Who invented tarot cards and astrology?

Question

And I have another question--did astrology pop up in societies that weren't connected to each other, such as Western civilization and the pre-contact Aztecs?

Was it basically mystical geniuses who created this system of reading the stars and divination, etc? P.S. I'm a half-hearted follower of astrology. It continues to amaze me every once in a while.

Answer 1

>The idea of staring at a picture card and letting it reveal the future or mirror the soul is not one that austere critics are likely to find tantalizing, <



But they'll accept the results of the Rorschach ink blot test as gospel.

Answer 2

Depends on your definition of astrology. Man watched the heavens forever and tried to make sense of his world using it for a long time. Western Horoscopic Astrology is the invention of the Hellenistic Greeks. Prior to that the Mesopotamians developed a system of predicting events using omens based on cosmic activity. The Astrology practiced by ancient Greeks would be instantly recognizable to any Westerner.



And yes it did pop up in cultures unrelated to each other. There is a Mayan astrology, Chinese Astrology and other methods of astrology. They are not the same as Western astrology but they are recognizable. One of the more interesting facts is that despite cultural differences, and lack of contact, no culture reversed the commonly held understanding of the planets. Mars for example is always the god of war never the goddess of love. The same is true for Venus only reversed. Yet we know these cultures had no contact with each other. All beliefs, as far as we know are based on observations.



One of the more widely held incorrect beliefs is that the ancients thought the planets were gods They didn't. No surviving Hellenistic astrology text makes any such statement. It is arguable that the planets were considered physical manifestations of the gods or some such thing, but planetary motion was predictable even if the model of the solar system was incorrect. They knew that the "wanderers," the definition of the Greek word for planets, were not the gods. A skimming of Homer would tell anyone that.



I don't know much about Tarot cards. Supposedly they aren't that old and they are considered a forerunner of modern playing cards. Using picture symbols is very old, but playing cards could not have been invented prior to the invention of the printing press, I would think. The principle behind them is similar to the principle of the I Ching, and astrology. Everything is connected to everything else. Therefore there are no random events. A card is drawn for a reason just as the sticks of the I Ching fall in a certain way for a reason. Someone has to determine what the card or the pattern means. Astrology is more sophisticated in that the positions of the planets are not random, and are predictable.

Answer 3

People have studied the stars forever. Yes, astrology has been present in several unrelated cultures (chinese and european, most prominantly), but they are different interpretations, symbols and meanings. I've never been a fan of astrology, though I think studying the zodiac can be interesting and spiritually insightful, just not the constelations use for divination... that's just me though.



Tarot cards were invented I think in themiddle-ages and they were used, at first, just for playing card games, not divination. It wasn't until the late renaissance that they started to be used for divination. No one knows who invented the cards themselves. As far as who invented divining with tarot? Eliphas Levi is credited with seeing the symbolism in the cards as useful for divination and he (and later occultists like Aleister Crowley) went on to develop an elaborate system which changed the nature of the cards from mere playing cards to the symbolicly rich system we know today.

-Scarlet

Answer 4

The tarot is a set of cards used in fortune-telling. A few years ago, tarot cards would have conjured up images of Gypsies, who didn't begin using tarot cards until the 20th century. Today, the cards are popular among occultists and New Agers in all walks of life. According to Grillot de Givry (1971):



"The tarot is one of the most wonderful of human inventions. Despite all the outcries of philosophers, this pack of pictures, in which destiny is reflected as in a mirror with multiple facets, remains so vital and exercises so irresistible an attraction on imaginative minds that it is hardly possible that austere critics who speak in the name of an exact but uninteresting logic should ever succeed in abolishing its employment."



The modern tarot deck has been traced back to 15th-century Italy and a trick-taking game called "triumphs" (tarots in French; Decker 1996). The traditional tarot deck consists of two sets of cards, one having 22 pictures (the major arcana), such as the Fool, the Devil, Temperance, the Hermit, the Sun, the Lovers, the Hanged Man, and Death. The other set (the minor arcana) has 56 cards with kings (or lords), queens (or ladies), knights, and knaves (pages or servants) of sticks (or wands, cudgels or batons) , swords, cups and coins.



Tarot cards are usually read by a fortune-teller, though in these days of New Age Enterprise, anyone can buy a deck with instructions on how to discover your real self and actualize your true potential. Why anyone's fate would be mysteriously contained in playing cards is a mystery; although, sympathetic magic seems to play a role.



There is a romantic irresistibility to the notion of shuffling the cards and casting one's fate, to putting one's cards on the table for all to see, to drawing into the unknown, to having one's life laid out and explained by strangers who have the gift of clairvoyance, to gamble on the future, and so on. The idea of staring at a picture card and letting it reveal the future or mirror the soul is not one that austere critics are likely to find tantalizing, but the thought of such visionary mysticism obviously has its attraction. Centuries of scientific advancement and learning have not diminished the popularity of occult guidance systems such as the tarot, Ouija boards, astrology, I Ching, palmistry, iridology, reflexology, ink blots, graphology, enneagrams, crystal balls, tea leaves, and the like.