February
20
/ 2014
The Marseille Tarot is the result of one or more attempts to copy imagery in Sumerian and Babylonian cylinder seals and other artefacts from that civilization. Theosophical Society founder Helena Blavatsky said as much in her correspondence -- although she didn't specify the Marseille deck, probably because, in nineteenth century Paris, she didn't think she needed to. The seals themselves are mostly illustrations of myths. Newcomers to the Tarot seek information about it in the same, all too familiar, places: the countless books and, of course, more recently, online sources that purport to explain it and, very often, instruct in how to use it intuitively or psychically. They read the same tired facts -- including the non sequitur that the
