Selected Tarot Links

Sacred-Texts.com

Sacred Texts Tarot section contains a valuable online library rich with crucial books in hypertext format for the Tarot scholar. Find a free, complete online version of A. E. Waite’s classic book, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. “This is the essential Tarot reference by the designer of the best known Tarot deck.”

Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, along with The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, constitute the core literature of 19th and early 20th century 'Tarotism'. However, PTK is to the TOB as arithmetic is to differential calculus. If you have no experience reading occult literature of this period, you may find yourself profoundly lost after the first couple of pages, staring at the abundant and profoundly esoteric tables, charts and diagrams, trying to get a clue as to what Papus is talking about. Papus is after a 'Theory of Everything', and finds evidence for it in the Tarot and a set of correspondences with everything from the tetragrammaton to numerology and astrology.

The Tarot , by S. L. McGregor Mathers, is a short essay on the Tarot, by a prominent occultist of the 19th Century.

The Symbolism of the Tarot was written by P.D. Ouspensky, famous Twentieth Century student of the mystic Gurdjieff, journalist and philosopher.

Aeclectic.net

Aeclectic Tarot allows you to browse or sort over 450 different Tarot & oracle decks. See card images before you buy the full deck, read reviews, see unpublished and categorised decks, or popular decks like the Rider-Waite Tarot, Thoth Tarot, Osho Zen Tarot,  Sacred Circle Tarot, Robin Wood Tarot, Tarot of Marseilles , and many others.

Tarot.com

The Kabbalah/Cabbalah

“The Hebrew alphabet and its associations with numbers, astrology, angels and a host of other correspondences provides the very skeletal structure upon which the cards have grown. Without the Hebrew astro-alphanumeric associations that were laid out so long ago by our ancient ancestors, the Tarot could never have taken its present shape. So even if we never learn how to pronounce the letters correctly or read any words in Hebrew, we must understand just what is going on with these twenty-two letters in order to truly deepen out understanding of Tarot.”

The Christine Payne-Towler Library contains excerpts from her book, and contributions from others, including essays on Gnostic Tarot, Spanish Tarot, Continental Tarot, English Tarot, and the history and attributes of the Esoteric Tarot. 

The Robert V. O'Neill Tarot Library offers a deep online resource containing a series of lengthy documents exploring the often contentious history of Tarot.

“Dr. O'Neill recently retired as Senior Research Scientist and Corporate Fellow, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has produced 60 unpublished decks. He and a colleague developed a statistical analysis of Tarot imagery that was published in the Journal of the International Playing Card Society in 1982. His major work on the symbolism of the 15th century Tarot, Tarot Symbolism, was published in 1986. He has presented his research on the history of Tarot at the first two International Tarot Symposia in Chicago and at a similar symposium in Florida. Recent work has included a web-book on the possible contribution of the Medieval heresy of Catharism on the Tarot designers and an in-depth analysis of the sources of the Waite-Smith deck. (this research on Catharism can be read at a GeoCities website).

“The primary purpose of this series of essays is to provide evidence that the Tarot originated in northern Italy in the 15th century. This was the intellectual, cultural, and religious milieu within which the Tarot was invented. The fundamental evidence offered here is the images themselves. No earlier period and no other geographic venue can claim the wealth of visual evidence that is presented here.

"We do not know what the first Tarot deck looked like. Given that simple fact, there is no rationale for giving special weight to one or another of the surviving hand-painted and woodblock printed decks. So for present purposes we will consider all of the oldest decks that are available through the efforts of Stuart Kaplan (1978, 1986). We will look for contemporary imagery that resembles all or most of the surviving Tarot cards.. . ."  more

You can get both free and paid Tarot readings, free I Ching readings and paid online Tarot readings, complete with beautiful graphics and a very unique and thoughtful take on the cards, at Tarot.com, where these two valuable Tarot libraries are located.

Byzant.com

Byzant Tarot focuses on the correspondences between the Tarot and the Kabbalah.

“Adherents of the Mysteries have long held the idea that the Tarot has its origins in the arcane system of the Kabbalah, though there is no firm historical evidence for this. The work of the 19th century French occultist, Eliphas Levi, was the catalyst for the study of the esoteric link between the Tarot and the Kabbalah, which became the main model for the development and interpretation of the Tarot. The most influential decks of the 20th century were founded on Kabbalistic principles, in terms of their structure, their symbology and their explication.”

Byzant Mystical , a well-designed, artistic, deeply researched site, offers sections on Tarot , Kabbalah, and Astrology , three key disciplines for any aspiring student of Tarot. In addition, there’s a handsome and informative Library of Esoteric Symbols.

“Esoteric study necessarily involves consideration of symbols, whether these are symbolic texts, sounds or visual glyphs. From the Indian tattvas to the trigrams of the Chinese I Ching, from the Jewish Kabbalah to the medieval Tarot cards, from the astrological glyphs to the complex emblems of Ceremonial Magic, every area of spiritual knowledge has its own symbology. Symbols and concepts like the Cross, the Trinity and even the fish are vital to an appreciation and comprehension of Christianity, and a holistic grasp of symbols is even more important for esoteric understanding.

In our Library of Esoteric Symbols, a variety of important symbols are introduced for meditation and synthesis, and as a springboard to further exploration.”

This site has a lot to offer, including free Tarot readings. 

Queen of Pentacles.com

Tarot and Kabbalah, by Joani Cunningham, takes a very different view of the relationship between Tarot and Kabbalah.

“Tarot as we know it did not originate from Kabbalah, or any other system in totality. It is the result of occultists studying all manners of beliefs to find universal truths and incorporating them in a series of cards that could be used for self-exploration, learning and divination. In other words, they created a totally separate system of attaining spiritual growth by borrowing what they felt was useful in their esoteric studies. So yes, Tarot has some resemblance to Kabbalah, parts of Kabbalah teachings and symbolism were used in the making of our modern decks (ones containing both major and minor arcana, made in the 17th century or later, for esoteric purposes vs. the first cards and decks of the 15th-16th centuries for artistic and game playing purposes.)”.

Queen of Pentacles Tarot Joani’s website, is a Tarot card reading and learning center. Discover your primary soul archetypein an interactive online session. Have a free Tarot reading. 

Tarot Schools

LearnTarot.com

Learning the Tarot: An Online Course, by Joan Bunning, is a self-paced series of 19 lessons that begin with the basics and then move gradually into more detailed aspects of the tarot. These lessons are geared toward beginners, but experienced tarot users will find some useful ideas and techniques as well. For each lesson there are some exercises that reinforce the ideas presented. The Cards section contains information about each of the tarot cards. You can refer to this section as you go through the lessons and later as you continue your practice.

TarotSchool.com

The Tarot School in New York city offers Tarot lessons - live, online, on the phone and through the mail. Tarot classes, teleclasses, correspondence course, audio tapes, and a degree program, along with a program called The Readers Studio: continuing education for Tarot professionals.

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