Tarot famous people

Antoine Court de Gebelen (1725-84) De Gebelen was a member of a secret society of occultists, and was greatly influenced by Egyptian thought. The story is that he saw the game of tarocchi being played and saw in the cards a vast amount of symbolism which he attributed to ancient Egyptian lore. The deck he saw at the time was the Marseilles type, which had evolved and changed from the Visconti-Sforza deck. It is thought that the changes in the cards occurred when members of a secret society put occult symbols and artwork into the cards. De Geblen didn't realize that the cards he saw weren't the original cards, and so when he wrote his treatise, "Le Monde Primitif", which was the start of written works about the secret meanings of tarot cards, he was writing about the modified tarot. It is from his treatise that all the common misconceptions relating the tarot to Egypt stem from.

Eliphas Levi (1810-1875) A Catholic Priest, writer, and teacher who created the basis for the most popular Tarot cards still in use today, although Levi was born and trained for the Catholic Priesthood, he studied many other religions and subjects as well. He studied the Jewish, Hindu, Polish and Masonic religions and Cabalism. Levi was also a student of astronomy, astrology, and the metaphysics. When he created his first Tarot deck, he incorporated his knowledge of religions, the elements in nature (fire, water, earth, air), and what were believed to be powerful astrological events and symbols (most of which are still popular today). There are even references to scriptures from The Bible shown in some of the cards. Levi claimed he created the cards as a tool to aid his students in the art of spiritual enlightenment, self improvement, and self awareness.

A E Waite (1857-1942) Arthur Edward Waite is credited with the renaissance of the Tarot in the Twentieth Century. He commissioned artist Pamela Coleman Smith to create what he called the "rectified" Tarot. Created by a member of secret societies also known as a revered mystic, Waite's version has been widely accepted as the standard, and is by far the most popular deck of the century, rich in symbolism and easily understood due to the simple nature of the artwork. It wasn't until the late 1800's that A.E. Waite realized that the cards could be used to predict possible future events. Waite created the Rider-Waite deck based on the works of Eliphas Levi, and published the cards in 1896. The Rider-Waite Tarot deck is the most widely used version currently in existence.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) Crowley as A E Waite was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He is author of 'The Book of Thoth : A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians 'This book describes the philosophy and the use of Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot, a deck of Tarot cards designed by Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris. The Thoth Tarot has become one of the best-selling and most popular Tarot Decks in the world. By 1944, Crowley would match the pace in scholarship set by Waite in 1909 and at the same time, he would expand upon it by extending the field into Oriental philosophy, Middle Eastern practices and Western science including Relativity. http://www.jcpf.co.uk/acatalog/Famous_Tarot_readers.html