From Card Game to Esoteric System

The tarot's esoteric career begins in late-eighteenth-century France, with Antoine Court de Gebelin's claim that the cards preserved ancient Egyptian wisdom, a claim without historical support, and the cartomancer Etteilla's divinatory decks. In the nineteenth century Eliphas Levi linked the twenty-two trumps to the twenty-two Hebrew letters and the paths of the Kabbalistic Tree, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn built an elaborate system of astrological and elemental correspondences that shaped the influential Rider-Waite-Smith (1909) and Thoth decks.

The atlas describes both the documented history and the esoteric tradition, keeping the two apart: the deck's origin as a card game is well attested, while its supposed ancient and Egyptian roots are a modern invention.