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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Going to add an article

My article The Sociology of Tarot has been accepted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Sociology. Since it is directly relevant to this article, and since it will be available online and open access, i believe it should be added to the document, replacing "citation needed" in appropriate places. The article was reviewed by Robert Place and a historian of Tarot.

any objections?

I've also got some additional references to add to this article now, to address the "only one source" complaint 

 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr.Sosteric (talk • contribs) 23:13, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Not from me. Personally I think your doing a great job, its good to see. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrBwts (talk • contribs) 14:33, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Renaming article to Tarot reading

The current name of this article, Divinatory, esoteric and occult tarot seems awkward and most articles seems to just use Tarot reading, including Psychic reading. This change would also match Category:Tarot reading. @Jeraphine Gryphon: as the other active editor on this page.

Is renaming the article a good idea? RevelationDirect (talk) 08:36, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

This title is awkward but we need to have a proper conversation before moving it again, it's been moved a dozen times before. Apparently the current title is "more inclusive". We can't move it to Tarot reading if the current article content is about more than just reading and interpreting the cards. I haven't yet looked through this article properly. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 09:01, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

And by the way, the Cartomancy article is pretty short, though I think most laypeople think of Tarot cards when hearing of cartomancy. We could maybe do some thinking on what topics we want to cover in the Tarot article, the cartomancy article, and this current article here. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 09:13, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Having looked through the Cartomancy article, it's clearly the same thing as tarot reading i.e. fortune telling. The sections in this article which deal with different types of decks should me moved to the Tarot article as that deeals with different types of card decks. At the same time perhaps the Forward into the Mysteries and Through the Temple Door sections of this article can be encyclopediafied, I don't even know where to begin with those. So:
AadaamS (talk) 06:32, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • It looks like Cartomancy article, although it technically includes Tarot cards, focuses on divination with non-Tarot standard playing cards. I'm not sure if that's an accurate usage or not though. Tarot seems to be culturally prominant but I've never heard the term "cartomancy" before. We currently have a separate article on Tarot that includes the deck history and a this one for divination with Tarot. Are you thinking this article should be merged so it goes away? RevelationDirect (talk) 12:08, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
We just need to think about how to organize the information that we have. One possible option that we have is move the info from this article into Tarot and Cartomancy. Given how Tarot cards are the most well-known cards used for divination, it would be okay (and not WP:UNDUE) to have a lot of text about Tarot in the cartomancy article. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 12:18, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
@RevelationDirect: yes I think this article should be merged so it goes away. The information about the practice, such as cultural, social and historical impact should go into Cartomancy article, the text about the decks their inventors and history should go into the Tarot article. AadaamS (talk) 05:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)
I'm wondering how much weight we should give to WP:COMMONNAME here. Now that I've read more, I've learned there are non-divination games played with the tarot and that other cards can be used for divination. In popular culture though, and indeed with most practicing psychics I've seen, tarot and cartomancy are interchangeable and the latter term is relatively obscure.
I suspect most readers would probably search for tarot but technically mean cartomancy, without realizing it. RevelationDirect (talk) 13:50, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
Cartomancy is not the same as tarot reading. In a narrow sense, cartomancy is the divination using the standard playing card deck, in a more broad sense cartomancy includes any cards including the standard playing cards, tarot decks, and oracle decks. I don't see the reason for mergingSmiloid (talk) 09:34, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
I would though second a motion to re-name article as "Tarot reading" for simplicity. The article on the games was recently changed from Tarot, tarock and tarocchi games to Tarot card games for similar reasons. Smiloid (talk) 09:42, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Dumb ass Contributor (me) says

oops. never mind.

Mike Sosteric PhD 15:18, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Removing "single source" tag

Can we remove the single source tag at the top of this article? There are more sources included now.

