Origins of the Egyptian Tarot

The idea that the tarot has Egyptian origins originated with Antoine Court de Gébelin, who saw ancient Egyptian influences in the tarot de Marseille. He was also the first to associate the 22 trumps of the tarot with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

De Gébelin tried hard to show Egyptian roots for the card design, including claiming at times that the European card-makers misinterpreted their presumed source materials. His arguments are somewhat weakened by ignoring obvious European imagery such as the papal crowns worn by the High Priest and High Priestess, and the and Papal triple crozier, which he called “totally Egyptian”. He also invented the explanation that the name of the deck came from the ancient Egyptian “tar ro”, meaning “path of the king”, when no such words existed in Egyptian. Nobody knew that at the time; hieroglyphics had not yet been deciphered.

Despite the factual inaccuracies, de Gébelin elevated the tarot from a card game to a medium for both divination and the communication of occult ideas. Among the first whose imagination was stimulated by the idea of occult knowledge being hidden in the cards was Jean-Baptiste Alliette, who used the pseudonym Etteilla]. in 1789 he produced the first deck designed for divination, and called it the Book of Thoth, after the Egyptian god who was credited with bringing writing and other knowledge to humanity.

The first tarot cards to employ ancient Egyptian imagery were the trumps drawn by Otto Weggener that appeared in the book Les XXII Lames Hermetique du Tarot Divinatoire by Robert Falconnier, published in 1896. Falconnier used descriptions published by Paul Christian (pen name of Jean-Baptiste Pitois) in 1870. This deck was never commercially published, but served as the basis for a number of later Egyptian-themed tarots. Some of Falconnier’s card names were radically different from their traditional ones. For example, what we recognize as the Sun card is titled L’Amour (Love). Some of these name changes were taken from Christian’s tarot, such as L’Épreuve (The Test or Ordeal) for VI (traditionally L’Amoreux/The Lover). Christian titled this card The Two Roads, with L’Épreuve as its subtitle. He also moved the Moon (renamed La Nuit, Night) to the end at XXII, with the Fool card (L’Athée/The Atheist) at XXI.

Five years later, in 1901, Edgar de Valcourt-Vermont, a Chicago newspaperman writing as Comte C. de Saint-Germain included drawings and interpretations for a full 78-card Egyptian tarot in his book Practical Astrology. Aside from The Gate of the Sanctuary (II), Saint-Germaine’s majors appear to be line-for-line copies of Weggener’s designs. Saint-Germaine used titles based on Christian’s cards, though he changed the title of trump III from “Isis-Urania” (meant to indicate “Celestial Isis”) to “Iris Urania”. Saint-Germaine’s minors have suits titled Scepters, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles, and courts consisting of Master, Mistress, Warrior, and Slave. They are less finely drawn than Weggener’s majors.

The Saint-Germaine deck was published by AGMueller in 1980, as “Egyptian Tarot Deck”.

In 1991, Josef Machynka’s Ibis Tarot was published. Machynka took Weggener’s majors and Saint-Germaine’s minors, redrew them, and added color and shading. The Church of Light has published several versions of its Brotherhood of Light Egyptian Tarot over the years. These feature redrawn versions of Saint-Germaine’s majors plus minors of their own design. Other Egyptian Tarots have used the Falconnier-Weggener/Saint-Germaine trump designs to varying degrees.

The images below show four trump designs from the Falconnier-Weggener, Saint-Germaine, Ibis, Brotherhood of Light, Kier, and Lo Scarabeo Egyptian tarots. All of these decks also use the magical letter that Paul Christian associated with each trump.

Decks, from left:

Falconnier/Wegener Egyptian Tarot (From Les XXII Lames Hermetique du Tarot Divinatoire 1893; numbers and titles added)

The Egyptian Tarot of Comte C. de Saint-Germain (From Practical Astrology 1901; numbers and titles added)

There are numerous ancient-Egyptian-themed tarot decks, some of which are described here: https://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/ancient-egyptian.shtml/. One interesting characteristic of some of them, including the Kier Egipcios, is that the lack of suit cards. In place of the minor arcana there are cards numbered 23-78 that are basically oracle cards.