Masonic & Occult Symbols Illustrate

With the resurgence of the occult and the New Age movement has come a new interest in the Tarot card deck. The New Age Almanac explains: “The tarot, however, began to take on OCCULT associations and to be USED PREDOMINANTLY FOR CARTOMANCY, DIVINATION, OR FORTUNETELLING with cards. The person primarily responsible for the new developments in the tarot was a French Huguenot pastor, Antoine Court de Gebelin (1719-1784). In the 1770s, de Gebelin became active in Parisian FREEMASONRY circles and joined the Philalethes, a French MASONIC OCCULT ORDER derived from the teachings of Martines de Pasqually (d. 1774). He became an accomplished OCCULT scholar. This French occult perspective came to be an essential building block in the revolutionary thought that would bring down the French government in a few years. “Through his social connections, de Gebelin discovered the tarot. He immediately saw in them OCCULT SYMBOLOGY, and tied them to ancient Egypt. As ancient Egypt disintegrated, the priests developed playing cards to hide their wisdom from the profane and at the same time ensure their survival. He concluded that they had traveled to Rome, kept in the possession of the popes who took them to Avignon. From Avignon they were disseminated throughout Europe. De Gebelin published his speculations in 1781 in the eighth volume of his multi volume study of the ancient world, Le Monde primitif, in which he begins to designate the occult symbology of the deck. De Gebelin is, for example, the one who originated the idea that the 22 Major cards were to be equated with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In an essay by an unknown associate appended to his own account of the tarot, de Gebelin suggested that the TAROT BE USED AS A METHOD OF DIVINATION. The idea was adopted by a fortune-teller known only as Etteilla, who in 1783 published a book detailing a methodology for tarot cartomancy, and over the next decade authored a host of books and pamphlets on fortune-telling using the tarot and other means. Cartomancy with the tarot grew increasingly prevalent during the decades of post-revolutionary France.