How To Read Egyptian Tarot Cards

A variation of the Tarot card game is called the Egyptian Tarot. From the perspective of esotericism, it is regarded as one of the sacred decks and the key to all powers and dogmas, as well as being the most accurate. Its study covers color, symbol, and feature knowledge.

Egyptian tarot cards are they?

Contrary to what some people may believe, the tarot did not begin in ancient Egypt. However, the occult tradition that derives from 18th-century myths about the Egyptian mysteries underpins modern Tarot decks. Tarot cards are frequently used by mystery schools to outline the stages of their initiations and incorporate Egyptian god forms and symbolism.

According to Mystery Schools, words and symbols have secret significance that can only be discovered by personal experience and cannot be taught. The educational institutions direct a person through a sequence of ceremonies that start or “start the process of awareness transformation. This wakes the body’s organs and subtle energies, triggering powers that the general public is typically unaware of. The highest level of these teachings and abilities is thought to have been obtained in Egypt. Manly Palmer Hall, an expert on the occult, felt that these institutions are the institutions of Isis, the mother of the Mysteries, from whose dark womb initiates are born into a second or philosophical birth. The descendants of Isis are all adepts. Each initiate is a Horus, a hawk of the sun, whose mission is to exact revenge on wisdom’s destruction, which is represented by the assassination of his father Osiris. The widow Isis is the Mystery School itself, and she keeps producing possible saviors from within herself.

But what relevance does tarot have to this? The issue is that between 1420 and 1440, Northern Italy rather than Egypt was the place where tarot first appeared. The belief in the mystical power of images was a defining feature of this time period. At the same time, there was a massive migration of scholars and manuscripts from Constantinople, which was being conquered by Muslim Turks, and from Spain, where Jews were being persecuted. Cities in Northern Italy that took in these refugees developed into centers of learning with libraries stocked with texts on magic, astrology, and long-lost Greek philosophical writings. Alexandria, Egypt, which is home to a diverse collection of Egyptian, Coptic, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and East Indian learning, has retained a large portion of this information. The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, a Greek book from the fifth century, arrived in Florence in 1422. It greatly influenced Renaissance thought and mistakenly claimed to unveil the hidden meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Although few of the pictures directly appear in the tarot, they added to the myth that Egypt was the source of ancient knowledge.

Pythagoras, the creator of one of history’s most important mystery schools, studied in Egypt. Through him, the sacred mathematical concepts entered Western culture. Egyptians were regarded as the wisest men by Plato, Pythagoras, and Plutarch, among others, and their temples served as archives for mystical studies. The Eleusinian mysteries of Demeter and Persephone were united with those of Osiris and Isis in Greco-Roman Alexandria to create the Serapis and Isis mysteries, which later spread throughout Europe. In Paris, the Notre Dame cathedral was constructed on an Isis temple, and many of the oldest “Isis and her son Horus are depicted in sculptural form as black Madonnas.

Tarot cards didn’t become prominent in relation to the adoption of Egyptian-inspired initiation rituals by the Rosicrucian and Masonic secret societies until the height of France’s 18th-century Enlightenment. There was a scholarly movement in France looking for the origins of language, which was thought to be a kind of Hebrew preserved from the language of the gods recorded in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Their phonetic properties and genuine meanings weren’t understood until the translation of the Rosetta Stone in the 1830s.

The Comte de St. Germain, Cagliostro, Anton Mesmer (who invented hypnotism), Benjamin Franklin, and Antoine Court de Gbelin, the head Egyptologist of the French Academy, were all involved with Egyptian rites of Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism in pre-revolutionary France, as were many other extraordinary individuals. The Krata Repoa, a compilation of ancient and Hermetic writings on Egyptian mysteries organized into seven initiation rites, served as the basis for these and was originally published in Venice in 1657.