Mike Sosteric PhD 15:32, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Untitled

The table comparing the order of trumps in the various decks contains an error. A.E. Waite's deck has no. 8 (VIII) as Strength and no. 11 (XI) as Justice -- not the other way around. Please fix. Joe Smith92.146.179.166 (talk) 07:04, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

There is no error, according to the pictoral glyphs of the Rider-Waite tarot deck. Ernobe (talk) 17:29, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

This article is so seriously erroneous in so many details it should not really be included in Wikipedia in its present form. For a start Ellic Howe is/was not Ely Starr! Proceed from there. KitMarlowe3 (talk) 21:31, 22 March 2015 (UTC)


I AM ACTIVELY WORKING ON THIS ARTICLE!!! I am slowly going through this article, removing questionable references, providing historical detail,and fleshing out the the argument. If you have concerns about the direction of the rewrite, please post on this talk page first BEFORE reverting my changes. I have spent over 40 hours on this article so far fixing it up and raising the standard of evidence and logic, and I don't want to have to repeat that work for a second time. I am more than happy to answer questions about my choice of reference, respond to concerns about article style and length, or deal with any issues that other editors may raise as appropriate. Please be patient we me.Progress through the article is slow because as I go I am ordering the books listed as references (some of which are out of print or hard to find) in order to evaluate their suitability for this page. It is going to take me a couple months to finish this article at which point I hope that interested editors will nominate it as a "good" article (or whatever). Help me achieve that! Mike Sosteric PhD 13:17, 14 March 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr.Sosteric (talk • contribs)

I think tarot divination deserves its own article in keeping with some of the other language Wikipedias. Smiloid (talk) 06:01, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

This article is quite problematic. I don't know much about wikipedia's standards, but on the basis of pure reason, it seems that the article's title makes little sense. I was redirected here by clicking on tarot reading, and the article seems to be specifically about tarot reading. The title 'Divinatory, esoteric and occult tarot' seems to claim that using tarot cards for the purpose of divination is connected to the esoteric or the occult, which to me would seem to be a separate claim with its own need of reference which this article does not provide. The association of this article with the 'New Religion' project would seem to make the same claim. However, using playing cards for divination, or 'cartomancy', is a relatively recent practice in history, and seems to come specifically from con artists having no particular association with any particular cults. It would seem to me that a connection between people significant to the history of tarot reading to a particular religious or occult group would be necessary to establish it being a part of new religion or the occult. The article claims that tarot divination is related to 'Kabbalah and Medieval Alchemy', yet no part of the Kabbalah, nor any reference to Medieval Alchemy is made. The few citations the article has are poor, and seemingly come from unreliable sources such as a book by Paul Huson, who is an actor with no formal education in religion. I am an atheist, and therefor have no personal concern with how 'New Religion' portrays itself, yet to me it seems they would be a foul way out if they were to claim tarot divination was a part of religious practices, especially when the historical information does not seem to concur with this claim. It appears to come strictly from swindlers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.171.235.233 (talk) 15:38, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

If you look at the articles concerning the founders of this divinatory practice, Etteilla,Antoine Court de Gébelin, you will see that they were occultists so on that basis tarot reading is connected with occultism. I've edited the intro to the article which claimed a connection with Alchemy and Kabbalah. Tarot reading, as commonly practiced today, is rooted in the works of French occult writers.Smiloid (talk) 19:09, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
The "New Religious Movement" template was not placed by me but by someone connected with that project. I understand how one would dispute that card reading is an actual religion. However that same template appears here as well

Talk:Comet Hale–Bopp. Perhaps if you bring that up with the Religion project.Smiloid (talk) 19:27, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

name change

Considering there are articles for Major Arcana and Minor Arcana, both only relevant within the context of this articles' subject, we could change the name to 'Tarot Arcana'. Incidentally, Arcane redirects to the 'Western esotericism' article, so it is not an unheard term.Ernobe (talk) 21:19, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

The term "tarot arcana" is not commonly used for tarot reading or occult tarot. What sources are using "tarot arcana?" I've switched the name back to "occult tarot" because I know it to be used by writers on the subject. I do prefer perhaps "tarot reading" but I cannot change it for some reason.Smiloid (talk)
I was able to change it back to "tarot readings"Smiloid (talk) 08:47, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
The terms Major Arcana and Minor Arcana are not used? And do these terms refer to anything other than the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana of Tarot, according to the same sources? Is it the purpose of the article to provide us with a manual of Tarot reading or divination? If the answer to these questions is no, an unbiased, objective presentation of the facts concerning this subject is to name the article Tarot Arcana, and change the introduction to reflect this, the way I had done it. Ernobe (talk) 15:50, 15 July 2016 (UTC)


Name Again

I don't know how this article got named tarotology but it is not a suitable name for this article. It sounds like someone is trying to sciencify the name. While this term is not unknown it is far from the common term. I'd like to suggest we go back to something like "Tarot Reading" or "Tarot Occult". Morgan Leigh | Talk 00:58, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 8 July 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Tarot card reading. Anarchyte (talk | work) 03:06, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Esoteric Tarot → Tarot card reading – This article's title is very confusing, at least I had to do a double take when I arrived here. "Esoteric Tarot" doesn't appear to be a common name at all although one book has that title, and I personally would not have been able to guess what it meant.

