Tarot is both a symbolic system and a mirror of human thought. Its history has two threads: one woven from documented fact, the other from myth and mystical tradition. To truly understand Tarot, we must walk through each school of its lineage — from Atlantis to the Golden Dawn — and meet the masters who shaped its form.

The Atlantean Hypothesis — Cards Before History

In certain esoteric traditions, Tarot is not an Italian invention but an Atlantean inheritance. Atlantis, in these accounts, was an advanced civilisation that flourished tens of thousands of years ago, with knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, healing, and spiritual law. Some claim that this knowledge came from extraterrestrial visitors, and that it was encoded in symbolic systems designed to survive catastrophe.

One of these systems, say proponents, was a set of pictorial tablets — the forerunners of Tarot and Destiny Cards. The Destiny Card system, which uses an ordinary playing card deck, is sometimes described as the “calendar of life” that originated in Atlantis and was later disguised in everyday games.

Proof? None exists in the archaeological sense. The link rests on symbolic parallels, oral traditions in occult orders, and the recurring human habit of hiding sacred teachings in plain sight — a habit which, true or not, makes for a compelling initiation story.

From Egypt to the Mystery Schools

In the Atlantean narrative, survivors carried the symbolic language to Egypt, where it became associated with the Book of Thoth — a legendary compendium of divine wisdom. This was said to be not a literal book, but a deck of illustrated tablets depicting the laws of nature, the path of the soul, and the cycles of destiny.

From Egypt, the knowledge supposedly entered Hermetic schools in Alexandria, mingling with Greek philosophy and Jewish mysticism. For centuries, it remained a guarded tradition, preserved by adepts, alchemists, and itinerant teachers, awaiting its reappearance in a more receptive age.

The Italian Renaissance — Painted Triumphs

History’s verifiable record begins in 15th-century Italy, where Tarot as a physical deck first appears. Noble families like the Viscontis and Sforzas commissioned lavish trionfi decks, richly painted with gold leaf. The imagery — Emperors, Popes, Virtues, Death, Fortune — echoed medieval morality plays and the allegories of the Renaissance.

These decks were used for a game, not divination, yet their allegorical depth made them ripe for esoteric adoption.

Etteilla and the First Tarot for Divination

In the late 18th century, Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Alliette, known by his reversed surname Etteilla, became the first to publish a Tarot deck created specifically for occult and predictive purposes. He claimed ancient Egyptian origins for the cards, tying them to the Book of Thoth, and added astrological correspondences, reversed meanings, and a sequence different from the traditional order.

Etteilla’s cards were unlike anything before — brimming with mysterious diagrams, zodiac signs, and cryptic phrases. He founded the Société des Interprètes du Livre de Thot and trained readers in his system. In his time, his deck was wildly popular, especially among the Parisian public fascinated by the Egyptian vogue sparked by Napoleon’s campaigns. For decades, Etteilla’s Tarot was the most recognised esoteric deck in France.

The French Occult School — Lévi, Papus, and Wirth

Following Etteilla, Éliphas Lévi reframed Tarot as a universal key to the mysteries, linking the 22 Major Arcana to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the paths on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. His synthesis of Tarot, Kabbalah, astrology, and alchemy became the cornerstone of Western occultism.

Papus (Gérard Encausse) systematised Lévi’s ideas in The Tarot of the Bohemians (1892), blending numerology with esoteric philosophy and presenting Tarot as a practical tool for spiritual development. Oswald Wirth refined the Marseille-style trumps with Hermetic and astrological symbolism, producing one of the most elegant esoteric decks of the era.

The Golden Dawn — A Magical Integration

In Britain, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888) absorbed and expanded the French occult approach. They wove Tarot into a vast network of correspondences — linking it to astrology, the Hebrew alphabet, the Tree of Life, elemental forces, and ceremonial magic. Within the Order, Tarot was not just a tool for divination but a ritual key to spiritual ascent.

Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers

Mathers was the primary architect of the Golden Dawn’s Tarot curriculum. He codified the attributions that became the backbone of the Order’s system — assigning each Major Arcana to a Hebrew letter and each Minor Arcana to a specific decan of the zodiac. He also determined the elemental rulerships of the court cards. Mathers’ structure became the foundation for much of 20th-century Western esoteric Tarot, influencing every Golden Dawn-derived deck that followed.

William Wynn Westcott

Westcott, a physician and mystic, helped organise the Golden Dawn’s teaching system. He integrated the Tarot into the Order’s graded initiations, ensuring that a student’s understanding of the cards was tied to their progress through ceremonial magic. Westcott was also instrumental in connecting Tarot imagery to the Enochian magical system and Hermetic Qabalah, making the cards multi-layered portals for ritual work.

Florence Farr

An actress, writer, and adept magician, Farr brought an imaginative, meditative approach to Tarot. She developed “skrying in the spirit vision” — entering a trance state to travel into the landscapes of the cards. Her methods influenced how the Golden Dawn taught inner-plane work with Tarot, making it not just a system to read, but a world to enter.

Moina Mathers

An artist and ceremonial magician, Moina worked closely with her husband MacGregor Mathers in illustrating and adapting Tarot symbolism for ritual use. She refined the visual correspondences so that colour, form, and symbolic detail aligned perfectly with the Golden Dawn’s teachings. Her work ensured that the cards were not only philosophically consistent but ritually potent.

Arthur Edward Waite

Waite departed from some Golden Dawn orthodoxy to create his own system, which prioritised moral and spiritual lessons. In collaboration with artist Pamela Colman Smith, he produced the Rider-Waite-Smith deck in 1909 — revolutionary for its fully illustrated Minor Arcana. Smith’s storytelling scenes made the cards accessible to intuitive readers, transforming Tarot into a worldwide phenomenon. Waite also embedded subtle Christian mysticism into his deck, differentiating it from the more openly occult Golden Dawn style.

Aleister Crowley

Crowley reimagined Tarot through the lens of Thelema, his own spiritual philosophy. In partnership with Lady Frieda Harris, he created the Thoth Tarot — a deck dense with astrological, Qabalistic, and alchemical symbolism. Crowley altered traditional card names and attributions, aligning them with his vision of cosmic evolution. Beyond Tarot, Crowley’s system integrated Enochian magic, yoga, and ceremonial ritual, making the Thoth deck one of the most complex in the esoteric canon.

Carl Jung — The Psychological Bridge

While the Golden Dawn was refining Tarot as a magical and ceremonial tool, the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung was quietly giving it another kind of legitimacy. Jung did not read Tarot to predict events; he saw it as a psychological mirror, a symbolic map of the archetypes that live in the collective unconscious.

To Jung, each Major Arcana card was more than artwork — it was a living archetype. The Magician embodied the will to act; the High Priestess held the mysteries of the hidden self; the Tower revealed the chaos that forces transformation. He connected Tarot to his theory of synchronicity, where a card drawn in the moment was not random chance, but a meaningful correspondence between inner state and outer sign — much like the I Ching.

Jung’s lens placed Tarot firmly in the realm of self-discovery and individuation. The Fool’s journey through the Arcana mirrored the soul’s path toward wholeness. In modern practice, this view bridges mystical Tarot traditions and therapeutic work, showing that the cards can guide not only magical ritual but also deep personal growth.