Editing Major Arcana (section)

==Fortune telling==
Now popularly associated in English-speaking countries with divination, fortune telling, or cartomancy, Tarot was not invented as a mystical or magical tool of divination, but as an instrument for playing card games with a permanent trump suit.<ref name="Dummett" /> The people who published esoteric commentary of the tarot (e.g. [[Antoine Court de Gébelin]] and the Comte de Mellet) also published commentary on divinatory tarot. There is a line of development of the cartomantic tarot that occurred in parallel with the imposition of hermetic mysteries on the formerly mundane pack of cards that can usefully be distinguished. It was the Comte de Mellet who initiated this development by suggesting, entirely incorrectly, that ancient Egyptians had used the tarot for fortune telling and provided a method purportedly used in ancient Egypt.{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=38}}{{efn|It has been suggested recently that the tarot may have been associated with divination perhaps as early at the 15th century in Bologna, but the evidence is not conclusive. See [http://trionfi.com/pratesi-cartomancer Franco Pratesi. Tarot in Bologna: Documents from the University Library. The Playing-Card, Vol. XVII, No. 4. pp. 136–146.]}} 

Following the Comte de Mellet, [[Etteilla]] invented a method of cartomancy, assigning a divinatory meaning to each of the cards (both upright and reversed), publishing ''La Cartonomancie française'' (a book detailing the method), and creating the first tarot decks exclusively intended for cartomantic practice. [[Etteilla]]'s original method was designed to work with a common pack of cards known as the [[Piquet pack]] because [[Piquet]] was the most popular game played with 32 cards. In 1783, two years after Antoine Court de Gébelin published ''Le Monde Primitif'', he turned to the development of a cartomantic method using the standard (i.e. Marseilles) tarot deck.  His work was published in the book ''Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots''<ref>A scanned version of the original text is [http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-62272 available]</ref> and the creation of a society for tarot cartomancy, the Société littéraire des associés libres des interprètes du livre de Thot. The society subsequently published ''Dictionnaire synonimique du livre de Thot'', a book that "systematically tabulated all the possible meanings which each card could bear, when upright and reversed."{{sfn|Dummett|1980|p=110}}

Following Etteilla, tarot cartomancy was moved forward by Marie-Anne Adelaid Lenormand (1768–1830) and others.<ref name="Dummett" /> Lenormand was the first well known cartomancer and claimed to be the confidante of Empress Josephine and other local luminaries. She was so popular, and cartomancy with tarot became so well established in France following her work, that a special deck entitled the ''Grand Jeu de Mlle Lenormand'' was released in her name two years after her death.  This was followed by many other specially designed cartomantic tarot decks, mostly based on Etteilla's Egyptian symbolism, but some providing other (for example biblical or medieval) flavours as well.<ref name="Dummett" /> Tarot as a cartomantic and divinatory tool is well established and new books expounding the mystical utility of the cartomantic tarot are published frequently.{{clarify|date=October 2024}}

===Mysticism===
By the early 19th century Masonic writers and Protestant clerics had established claims that the tarot trumps were authoritative sources of ancient hermetic wisdom, of Christian gnosis and revelatory tools of divine cartomantic inspiration.{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=38}} In 1870 [[Jean-Baptiste Pitois]] (better known as Paul Christian) wrote a book entitled ''Histoire de la magie, du monde surnaturel et de la fatalité à travers les temps et les peuples''. In that book, Christian identifies the tarot trumps as representing the "principle scenes"{{Dubious|date=September 2017}}<!-- Really? "Principle", and not "principal"? --> of ancient Egyptian initiatory "tests".<ref name="Dummett" /> Christian provides an extended analysis of ancient Egyptian initiation rites that involves Pyramids, 78 steps, and the initiatory revelation of secrets. Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett write:

{{Quote |At one stage in the initiation procedure, Christian tells us...the postulant climbs down an iron ladder, with seventy-eight rungs, and enters a hall on either side of which are twelve statues, and, between each pair of statues, a painting. These twenty-two paintings, he is told, are Arcana or symbolic hieroglyphs; the Science of Will, the principle of all wisdom and source of all power, is contained in them. Each corresponds to a "letter of the sacred language" and to a number, and each expresses a reality of the divine world, a reality of the intellectual world and a reality of the physical world. The secret meanings of these twenty-two Arcana are then expounded to him.{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=206}}
}}

Christian attempted to give authority to his analysis by falsely attributing an account of ancient Egyptian initiation rites to [[Iamblichus]], but it is clear that Christian was the source of any initiatory relevance to the tarot trumps.<ref name="Dummett" /> Nevertheless, Christian's fabricated history of tarot initiation were quickly reinforced with the formation of an occult journal in 1889 entitled ''L'Initiation'', the publication of an essay by [[Oswald Wirth]] (Joseph Paul Oswald Wirth) (1860–1943) in ''Le Tarot des Bohémiens'' by [[Papus]] (Gérard Anaclet Vincent Encausse) (1865–1916) that stated that the tarot is nothing less than the sacred book of occult initiation,<ref name="Dummett" /> the publication of a book by François-Charles Barlet (Albert Faucheux) (1838–1921) entitled, not surprisingly, ''L'Initiation'',  and the publication of ''Le Tarot des Bohémians'' by Papus.<ref name="Dummett" /> Subsequent to this activity the initiatory relevance of the tarot was firmly established in the minds of occult practitioners.

The emergence of the tarot as an initiatory tool was coincident with the flowering of initiatory esoteric orders and secret brotherhoods during the middle of the 19th century. For example, Marquis Stanislas de Guaita founded the Cabalistic Order of the Rosy Cross in 1888 along with several key commentators on the initiatory tarot, e.g. Papus, François-Charles Barlet, and [[Joséphin Péladan]] (1858–1918).{{sfn|Decker|Depaulis|Dummett|1996|p=38}} These orders placed great emphasis on secrets, advancing through the grades, and initiatory tests and so it is not surprising that, already having the tarot to hand, they read into the tarot initiatory significance.<ref name="Dummett" /> 

Doing so lent an air of divine, mystical, and ancient authority to their practices and allowed them to continue to expound on the magical and mystical significance of the presumably ancient and hermetic tarot.{{sfn|Dummett|1980|p=127}} Be that as it may this activity established the tarot's significance as a device and book of initiation{{clarify|date=August 2024}} not only in the minds of occult practitioners, but also in the minds of new age practitioners, Jungian psychologists,{{disputed inline|date=August 2024}} and general academics.{{fact|date=August 2024}}