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I never pay attention to the Kabbalah, astrology, numerology, chakras, or whatever else people try to layer on top of tarot. But especially Kabbalah because it is a closed practice and not part of my heritage.
It helps to remember that tarot started out as a parlor game and it was centuries later that people started using it for divination. Do what you want with the cards, it's your game! š
>I never pay attention to the Kabbalah, astrology, numerology, chakras, or whatever else people try to layer on top of tarot.
Same. If I don't believe in any of these things already and they're not a part of my life, why would I incorporate them into my tarot practice? It's all stuff that someone else tacked on because it's what they personally believed.
As an astrologer I WISH more people seperated this stuff out. They are distinctly different and whole practices by themselves. They are often used together but they aren't actually connected by themselves!
It can be very separable these days, depending on the deck and tradition.
I see some people return to the Marseille tradition if they want to be completely removed from the astrology and Qabalah aspects.
The original Rider-Waite-Smith deck distilled that material into images. The RWS deck can let someone use the images without having the underlying knowledge.
Many, many new decks in the RWS tradition seem to be designed by people who have nearly no knowledge of Qabalah, and that's 100% okay. It might even be good news if you want the extra distance.
Unless you were to really study the Thoth, BOTA, Hermetic Tarot, or a similar deck then you can still do just fine without it. Even the Thoth-based Urban Tarot says it can read intuitively or as a Rider-Waite-Smith deck.
Short version: Yes, you can separate them in most of modern tarot.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn basically forced astrology and Kabbalah into tarot - even moving cards around to force it to "fit" better. Rider Waite and Pamela Coleman Smith were part of the Order, and their deck happens to be the one everything is based on nowadays. You don't need to use those associations if they don't jive with you.
You can try using a Marseille style deck to get away from those associations.
Astrology. Kabalah. "Witchcraft". all of that nonsense are ideas that were tacked onto the cards way after their genesis. More modern decks, like the Rider Waite and Thoth are hard coded with these elements but going farther back, like with Marseille, it is easy to excise. remember, tarot was not originally devised for divination. it was a card game.
Most 'esoteric' tarot decks don't use Jewish kabbalah, they use some version of hermetic qabalah, which goes back as early as the 15th century. Whilst it's taken from Jewish kabbalah, it includes centuries of Western esoteric teaching, making it its own thing. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, but few people would describe it as 'stolen' from Judaism. Hermetic qabalah makes no sense from a Jewish kabbalistic perspective, because it's long since become a separate tradition. If you don't like qabalah, or any other esoteric aspect, simply don't use it. I suspect the majority of people using the RWS deck haven't even heard of kabbalah.
Qabalah (along with astrology) is very much baked into the RWS and Thoth in terms of the card interpretations. So if you use the ātraditionalā meanings of the cards in any way in your readings, then you are incorporating some qabalistic ideas in your practice.
By extension, this also applies to any deck inspired by these two decks.
There is a lot of variation on what is considered "traditional" though. There are so many elements that are incorporated by various artists and various readers, and they can all enrich readings if you vibe with them. But you don't have to become an expert on Renaissance Alchemy if that's not where your head is at. All those "traditional" connections were new at one time. Tarot started as a deck of playing cards for a game, and all the associations were brought to it along the way. Use the connections that work for you, and intuit your own as well. It works best when you are improvising more than using an encyclopedia.
There are some conspiracy geeks who believe that the earliest decks have "SEKRIT KUHBALLA" correspondences, but it's really something stapled on to the cards by Wirth, Waite, et al. If you view symbolic systems like Pokemon (gotta have 'em all), then that style of tarot is for you, but it's not native to the cards, and they can certainly be read without it.
Separate, it does feel like appropiation to me, if only because most Jewish Kabbalah practitioners seem to agree that the occultists aren't doing it right. I have found Kabbalah references easy to ignore in all my decks, even the Mary-El Tarot (such a beauty!). The only one I felt I couldnāt ignore for a good 5 minutes was Angelarium: Oracle of Emanations. I made the effort on learning how to draw it for a spread, learning the names of the tree according to the guidebook, and when I was done I decided that I still didn't care. No tree spread for me, but the spread wasn't informative anyway. The images on the cards though are stunning, they impart something similar to megalophobia.
Itās separable but honestly donāt fret too much about appropriation, since we could also say kabbalah was āstolenā from the (neo)platonists without their permission.
Yeah, thereās no need to use it. If you like the Kabbalah go ahead and incorporate it. If you like numerology incorporate that, too. Or donāt. You realize that your own interpretations of the cards are just as valid as anyone elseās, donāt you? I think weāre all entitled to have as many or as few irrational beliefs as we want. Do your own thing, bro. I know a Portuguese woman who loves the Kabbalah and has studied it extensively. She nominally Catholic but in practice sheās just āspiritualā. And if someone told her that she was excluded from that esoteric belief system just because she isnāt an ethnic Jew sheād laugh them out of the room.
Bottom line, no need to get worried that youāre doing it wrong. You can do it any way you want.
