"As the train hurtles along, the art critic sniffs scornfully at the idea that tarot cards can tell your future. But he lets Dr Terror lay out his pack anyway, as does everyone else in the compartment. And, one by one, they are all dealt the same final card. It is Death. This chilling scene, from the 1965 film Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, is fairly standard tarot fare. Many people use the cards to tell the future, or to meditate and find mindfulness. In any occult shop, you’ll find a huge selection of decks. Just in time for Christmas, traditionally a great time for card games, a famous pack – created in 1910 by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith – is being reissued by Taschen, complete with Waite’s booklet explaining the supposed mystic roots of tarot and what the symbols all mean: 'Death: End, mortality, destruction, corruption. Reversed: Inertia, sleep, lethargy.' ... The world’s oldest surviving tarot decks come from 15th-century Italy. They were commissioned by wealthy rulers who stipulated what they wanted, often adding in different picture cards, which they called “triumphs”. Today, these are known to occultists as the Major Arcana. One lost set, known only from a descriptive booklet, featured the pagan gods. The oldest pack that still (partially) exists – the Cary-Yale deck, created for Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan – mixes images that are still in today’s tarot, such as Death and The Lovers, with unique cards representing Faith, Hope and Charity. ..."
The lure of hocus pocus … three cards by Salvador Dalí.
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