Prophetical, Educational and Playing Cards

by Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer

There have been many persons who have interested themselves in the history of playing cards, and some of them have pierced the veil surrounding their cradle; but, generally, since these students have only been interested in the cards as toys or gambling instruments or as rare specimens of painting, engraving or stencilling, the studies have not extended beyond the time when playing cards became common in Europe, or about the beginning of the fourteenth century. None of these students followed the clues that would have proved the original purport of the “tablets of fate.”

In “Les Etudes Historique sur les Cartes à Jouer,” by M. C. Leber (1842), the question is asked: “Where do cards come from, what are they and what do they say?” These queries the writer proceeds to answer only in part, for he fails to see the connection of the cards familiar to him, that have French or German pips, with the more ancient Tarots, which, in all probability, he had never seen. But Leber states positively that cards “are of ancient origin and Eastern invention, and primarily they constitute a symbolic and moral game.” He professes to be guided by the emblems on the cards themselves, but he fails to decipher or to understand the evidences shown by the heraldic devices peculiar to one of the ancient Greek gods, which would have answered his questions.

According to the Rev. Edward Taylor and other authorities, the emblematic and mystic cards called Tarots were “born long since in the East, from whence they were brought by the gypsies for thaumaturgic purposes.” Although it is declared that the gypsies always carried and consulted packs of cards ever since the wanderers were known in Europe, these people themselves have no history of their mystic book that they will disclose, so the positive historical record of playing cards as used for gambling games or fortune-telling does not commence before the second half of the fourteenth century.

These cards are the ones we call Tarots, which are still common in Italy, and the emblems on the cards themselves reveal their original connection with the worship of Mercury in Etruria, of Thoth in Egypt, and of Nebo in Babylonia. These three gods have the same attributes, and were worshipped for many generations in the then civilised portions of the world; yet the forms of their worship, that have been so strangely transmitted to us through the greatest of their books, the cards are now little understood and seldom consulted.

Indeed, the very name Tarot has been deemed by some authors as positive proof that the cards are the unbound leaves of one of the great books of the Temple of Thoth Hermes Trismegistus, since they derive the word Tarot from Thoth or else from Thror Tahar, which, says Wilkinson (Volume II, page 90), “were the parchment records kept in the Temple, which are mentioned in the time of the eighteenth dynasty that were written on skins.” The same author states (page 207) that “Thoth framed the laws.” In fact, his temple was the seat of all learning, where doctors, lawyers and scientists were able to study and to devote their knowledge to the god they worshipped.

It seems, therefore, that the name is in truth one of the links in the chain of evidence proving that what we use as playthings were once part of the great cult of Mercury and his African or Asian confrères, in whose time the pictures and the emblems were thoroughly understood and were regarded with awe or reverently consulted, since by their means alone could the wishes of the gods be made known to mortals, through the medium of the priests of Mercury, Thoth, or Nebo.

The intimate connection of the triple god is no fanciful suggestion, but is acknowledged by all students. Nebo, of the Babylonians (mentioned in the Bible), Thoth, of the Egyptians, and Hermes, of the Greeks, were all worshipped as gods of speech and inventors of transmitted ideas. It is not credible that in Asia or Africa, even as early as the twelfth dynasty, that voice language or speech was a gift newly granted to mankind, so there must have been some reason for the belief that “these gods gave speech to mankind.” This is one of the superstitions puzzling many modern students who have tried to investigate the mysteries of the Temple of Thoth.

It is now believed that one of the priests who was connected with the cult conceived the bright idea of communicating the wishes of the planets, of the vegetable and the animal kingdoms, as well as those of the patron gods, to mankind through a well-arranged system that had the Temple of Thoth for a centre and its priests as interpreters. The power that this system would give to the learned men congregated in the vast Temple of learning would be great, and would increase their prestige to a wonderful extent. Before that time the primitive people were content with simple means of consulting the wishes of the gods, or with the decrees written at the birth of each child on the tablet of fate by “the writer of Esigalia, who was called Nebü.” The means generally resorted to were those still common in Korea, Japan and China, where the oracle is consulted by throwing a handful of sticks before a shrine. Among the Arabs a sheaf of arrows is used. Gordon Cummings describes his negro servants using sticks which were marked and then thrown on the ground, when the natives desired to be told by their gods where the game lay and what direction to take when hunting.

The scientific arrangement devised by the priest of Thoth that earned for his god the reputation of giving speech to mankind was done through placing on the walls of the temple a series of pictures representative of the chief gods, such as Thoth, Isis, Maut, Phthah and Ammon, as well as various virtues, vices, etc., either pictorially or through heraldic and emblematic devices. These mural pictures could be consulted by the priests by casting on a central altar a handful of arrows, straws or rods, that were always connected with the magic of the Egyptians, as is mentioned in Exodus. As these rods fell they naturally pointed toward the pictures on the walls, and since these represented nearly every event in human life the “speech or commands” of the gods were readily interpreted by the priests, who thus proved that Thoth was the “God of speech” with themselves for his mouthpieces. This superstition was carried out even to the sacrifice of tongues, which was customary as late as the days of the Roman emperors, when tongues were used as one of the sacrifices to Mercury.

It can easily be seen that the primitive arrows were incomplete without the interpretation of the pictures on the walls used in their connection, just as the pip part of the Tarot pack is useless for fortune-telling without the Atouts, which are supposed to be crude Europeanized copies of the pictures on the walls of the Egyptian temples representing their deities. It will also be seen that the cards bearing the comparatively modern pips of Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades, or of Acorns, Bells, Hearts and Leaves have no power whatever of translating the wishes of the gods, since they were invented for another and widely different purpose.