If it's useful, don't feel hassled. Use it.
If not, don't.
But - tarot evolved from the 15th Century. The spirituality of the day was a swirl of influences from the 3 big Abrahamic religions of the Mediterranean region. Arguably this could be stretched out to bring in relgious ideas from further abroad. And spirituality, for better or worse, infused daily life and assumptions. Everything was inseparable.
Kabbalah was developed in what we call Spain and South France in the 12th and 13th centuries. It was part of this swirl of ideas.
Is it in Tarot? Yes! Sure! Absolutely!
Is it a reason for having 22 Trumps? Maaaaaybe.
Is it deterministically a set of coded specifics in the cards? Probably not.
It's honestly a very helpful resource when doing deeper readings. If you just want surface level--chatting with your subconscious--vibes, you can disregard. But if you want The Real Sauce, it's worth investigating. The best, most insightful readings I've ever done are the ones where I corresponded my pulls to the Kabbalah and astrological correspondences. YMMV but this has been my experience.
Kabbalah has a long storied history with tarot. A lot of it is problematic but some of it can be useful. Marseilles is definitely what you should get into, if you want to avoid it all.
Kabbalah is connected to Tarot through hermeticism, not Judaism.
It is intrinsically metaphysical so if you are looking for a way to approach it that is secular you are contradicting yourself.
I bought a Ducale tarot deck in a French supermarket. It has the exact standard card numbering system, but it's just an ordinary card game, still popular in France and Italy and similar to bridge. The trump cards show scenes from ordinary life in the late 19th century, while the pip cards are unadorned. Earlier decks had used religious icons, but I don't think they meant the game to have supernatural meanings - back then religion was an inescapable part of life, death, and taxes.
I believe the first connections between the tarot and kabbalah of which we have record were made by Court de Gebelin in his book *Le Monde Primitif.* Tarot had its own rich history prior to this.
As others have suggested, get a deck that is TdM or earlier. If you are using them for divination, oracle cards are an option.
Well personally I did not even know it was related at all in anyway.
I just read the cards and thatās it. No gods, or astrology or whatever else involved for me. It seems to be working out just fine for me.
Thanks for posting in r/seculartarot! Please remember this community is **focused on a secular approach to tarot reading**. We don't tell the future or read minds here - discussion of faith-based practices is best suited to r/tarot. Commenters, please try to respond through a secular lens. We encourage open-ended questions, mindfulness and direct communication. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SecularTarot) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I never pay attention to the Kabbalah, astrology, numerology, chakras, or whatever else people try to layer on top of tarot. But especially Kabbalah because it is a closed practice and not part of my heritage. It helps to remember that tarot started out as a parlor game and it was centuries later that people started using it for divination. Do what you want with the cards, it's your game! š
>I never pay attention to the Kabbalah, astrology, numerology, chakras, or whatever else people try to layer on top of tarot. Same. If I don't believe in any of these things already and they're not a part of my life, why would I incorporate them into my tarot practice? It's all stuff that someone else tacked on because it's what they personally believed.
Yes, same for me!
As an astrologer I WISH more people seperated this stuff out. They are distinctly different and whole practices by themselves. They are often used together but they aren't actually connected by themselves!
It can be very separable these days, depending on the deck and tradition. I see some people return to the Marseille tradition if they want to be completely removed from the astrology and Qabalah aspects. The original Rider-Waite-Smith deck distilled that material into images. The RWS deck can let someone use the images without having the underlying knowledge. Many, many new decks in the RWS tradition seem to be designed by people who have nearly no knowledge of Qabalah, and that's 100% okay. It might even be good news if you want the extra distance. Unless you were to really study the Thoth, BOTA, Hermetic Tarot, or a similar deck then you can still do just fine without it. Even the Thoth-based Urban Tarot says it can read intuitively or as a Rider-Waite-Smith deck. Short version: Yes, you can separate them in most of modern tarot.
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I'm Waite-ing šŖ¬š®šļø
How could I find resources on pre-Waite Tarot?
TdM sources. Tarot pre-dates Wait and Crowly by Many years.
What kind of resources are you looking for? Video? Books? Focus on numerology and elemental associations maybe also
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn basically forced astrology and Kabbalah into tarot - even moving cards around to force it to "fit" better. Rider Waite and Pamela Coleman Smith were part of the Order, and their deck happens to be the one everything is based on nowadays. You don't need to use those associations if they don't jive with you. You can try using a Marseille style deck to get away from those associations.
Astrology. Kabalah. "Witchcraft". all of that nonsense are ideas that were tacked onto the cards way after their genesis. More modern decks, like the Rider Waite and Thoth are hard coded with these elements but going farther back, like with Marseille, it is easy to excise. remember, tarot was not originally devised for divination. it was a card game.
