Arthur Edward Waite set out to clear up some of the fanciful creation myths that were surrounding Tarot.

In his book A Pictorial Key to Tarot, Waite writes#:

'We shall see in due course that the history of the Tarot cards is largely of negative kind, and that when the issues are cleared by the dissipation of reveries and gratuitous speculations expressed in the terms of certitude, there is in fact no history prior to the fourteenth century, the deception and the self deception regarding the origin in Egypt, India or China put a lying spirit into the mouths of the first expositors, and the latter occult writers have done little more than reproduce the first false testimony in there good faith of an intelligence unawakened to the issues of research.'

The French schools produced the idea of an esoteric Tarot and defined the main elements of traditional Tarot interpretation.

The Golden Dawn refined and advanced the esoteric Tarot providing a structure for the divinatory uses of the pack.

< previous page | next page >