Tarot Cards | Alternative Universe

What Are Tarot Cards?

The Hermetic Order of Campo Santo Mystery School has been created this year. [2021]

Tarot cards will be offered as taught by Geof Gray-Cobb back in 1974. Next Zoom classes will be in the Spring of 2023.

The 78 cards of a Tarot Deck contain more mysteries than any detective novel. Where did the cards come from? What do the pictures show? Why is every Tarot deck similar – but not the same – as all other decks?

The answer to these questions like hidden in the mists of time. Certainly, the cards, two decks within one, have been in existence for many centuries.

Legend suggests that they appeared during the Egyptian dynasties, and laid dormant through the ages except for a few decks which were used and understood by the adepts of the mystic arts.

Yet what is there to be understood in these brightly colored cards? Everything. The entire mystery of birth, death and the Universe is within the symbols on the cards. So, if we can understand the Tarot, even a little, we can begin to understand who we are, where we have been, where we are going – and more importantly, why we are.

And if you will accept that last, you will accept this next: that many millennia ago, people knew the secrets of Magic, which then was natural law, and was known as magic, with a small ‘m’, just as nowadays mathematics and physics carry the small initials, while the mysteries of Witchcraft and Christianity take capitals.

So as the knowledge was profaned, as Adam fell and magic was used for Power and Winning and Accumulating Material possessions – which are as much unnatural and unnecessary sins today as they ever were – so a few compassionate adepts gathered their knowledge into pictorial Tarot form ( for the Mysteries defy being expressed in words), analyzed the subconscious minds of evolving persons, and set their magic down on cards.

They knew that somewhere, somewhen, the symbols of their trade would speak to the minds of those who were ready to understand.

So was the Tarot Created: the Major Arcana (Arcana = secrets (Latin) of 22 cards which match the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the 22 paths of the Tree of Life in the Qabala, plus the Minor Arcana – 56 cards of four suits each running from Ace to 10, followed by two female and two male cards.

Then during the Inquisition, where our arcane knowledge was cause for burning at the stake (and times have changed but little since), the Church found the decks of Tarot, and perhaps some insightful priests felt the power of the cards. In particular, the inner forces of Major Arcana were recognized, and they were destroyed. The lesser cards of the Minor Arcana survived as playthings for kings and nobles, yet even then the sweet virgin Pages were removed.

Yet one Major Trump refused to be exorcised by the fire-breathing Church. The Unnumbered One, The Fool, Zero, Le Mat, The Trump of Trumps who wanders through the deck as my man incarnates, survives today.

The suits of Pentacles have become Diamonds, Wands have become Clubs, Swords have become Spades and Cups have become Hearts. The brave Knights have become surly Knaves or Jacks, and the rich symbolism of the deck has been swept into amorphous black and red shapes.

Yet open a new deck of bridge cards-and there, grinning at a world who tried to efface him, is the He Who Would Not Be Vanquished – the Fool, in motley now, universally called the Joker.

So how to proceed if one wishes to fathom the mysteries of the Tarot? Just as with any other craft or art, take the tools of the trade and practice with them until they become second nature.

In January 2023 you may sign up for VcToria’s ‘Learn To Read the Tarot Cards’ course. 2022 started already and they are only offered once a year. This will enable you to learn properly.

This will be a month-to-month course with an hour of personal ‘live’ conversation at the end.