History of Tarot | Tarot Cards Video Lecture | Tarot Reading: Read Tarot Cards to know all the Answers - Professional Skills

hello I'm Ellen Goldberg and welcome to
a Tarot moment from the school of
Oracle's in this segment we are going to
introduce the Tarot
what are tarot cards well you might
think that they are simply a deck of
cards but they're much more than that
the Tarot is actually a book of wisdom
that's disguised as a pack of cards
there are 78 cards in all and they're
divided into two groups the major arcana
are kind of mean secrets and the Minor
Arcana these major and minor secrets
will be covered in many of the segments
that we're doing in this series the
Tarot the origins are really shrouded in
mysteries there are many theories about
where they come from what we do know is
that they are an Oracle and that they
can tell you so many things about
yourself about life about the deep
meaning of things and reflect yourself
back to yourself well the Tarot is like
having a sage as a wise friend right in
your own pocket it's to be respected and
not to be used simply for
fortune-telling because it doesn't
really enjoy that aspect of itself it
will communicate I think on an almost
any subject but it prefers to be used
for questions dealing with your own
personal process your spiritual
advancement when I teach my students to
use the Tarot the first question we
learn which can be used over and over on
a daily basis is tell me what should I
know about myself right now the Tarot
wood loves to reflect yourself back to
yourself so that you can know yourself
and you can always know how to come back
to your Center how to find your best
self
how to take your next step in growth
many scholars say that the Tarot first
appeared around the time of the
Renaissance in Italy and surely the
first decks that we have come from
around that time may be things like the
invention of the printing press then the
availability that that made of paper
products to the masses certainly had an
influence on the Tarot as well as the
Renaissance proclivity for creating
systems that synthesized all existing
knowledge that existed they did this
quite a bit and so the Tarot is an
example of that in fact the Tarot is a
compendium of the entire Western mystery
tradition the Tarot is like a great
river into which the streams of Kabbalah
astrology hermetic philosophy alchemy
even Neoplatonic philosophy all of these
have flowed into the Tarot and are part
and parcel of it one of the reasons that
I enjoy reading with the rider-waite
deck which is the deck that we will be
talking about and using as our source of
images in this series is because it was
created by a hermetic magical order the
order of the Golden Dawn in England the
order formed in the late I eighteen
hundreds and lasted I think up until
about 1920 maybe was 1888 was the
founding but I can't be exactly sure but
what I do know is that they based
everything on Kabbalah and Tarot and
they had great systems that they helped
to make the Tarot grow the tallow it may
only have appeared first in Renaissance
Italy but its roots go back far and wide
goes back to the east and the West
there's Eastern tradition here from
India and Tantra
there's the Western judeo-christian
Egyptian and Greek tradition in here and
they flow all into this simple seemingly
simple pack of cards which is really
profound the four-armed mother of time
and great goddess in India colleague
from whom we get our word calendar in
her four arms
she held four symbols which are
representative of the four suits in the
Tarot the wands the cups the swords and
the Pentacles later on in Greece the
goddess nemesis the goddess of fate
before whom even the other gods bow down
she too carried these same symbols in
her hands and of course they were sacred
to mercury who gives his name as Hermes
the Greek name for mercury to the entire
Hermetic tradition Tarot is part and
parcel of the Hermetic tradition and
it's still-growing
still alive the Tarot is an example that
magic is alive and well the other
Oracle's that we know and love say the
II Ching the runestones
they date from about 1200 to 1500 years
before Christ palmistry my other great
love in astrology why they go back much
further and they might go back to 3,000
to 5,000 years before Christ so you can
imagine what a johnny-come-lately tarot
is coming right around the time of the
Renaissance that makes it around 600
years old Tarot is alive it's growing
look at all the wonderful tarot decks
that are constantly appearing and you
can be part of this evolution if you
learn the Tarot you can help it go
forward and it's very responsive