Today's
playing cards originated from tarot
cards.
What
is tarot?
History
Back
in the fifteenth century, somewhere in northern Italy, someone
created a deck of picture cards and used them for playing games.
People copied the deck thereby spreading the popularity of the
cards and associated games. The deck had four suits, court cards
and a number of other picture cards. The court cards obviously
represented kings and queens and their children and the other
picture cards represented people who could be seen at the time.
Examples are the hermit, Pope and Emporer. It wasn't until around
the 1700's that people began to see mystical meanings in the
cards thence another tool of divination was born.
The
tarot deck
The
deck consists of four suits of cards one through to ten plus
king, queen, page (princess) and knight (prince). These are
known as the minor arcana. There are twenty-two other picture
cards in the deck and these are called the major arcana. There
are hundreds of decks to choose from but a popular deck today
is the Rider-Waite version which depicts scenes from medival
times.
Reading
the cards
There's
nothing mysterious about reading the cards. Anyone can do it.
The cards are suffled and cut by the querent (the person having
the reading.) The reader deals out a number of cards into a
spread and begins reading the meanings. It's that easy.
