Covelluzzo, a fifteenth-century chronicler, relates the introduction into Viterbo of the game of cards in the year 1379. A German monk, Johannes, describes a game called Ludas Cartarum played in the year 1377. The emergence of Tarot cards in Europe predates by over five centuries the work of Waite. Gebelin asserts that it is from the Egyptians and Gypsies that Tarot cards were dispersed throughout Europe. Thoth was the Egyptian Mercury, said to be one of the early Kings and the inventor of the hieroglyphic system.
Court de Gebelin writing in Le Monde Primitif in 1781 advances the theory that Tarot cards derived from an ancient Egyptian book, The Book of Thoth. The precise origin of Tarot cards in antiquity remains obscure. In The Key to the Tarot he writes: “The true Tarot is symbolism it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.” What are the Tarot cards about which Waite so skillfully writes? What is the message of each card and when and where did these fascinating cardboard symbols first originate? Waite utilized symbolism as the key to the Tarot pack. Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1942) was a genuine scholar of occultism whose published works include The Holy Kabbalah and The Key to the Tarot first issued in England in 1910.