History of this article's titles:

  1. Divinatory, esoteric and occult tarot
  2. Tarot Arcana (only had this title for 1 hour)
  3. Occult Tarot
  4. Tarot readings
  5. Tarotology
  6. Esoteric Tarot

See also these discussions above: [1], [2].

This practice is always referred to as "tarod card reading" or "tarot reading" so I believe either of those would be an obvious and fitting title. 83.240.234.220 (talk) 00:30, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"Later Egyptologists found nothing in the Egyptian language to support de Gébelin's etymologies." [citation needed]

Yes, maybe it's true, but… negativa non sunt probanda.

For instance, if I say "there's no evidence of flying donkeys", it's pointless marking the sentence as "citation needed". On the contrary, if you have knowledge of a donkey which can fly, please share your reference. That's what I feel, at least. --Filippof (talk) 12:47, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Reworking the historical parts

Just reworked the historical section of the article after having read A Wicked Pack of Cards by Decker, Depaulis & Dummett (1996) which wasn't cited anywhere here but seemed to more or less fill in a lot of the missing citations.

  • Standardized citations on Citation Style 1 as best as possible. Not everything could be cleaned up well, especially outside of the History section, and I didn't want to fill in citations unless I could be sure that it was what was being discussed, so some citations are still probably missing ISBNs or relevant references.
  • Added citations to A Wicked Pack of Cards where useful.
  • Standardized some names throughout the work, including "Court de Gébelin" (instead of "de Gébelin" in places), "Etteilla" (alternately spelled "Ettiela" and "Ettielle"), and "Alphonse-Louis Constant" (not "Alphonse-Louise")
  • Fixed spelling and standardized on "Qabalism" as the spelling for Caballism
  • Removed birth and death years where I saw them, since I'm pretty sure that's non-standard.
  • Fixed or removed a few links, depending on whether or not they could be repaired.
  • Fixed or removed a couple of statements I didn't see adequately supported in my reading, notably:
    • The early Romani claim by Comte de Mellet in Court de Gébelin's work; Decker, Depaulis & Dummett (1996) does briefly mention that Court de Gébelin made a passing remark to this effect (p. 214), but it's not cited well (it might be in the introduction to Comte de Mellet's contribution though). As far as they're concerned, the first significant proponent of the theory was Boiteau d'Ambly in his 1854 work Les Cartes à jouer et la cartomancie, which they mention on page 214–215, followed closely by Jean-Alexandre Vaillant in his work Les Rômes (1857), which they discuss in the rest of the chapter (especially pp. 222–224).
    • Lenormand isn't seen as a confidant of Empress Josephine by all scholars (even on her own page), so I reworded it to mention her "claims" of such.
    • Lenormand's use of Etteilla's cards; Decker, Depaulis & Dummett (1996) discuss the likelihood of this based on what she wrote in her books and conclude that there isn't sufficient evidence to believe that she used any other tarot decks besides decks based on the Tarot de Marseille, which I have appropriately cited with my fix.
    • Lévi's rejection of Court de Gébelin's Egyptian theory; Decker, Depaulis & Dummett (1996) more or less say that Lévi had no qualms with the Egypt theory (even if it was incompatible with a Qabalistic interpretation), but only rejected Etteilla's interpretation. I've cited this change appropriately.
    • The mention of Lévi's Magus "working with" the four suits; this was unclear, and the only interpretation that made sense was to interpret it in line with Decker, Depaulis & Dummett's (1996) claim that he was the first to propose depicting the Magus with them.
    • The Jung quote on tarot was poorly sourced and it is now marked as citation needed. I'm sure the "CW, 9.1, p.38" citation means something, but it's very difficult to determine with much certainty, so I'll leave it to others to attempt to find the original source (Volume 9, Part 1 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung?) and fix it.
  • Fixed some colloquial wording:
    • at the end of the Etteilla section
    • in the part of the Lenormand section discussing the decks named for her
    • where Lévi's theory of Astral Light is mentioned
    • in the discussion of the source of Lévi's card imagery and interpretation
  • Elaborated on the decks named for Lenormand to make it clear that those decks are not tarot-based.
  • Significantly reworked the paragraph after the list of Lévi's contributions into a section discussing French occultist interpretations of tarot cards after Lévi (which seemed to be the intent). This includes:
    • Fixes to the flow of what is said there
    • Making the references to Jean-Baptiste Pitois consistently use "Pitois" instead of switching to "Christian". (I'm okay if it can convincingly and unconfusingly be changed to read "Christian" instead)
    • Adding context to Ély Star and Oswald Wirth's work by adding a short contextual paragraph about fin de siècle French occultism
    • Adding a paragraph about Papus's contributions to the occult tarot which were completely missing from the page before.
    • Added a short clause to expand on Oswald Wirth's work.