Court de Gbelin was the first to attribute occult knowledge to the cards when he declared that an ancient Egyptian book, the Book of Thoth, still existed in his encyclopedic work of anthropological linguistics, Le Monde Primitif (1781). He asserted that it was the only thing to survive the destruction of their libraries and that it contained their most fundamental beliefs in a form that had been widely disseminated, albeit unappreciated, throughout most of Europe by gypsies, whom he believed to be Egyptian. He explained that this book of odd figures on 78 leaves is definitely symbolic and adheres to ancient Egyptian ideas. One evidence was the existence of both male and female priests. The triple cross on the Pope or Hierophant card symbolizes the renewal of all of Nature and is the djed pillar (backbone) of Osiris. The star depicted on the Star card is Sirius, the Dog-Star, which rises at the beginning of the New Year in Leo along with the Nile’s flood. Isis, Queen of Heaven, is seen below spilling water from her jars since it was her tears that caused the annual flooding of the Nile. When it was time for the Nile to rise, one of her tears would fall from the Moon. The mighty demon Typhon (or Set) appeared on the Devil card. The Hebrew alphabet’s letters were represented by the twenty-two trump cards. Swords represented aristocracy, Cups the priests, Staffs (or cudgels) represented agriculture, and Coins represented trade. These four suits represented the four social groups in ancient Egypt.

This “He claimed that the book of destiny was entirely Egyptian, being made up (falsely) of the words tar, which means “way, road,” and ro, which means “king, royal.” Thus, it demonstrated the “We must pursue the Royal Path of Human Life. The tarot helps us understand how events unfold and how they end, and the Egyptian wise men used these sacred images to foretell the future and decipher dreams.

One hundred years later, French occultist Paul Christian described an Egyptian initiation ceremony that was exactly that old compilation of classical sources, the Krata Repoa, to which he had added a section involving the tarot trumps in his book The History and Practice of Magic. He claimed that the Giseh Sphinx functioned as the entryway to the holy chambers where the Magi conducted their examinations. The Great Pyramid’s underground passageways led to areas where the applicant had to endure potentially fatal situations. A hidden entrance into a long gallery with twenty-two statues in facing pairs depicting enigmatic beings and symbols was located after he descended a seventy-eight step ladder into a bottomless pit. The candidate was here welcomed by the “guardian of the sacred emblems” with these words:

How can I interpret tarot cards on my own?

How to Conduct Your Own Tarot Reading

  • First, make the space.
  • Step 2: Discover the question’s core.
  • Choose the layout in step three.
  • Step 4: Sort the cards and shuffle them.
  • Read the cards and tell the story in step five.
  • Answering your question is step six.

What should you do initially while using a tarot deck?

What to Do First:

  • Get out your tarot deck.
  • The cards are in your hand.
  • “Knock or tap the pile of cards numerous times while holding them in your palm to disseminate your energy throughout the deck.
  • Shuffle the cards completely.
  • The cards are divided into three heaps, which are subsequently reassembled into one pile.

How are Tarot cards charged?

Leave your deck in a sacred location where you can “knead (shuffle) it each hour, giving it your magical power with your hands, for one waking day, much as you would a loaf of rising bread.” The greatest time to use this charge is when you’re taking a day off at home or in a retreat.

How many tarot cards from ancient Egypt exist?

The 78 cards in the Egyptian Tarot are line-drawn in brown on a mottled papyrus-like backdrop, using the traditional aesthetic of Ancient Egyptian art. The minors have embellished pips in suits of Pentacles, Cups, Swords and Sceptres and courts of Slave, Warrior, Mistress and Master, while the majors have themed titles and Tarot-like pictures. The images were created to serve as illustrations for

the Practical Astrology book from 1901.

What main god is there in Egyptian mythology?

Amun was the “Hidden One who created the entire world,” whereas Ra was the ancient god of Heliopolis who stood for the sun and light. The capital of the southern region, Thebes, had an Amun statue. Amun-Ra (or Amun-Re), the greatest god of Egypt, who provided sun, light, and creation to the entire globe every day, was created as the gods of Egypt evolved and were merged during the New Kingdom. Amun-Ra served as the pharaoh’s primary guardian, often appearing in the form of genuine live gods.

