was that country in close contact with Egypt, as was Italy. There is no historic record of yearly communications between the two opposite shores of the great sea, as is the case with Italy, for Seneca has left an interesting description of the great fleet from Alexandria that yearly visited Pozzuoli, on the bay of Naples.