--Pipian (talk) 06:27, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

I should add that I'm hoping to expand the history section a bit more as I read through A History of the Occult Tarot by the same authors (cited in the article). It seems a little strange to me that the history section doesn't discuss any developments after 1900, and none outside of France, given its popularity in the English-speaking world, and should this book have any high-level information that might be helpful to add to the article, I intend to do so. --Pipian (talk) 06:36, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Additional historical content

I've finally gotten around to finishing up the history section with the development of tarot in English-speaking countries as mentioned above. The summary of changes is as follows:

  • Restored the discussion about the Romani link I removed previously, with better citation and discussion
  • Added some additional commentary about Oswald Wirth's "theoretical" contributions to the French occult tarot
  • Added sections on the development of the occult tarot in the English-speaking world, including
    • The integration of the tarot into the practices of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
    • The creation and dissemination of the two most influential tarot decks in the English-speaking world, the Rider-Waite-Smith and Thoth decks
    • A discussion about American tarotism including Paul Foster Case and Eden Gray
    • A brief overview of tarotism since 1970
  • Reworked the table of major arcana to focus only on the names of cards, not their esoteric meaning, and to include better citation and notes associated with the table.
  • Added missing citations relating to "charlatanism" and Jung's quoted reference to Bernoulli.
  • Added additional criticism of occult tarotism from noted tarot historian Michael Dummett
  • Assorted other fixes, including:
    • Assorted citation syntax cleanup (switch to use of the {{sfn}} syntax)
    • Cleaning up some links and references with proper bibliographic citations
    • Minor cleanup of grammar around some of the bulleted lists
    • Archived most of the web references

--Pipian (talk) 20:47, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

An ad on this page?

Heading text

When I went to this page there was an ad for something very like the "best reader in Mumbai." Did I miss the memo that ads are now happening on Wikipedia??

– the promotional material was a recent addition and has now been removed per WP:PROMO – cheers, Epinoia (talk) 15:08, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Needs re-organization work

This has the start of some good structure, but is flawed.

  • The section on Golden Dawn and its heirs should include BOTA, which directly split off from it. The only mention of BOTA tarot in this entire article is brief mention of its art in another section.
  • "Waite and Crowley" makes no sense at all. There is no connection between their work, but both are very significant, especially the former (the RWS cards, in one exact variant or another, are by far the most-used in the world, by orders of magnitude), and the latter has been subject to a lot of RS material, both as to its arts and (more within the mysticism press, so not really independent sourcing) as to the symbological changes and interpretational intent.
  • "Tarot in the United States" doesn't make any sense as a categorizing heading in this article. This is not a "List of tarot cards decks by country". The section that follows that also has an arbitrary cut-off (if it's meant to represent the rise of less traditional, re-interpretational decks, meaning-books, and spread styles, that actually goes back to at least the 1960s). I would suggest instead merging these into a section named something like "Later developments" for all material that post-dates the early trends covered in their own sections and is not directly connected to them the way BOTA is to GD.
  • It should probably have a section on spreads, so we can catalogue when they were introduced and by whom and illustrate them with diagrams, unless there is already a separate article for that.

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:54, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

... And the lead should make it explicit that this practise is as much nonsense as the pseudosciences. - Sitush (talk) 11:04, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
I have changed it, since no-one responded here. Someone then claimed MOS did not permit the changes I made but I reverted their effort because (a) I'm not sure what bit of MOS supports that opinion and (b) it is only a guideline anyway. - Sitush (talk) 07:51, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Major Arcana#Requested move 20 August 2021​

A request to lowercase the terms Major Arcana and Minor Arcana has been underway for awhlle and may interest editors here. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:59, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 March 2021 and 2 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ArrowTarot.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

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