Editing Major Arcana (section)

==Esotericism==
By the 19th century, the Tarot was being claimed as a "Bible of Bibles", an esoteric repository of all the significant truths of creation.<ref name="Dummett" /> The trend was started by prominent Freemason and Protestant cleric [[Antoine Court de Gébelin]] who suggested that the tarot had an ancient Egyptian origin, and mystic divine and kabbalistic significance.{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=38}} A contemporary of his, Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce de Fayolle, comte de Mellet, added to Court de Gébelin's claims by suggesting (attacked as being erroneous{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=38}}) that the tarot was associated with Romani people and was in fact the imprinted book of [[Hermes Trismegistus]].{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=38}} 

These claims were continued by [[Etteilla]]. Etteilla is primarily recognized as the founder and propagator of the divinatory tarot, but he also participated in the propagation of the occult tarot by claiming the tarot had an ancient Egyptian origin and was an account of the creation of the world and a book of eternal medicine.{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=38}} Éliphas Lévi revitalized the occult tarot by associating it with the mystical Kabbalah and making it a "prime ingredient in magical lore".{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=174}} As Decker, [[Thierry Depaulis|Depaulis]], and [[Michael Dummett|Dummett]] note, "it is to him (Lévi) that we owe its (the Tarot's) widespread acceptance as a means of discovering hidden truths and as a document of the occult... Lévi's writings formed the channel through which the Western tradition of magic flowed down to modern times."{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=174}}

As the following quote by [[P. D. Ouspensky]] (Pyotr Demianovich Ouspensky) (1878–1947) shows, the association of the tarot with Hermetic, kabbalastic, magical mysteries continued at least to the early 20th century.

{{Quote|The fact that we question the Tarot as to whether it be a method or a doctrine shows the limitation of our 'three dimensional mind', which is unable to rise above the world of form and contra-positions or to free itself from thesis and antithesis! Yes, the Tarot contains and expresses any doctrine to be found in our consciousness, and in this sense it has definiteness. It represents Nature in all the richness of its infinite possibilities, and there is in it as in Nature, not one but all potential meanings. And these meanings are fluent and ever-changing, so the Tarot cannot be specifically this or that, for it ever moves and yet is ever the same.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ouspensky |first=P. D. |author-link=P. D. Ouspensky |title=The Symbolism of the Tarot: Philosophy of occultism in pictures and numbers |publisher=Dover Publications |year=1976 |pages=12–14}}</ref>}}

Claims such as those initiated by early Freemasons today found their way into academic discourse. Semetsky, for example, explained that tarot makes it possible to mediate between humanity and the godhead, or between god/spirit/consciousness and profane human existence.<ref>{{cite book |first=Inna |last=Semetsky |title=Re-symbolization of the Self: Human Development and Tarot Hermeneutic |year=2011 |place=Rotterdam |publisher=Sense Publishers |isbn=978-9460914195}}</ref> Christina Nicholson used the tarot to illustrate the deep wisdom of feminist theology.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Christina |last=Nicholson |title=How to Believe Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Irigaray, Alicer, and Neo-Pagan Negotiation of the Otherworld |journal=Feminist Theology |date=2003 |volume=11 |issue=3 |pages=362–74|doi=10.1177/096673500301100309 }}</ref> Santarcangeli wrote of the wisdom of the fool,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Santarcangeli |first=Paolo |date=1979 |title=The Jester and the Madman, Heralds of Liberty and Truth |journal=Diogenes |volume=27 |issue=106 |pages=28–40|doi=10.1177/039219217902710602 }}</ref> and Sallie Nichols spoke about the archetypal power of individuation boiling beneath the powerful surface of the tarot archetypes.{{sfn|Nichols|1980}}