Where is the Thoth book?

The piece of writing, which the editors refer to as the “More than 40 Graeco-Roman Period papyri from Berlin, Copenhagen, Florence, New Haven, Paris, and Vienna’s collections contain the Book of Thoth. A papyrus with fifteen columns, located in the Berlin Museum, serves as the main witness. The Book of Thoth, which is nearly fully written in the Demotic script, was likely created by scribes of the “Scriptorium of the Temple, House of Life. It mostly consists of a conversation between the divinity He-who-praises-knowledge (probably Thoth himself) and the mortal He-who-loves-knowledge. The book covers subjects including the scribal art, sacred geography, the afterlife, knowledge of animals, temple ritual, and wisdom. One section (the) stands out as particularly noteworthy “Vulture Text), in which a vulture is used to represent each of Egypt’s 42 nomes. The language is poetic, and the lines are frequently arranged into verses in a clear manner. Many scholarly issues are raised by the subject, dialogue structure, and striking phraseology; particularly intriguing are the potential connections between this Egyptian work, in which Thoth is called “Hermes Trismegistos plays a significant role in both the classical Hermetic Corpus and the thrice-great. Interpretative articles and discussions of certain topics, including the manuscript tradition, script, and language, are included in the first book. The transliteration, translation, and discussion of the Demotic text make up the bulk of the publication. The first volume is concluded with a consecutive translation, glossary, bibliography, and indexes. Nearly all of the papyri’s photos in the second book are of their original size.

What tarot card has the most influence?

The Fool is typically seen as a card from the Major Arcana when performing a tarot reading. Contrary to popular belief, the Fool does not fall under either category in tarot card games. Instead, the Fool serves a function that is distinct from both the simple suit cards and the trump cards. As a result, the Fool has no number assigned to it in the majority of tarot decks that were initially created for playing games. Although Waite assigns the Fool the number 0, in his book, the Fool is discussed between Judgment (number 20) and The World (number 21). The Tarocco Piemontese is the only traditional game deck that numbers the Fool 0. Since the 1930s, the corner index for the Fool in Tarot Nouveau decks has frequently been a black inverted mullet. The Fool is one of the most expensive cards in practically all tarot games.

What kind of religion are tarot cards?

Tarot cards also include four suits, but they are different depending on the region: French suits are found in Northern Europe, Latin suits are found in Southern Europe, and German suits are found in Central Europe. Each suit contains 14 cards: four face cards (King, Queen, Knight, and Jack/Knave/Page) and ten pip cards, numbered from one (or Ace) to ten. In addition, the tarot features a unique 21-card trump suit and a solitary card known as the Fool; this 22-card group of cards is referred to as the Major Arcana in the world of divination. The Fool may serve as the top trump or alternatively may be played to avoid doing so, depending on the game. In parts of Europe, these tarot cards are still used to play traditional card games without any occult connotations.

Tarot cards are mostly employed for amusement and divination in English-speaking nations where these activities are less popular, typically with the aid of specially created packs. Although academic research has shown that tarot cards were partially invented in northern Italy in the 15th century (16 of the modern 22 Major Arcana cards) and combined with a deck of four suits, “the Mamluk deck,” some people who use tarot for cartomancy believe the cards have esoteric links to ancient Egypt, Iran, the Kabbalah, Indian Tantra, or the I Ching. The Mamluk deck of cards was created in or before the 14th century and arrived in Western Europe after paper was produced in Asia (see Playing Card – Egypt and following sections). By the end of the thirteenth century, Europeans were making the Mamluk deck with customized “court cards” and suit symbols.

Although some people think that tarot cards were not used for divination until the late 18th century, there is evidence of an early tarot deck that was “used in divination to determine the querent’s prospects in love” (Fernando de la Torre’s “Juego de Naypes” deck of Spain, 1450), each card having an image and verse.