Whats the whole deal with tarot cards?

Question

what are they and what do they do?

are they real and do you deal them yourself or do you go to a tarot reader :S

Answer 1

Tarot cards are a set of cards featuring twenty one trump cards, the fool, and an extra face card per suit. Tarot cards are used throughout much of Europe to play Tarot card games such as Italian Tarocchini and French Tarot. In English-speaking countries, where the games are largely unknown, Tarot cards are used primarily for divinatory purposes with the trump cards plus the Fool card comprising the twenty-two major arcana cards and the pip and four face cards the fifty-six minor arcana. They also fit on the Qabalistic tree of life, each major arcana card corresponding to the attributed Sephiroth, representing cosmic forces such as force and form.

Answer 2

Hello Keelin

Tarot cards are a psychic & a subconscious tool for meditation, guidance, insight, psychic development & personal growth.

I have studied them for over 20 years & teach them so you can do both. Learn yourself or go to another.

Sadhara

Answer 3

Well, in English speaking countries most people think of them only as an occult object or fortune teller's tool. In fact, tarot is a pack of playing cards!

Playing cards arrived in Europe via the Islamic world in the mid 14th century. These early cards, known as the Malmuk cards had the same structure as our regular playing cards today, that is, four regular suits, each with 10 pip cards and three court cards. The original suit signs were cups, coins, swords, and polo sticks. Polo was an unknown game in Europe at the time, so these became batons. These suits are now known as the Latin suits and all Europe used them - though they are now only used by Latin countries. The court cards were a King, a Rider, and a Footman. All male court cards are still used in Latin suits, as well as the German and Swiss packs.

The Queen makes her first appearance in a Milanese pack that features six courts in each suit, a male and a female of each rank. Two of the extra courts were dropped and for a time the 56 card pack was standard in the region. It was to this pack that an extra suit of picture cards was added in the mid 15th century. They were commissioned by Duke Filipo Visconti as part of the celebrations for his daughter, Bianca Visconti's marraige into the Sforza family. They took as their theme a traditional Christian triumph procession. Hence they were called trionfi, meaning triumphs, and from which we get our word trump - it was the invention of tarot that marked the invention of trumps in card games!

The game of tarot quickly spread and diversified and was at one time the most popular form of card game throughout continental Europe!

In the early 18th century, German playing card makers began to produce French suited packs with new trumps featuring arbitrary trump designs. The French suits were much cheaper to produce, requiring only stencils rather than carved wood block and the new trumps allowed card makers to show off their skills in a time of great competition. These cards are now used for most of the games, with France being the last to adopt them in the early 20th century.

Toward the end of the 18th century, occultist and resident of Paris, Antoine Court de Gabelin wrote an article on tarot cards for his Encyclopaedia, The Primitive World. He declared that the cards were the codified wisdom of ancient Egyptian priests, essentially a series of hieroglyphs that were much in vogue at the time. He offered no evidence for his theory but it became a popular myth. For about a century, the occult tarot and divination with the cards was only known in France, it was not until members of the Golden Dawn, who based much of their occult beliefs on the cards, began to import them, publish translations of the French texts, and redesign them specifically for occult practice, that the myth reached the English speaking world.

Today, English speakers continue to know the cards for their occult myths and, of course, the fortune telling. However, Europe continues to play an impressive range of card games with them. France, Austria, and Hungary maintain particularly strong tarot game tradition as does Bologna in Italy, where they play a particular good form of the game called Ottocento.

The games are largely what we call point-trick games. That means that like whist, bridge, and spades, players win cards in tricks. Unlike those games, different cards carry different point values, so that it is not the number of tricks you take that wins the game but the number of card points you win in them.

There are a small number of players trying to promote the games to English speakers. For rules:

http://www.tarocchino.com

http://www.pagat.com

For the cards used:

http://www.tarobearslair.com

http://www.playingcardsales.com

For some history:

The Game of Tarot by Michael Dummett (Duckworth 1980)

http://www.trionfi.com

Answer 4

ermm i guess something like fortune telling - to which people who deeply believe in tarots. usually people go to tarot readers but i guess you can use it yourself but yeah you have to learn first. a lot of websites are available. google them =)

Answer 5

Basically it is a deck of cards. You can get all different types. The point of Tarot Cards is to read the future. The most well known method is the three card split.

For this you can either do it yourself or get a reader. Basically you or the reader shuffles the cards. Then you have to pick a spot in the deck and "split" it. If you do it, you just split. If a reader does it but you shuffle either you or them may split it. If a reader does it and shuffles it for you, you usually split the pack.

Then you pick 3 cards from the lower pile and face them up. They reveal your future. Sometimes the cards can be hard to "read" properly, which is why people get readers to do it for them. If you do not have a reader, you have to know what the cards represent.

I don't believe in them. But that is just me. I have heard of people who will swear on their life that it's real, so it's down to you if you believe it or not.  

Answer 6

They are cards you can use to ask for your fortune or direction of any kind. Yes, they are, in fact, real and you can learn to read them yourself if you so choose or go to a reader. For me, I can't do readings for myself because they just never work but when I read for others they are eerily surprised as to the responses they get!  

Answer 7

HAhahaha...U go to a tarot card reader..Like MS CLEO...(who got locked up BTW)...but all it is is that they draw some cards and tell U that something in your life has happened oor is going to happened depending on the type of card it is and it makes u fit your life into a frame of reference depending on the card.....its a bunch of bologna..its similar to reading your horoscope..its not true but U find things in your life that "fit the bill" that goes along with the horoscope to trick yourself into believing that its true...lol

Answer 8

they read your fortune, and your future, you can become one, can deal the cards yourself too