saved the game from being banned by the Church (though some accounts state that tarot was considered heretical and outlawed by the Church). Indeed in the latter half of the fifteenth century some church sermons labelled tarot as the work of the Devil. But in fact the Church concerned itself more with the use of ordinary playing cards, which were considered gambling. Some cards from the tarot deck – such as the Devil, the Tower and the Death card – were on occasions omitted from the pack, as they were feared by many people, but little harm was actually done to the use of the cards until centuries later.
EVOLUTION –
The tarot has undergone many permutations in its use, design and interpretation over the centuries. There is early evidence, for instance, to suggest that one of the first permutations was in using the cards as inspiration for poetry – possibly the first use in describing aspects of the human psyche and personality traits. The cards have since evolved according to the prevailing culture of the times and attitudes within them.
The first evidence of tarot being used as a divinatory tool came in the early eighteenth century in Bologna. In 1781 a clergyman, Antoine Court de Gebelin, revitalised and raised awareness of the tarot in his book, which drew links between the imagery in the Major Arcana and the mysteries of Ancient Egypt. This was later picked up by occult practitioners (occult means “hidden”) such as Alistair Crowley and Waite of the Rider-Waite deck. The imagery on this deck is the one with which we are most familiar today as this was the deck introduced into America in the twentieth century and the only one readily available to generations of Americans. We therefore tend to associate