The Rationalization of Occult Tarot

During the occult revival, which continued into the early 20th century, there was a great deal of anthropological revisioning of older traditions. Arthur Edward Waite, a Christian mystic and scholar of the occult, explicitly rejected the core of occult Tarot. He wrote, "I am not to be included among those who are satisfied that there is a valid correspondence between the Hebrew letters and the Tarot Trump symbols." His own novel interpretation of the trumps drew on many sources (including the occultists) to create an eclectic but tightly integrated representation of the mystical Perennial Philosophy. The first half of the trumps illustrated an involutionary descent while the second half illustrate an evolutionary ascent, the entire spiritual cycle being closely reminiscent of Joseph Campbell's Universal Monomyth. This was all in keeping with common ideas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century regarding comparative religion and the universality of myth and mysticism. Waite described his new creation as "a true Tarot under one of its aspects", and "not occult, but mystical". In addition, he was the first to use pictorial pip cards to facilitate the intuition of fortune-tellers.

In the late 20th century, Tarot was widely adopted by various New Age enthusiasts, neo-Pagans, and of course, fortune-tellers, as well as people who were simply interested in using the deck for self-exploration without any spiritual or mystical motivation. It was again redefined, largely in the terms of Jungian psychology, but with borrowings from the earlier occultists and from Waite. This development was greatly facilitated by Waite's mystical Tarot deck, whose trumps and pips had been redesigned in a manner consistent with such usage. His deck served as a model for hundreds of derivative decks. The new element, characteristic of contemporary Tarot, was the belief that naive intuition and free association would reveal universal archetypes from the unconscious mind. This liberated Tarot enthusiasts from having to learn complex systems of correspondence, and having to choose between the competing systems.

In addition to fortune telling, modern Tarot applications include soul-searching exercises and meditation for personal growth, and as a randomized input for free association and brainstorming techniques. Not surprisingly, they have even been used by some psychologists in a therapeutic context. The main distinctions between Waite and the contemporary Tarot enthusiasts are specificity and authority. Waite was in some ways closer to the earlier occultists who saw and emphasized a particular design to the trumps and their sequence, rather than the contemporary approach which validates any intuition one might posit about what are seen as archetypal subjects. Waite's authority for his design was personal insight and the history of Christian mysticism, whereas the contemporary Tarotist is likely to cite C.G. Jung and neo-Jungian psychologists.

Also in the late 20th century, more historically sophisticated writers have attempted salvage as much of the earlier occult fictions as possible while abandoning most of the obviously false elements. As with other late 20th-century Tarot writers, their basic premise is the existence of universals which are intuitively understood. Given this premise, Tarot must have always been something very close to what it is currently understood to be -- otherwise the supposed universals are not universal. Critics of this viewpoint would say that this preconception leads to the invention of secret coded messages in the trump cards, supported by nothing beyond the anachronistic belief that what people see in the images today must have always been there.

Detailed Timeline

Tarot History: 1901 - 2000