An Hermetic Origin of the Tarot Cards?
A Consideration of the Tarocchi of Mantegna

Adam McLean. First published in the Hermetic Journal 1983.

Labarinto and the Tarrochi of Mantegna
by Adam McLean.

Rafal T. Prinke - Mantegna's Prints in Tarot History

Article originally published in Manteia, 4 (1990), 9.

The Mantegna Cosmograph

The Tarot and other Early Cards
MANTEGNA'S TAROT

Tom Tadfor Little -

Tura - Turpsicord

Mantegna Tarot and Martianus Capella

At the BIBLIOTECA PHILOSOPHICA HERMETIC in Amsterdam.  Laurenzo Pignoria. Mensa Isiaca. Venice, G.A. Rampazetto, 1605

Plato was in Egypt in 393 BCE and his work reveals a general familiarity with Egyptian culture. In Philebus, a discourse on language, he alluded to the legend about the Egyptian god Thoth as the inventor of letters. For the Egyptians, Thoth was the god who recorded what the creator god Ptah had created. But the Egyptians also believed that Thoth himself created by means of the word(s) he uttered.

'the unlimited variety of sound was once discerned by some god, or perhaps some godlike man [...] there was some such person in Egypt called Theuth. He it was who originally discerned the existence, in that unlimited variety, of the vowels and then of other things which, though they could not be called articulate sounds, yet were noises of a kind. [...] in the end he [...] affixed to the whole collection, as to each single member of it, the name 'letter' [...] so he gave utterance to the expression 'art of letters', implying that there was one art that dealt with the sounds.'

Philebus, 18b, R. Hackforth

Paul Christian's table of decan names, dates, and character indications - http://www.tarot.org.il/English/PC_decans.html

Descriptions of the decans and their images - http://www.tarot.org.il/Decans/

 THE BEMBINE TABLET RESOURCES 

AFAIK, the B&W B.O.T.A tarot images are copyright free, which you can download from http://www.tarotinstitute.com/free/bota/index.htm 

OUSPENSKY ON THE TAROT

Papus' book is now online.

"Michael Scot's rebus figure of Juppiter" by Diane O'Donovan. Article about the imagery in the Tarot. Download as Adobe Acrobat file (42 Kb. PDF).

"Shipman's Guide: early card packs and the Arcana" by Diane O'Donovan. Article about the origins of playing-cards. Download as Adobe Acrobat file (60 Kb. PDF).

Diane Donovan
A Rational Disposition: the internalised world of the medieval scholar and the pack of paper tokens.

CAMOIN TAROT

BIBLIOTECA ARCANA - An extraordinary site, for its rich material and brilliance, including the Pythagorean Tarot, which can be downloaded. Unfortunately, some of the attributions fly in the face of the emperical evidence.

The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by A.E. Waite (1910)

Tony Allen Tarot Reader - Astrologer and Creative artist  

Jeanne's Place: Tarot and Psychic Readings

Byzant Tarot - Free Tarot Readings 

Toniallen.co.uk  Tarot - Divination - Astrology - Artwork

An introduction of the Tarot Cards 

Archetypes and Tarot Cards  

Byzant Tarot  

Tarot Decks by Pilgrims 

Liber A vel Follis

The Pythagorean Tarot

Samten de Wet