Tarot also has links with the ‘art of memory’ , a system of memorisation invented by the Greeks to impress images on the mind for symbolic association.
The 16th century. British astrologer and occultist John Dee, who took them one step further by using this system to talk to ‘angles’. No one really knows the origin of the word ‘tarot’. Some sources suggest that is a derivative of the god Thoth (who was the Egyptian god of magic). Others believe it has Hebrew origins or is a corruption of the word ‘torah’, from Hebrew book of law.
In the end of the 19 century, Dr Arthur Eduard Waite develop and designed his own unique and radical tarot deck with the help of Pamela Coleman Smith. Waite was an irritate of the Hermanic Order of the Golden Dawn, one of the most influential occultist groups founded in 1888 by William Wymn Westcott.
In the 1940s British occultist Aleister Crowley designed the Thoth deck, together with Lady Frieda Harris. In 1907, inspired by the idea of the Order of the Golden Dawn, he made his own order, the Silver Star, to include sexual and erotic magic. Crowley’s deck embodies Egyptian, Greek, Christian and Estern symvolism as well as many elements of other esoteric pathways. Since then, the tarot has become more than just a fortune-telling tool; it is comprehensive voyage of self-discovery, a mysterious and ancient symbol of all that we are.