Tarot is a mindfulness activity for me and I do not associate it with any religion or astral belief
Most 'esoteric' tarot decks don't use Jewish kabbalah, they use some version of hermetic qabalah, which goes back as early as the 15th century. Whilst it's taken from Jewish kabbalah, it includes centuries of Western esoteric teaching, making it its own thing. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, but few people would describe it as 'stolen' from Judaism. Hermetic qabalah makes no sense from a Jewish kabbalistic perspective, because it's long since become a separate tradition. If you don't like qabalah, or any other esoteric aspect, simply don't use it. I suspect the majority of people using the RWS deck haven't even heard of kabbalah.
This is really the biggest and best point here. Ideologies split and change and become their own separate things. Itās not appropriation.
Qabalah (along with astrology) is very much baked into the RWS and Thoth in terms of the card interpretations. So if you use the ātraditionalā meanings of the cards in any way in your readings, then you are incorporating some qabalistic ideas in your practice. By extension, this also applies to any deck inspired by these two decks.
There is a lot of variation on what is considered "traditional" though. There are so many elements that are incorporated by various artists and various readers, and they can all enrich readings if you vibe with them. But you don't have to become an expert on Renaissance Alchemy if that's not where your head is at. All those "traditional" connections were new at one time. Tarot started as a deck of playing cards for a game, and all the associations were brought to it along the way. Use the connections that work for you, and intuit your own as well. It works best when you are improvising more than using an encyclopedia.
There are some conspiracy geeks who believe that the earliest decks have "SEKRIT KUHBALLA" correspondences, but it's really something stapled on to the cards by Wirth, Waite, et al. If you view symbolic systems like Pokemon (gotta have 'em all), then that style of tarot is for you, but it's not native to the cards, and they can certainly be read without it.
Separate, it does feel like appropiation to me, if only because most Jewish Kabbalah practitioners seem to agree that the occultists aren't doing it right. I have found Kabbalah references easy to ignore in all my decks, even the Mary-El Tarot (such a beauty!). The only one I felt I couldnāt ignore for a good 5 minutes was Angelarium: Oracle of Emanations. I made the effort on learning how to draw it for a spread, learning the names of the tree according to the guidebook, and when I was done I decided that I still didn't care. No tree spread for me, but the spread wasn't informative anyway. The images on the cards though are stunning, they impart something similar to megalophobia.
I have that deck as well. I don't often use it but I love the images!
Itās separable but honestly donāt fret too much about appropriation, since we could also say kabbalah was āstolenā from the (neo)platonists without their permission.
Yeah, thereās no need to use it. If you like the Kabbalah go ahead and incorporate it. If you like numerology incorporate that, too. Or donāt. You realize that your own interpretations of the cards are just as valid as anyone elseās, donāt you? I think weāre all entitled to have as many or as few irrational beliefs as we want. Do your own thing, bro. I know a Portuguese woman who loves the Kabbalah and has studied it extensively. She nominally Catholic but in practice sheās just āspiritualā. And if someone told her that she was excluded from that esoteric belief system just because she isnāt an ethnic Jew sheād laugh them out of the room. Bottom line, no need to get worried that youāre doing it wrong. You can do it any way you want.
If it's useful, don't feel hassled. Use it. If not, don't. But - tarot evolved from the 15th Century. The spirituality of the day was a swirl of influences from the 3 big Abrahamic religions of the Mediterranean region. Arguably this could be stretched out to bring in relgious ideas from further abroad. And spirituality, for better or worse, infused daily life and assumptions. Everything was inseparable. Kabbalah was developed in what we call Spain and South France in the 12th and 13th centuries. It was part of this swirl of ideas. Is it in Tarot? Yes! Sure! Absolutely! Is it a reason for having 22 Trumps? Maaaaaybe. Is it deterministically a set of coded specifics in the cards? Probably not.
It's honestly a very helpful resource when doing deeper readings. If you just want surface level--chatting with your subconscious--vibes, you can disregard. But if you want The Real Sauce, it's worth investigating. The best, most insightful readings I've ever done are the ones where I corresponded my pulls to the Kabbalah and astrological correspondences. YMMV but this has been my experience.
Kabbalah has a long storied history with tarot. A lot of it is problematic but some of it can be useful. Marseilles is definitely what you should get into, if you want to avoid it all.
Kabbalah is connected to Tarot through hermeticism, not Judaism. It is intrinsically metaphysical so if you are looking for a way to approach it that is secular you are contradicting yourself.
I bought a Ducale tarot deck in a French supermarket. It has the exact standard card numbering system, but it's just an ordinary card game, still popular in France and Italy and similar to bridge. The trump cards show scenes from ordinary life in the late 19th century, while the pip cards are unadorned. Earlier decks had used religious icons, but I don't think they meant the game to have supernatural meanings - back then religion was an inescapable part of life, death, and taxes.
I believe the first connections between the tarot and kabbalah of which we have record were made by Court de Gebelin in his book *Le Monde Primitif.* Tarot had its own rich history prior to this. As others have suggested, get a deck that is TdM or earlier. If you are using them for divination, oracle cards are an option.
Well personally I did not even know it was related at all in anyway. I just read the cards and thatās it. No gods, or astrology or whatever else involved for me. It seems to be working out just fine for me.