There’s a popular legend about the origins of tarot. Long ago, so the story goes, there were nomadic people who were constantly oppressed by Egypt—harassed, enslaved, and forced into hardship. Eventually the nomads reached a breaking point. They united at a moment when Egypt had weakened and marched against their former oppressors.
The Egyptian priests understood that the attacking forces could not be held back. At that moment, preserving their system of knowledge—knowledge about how to work with and direct the forces of nature—became urgent. They needed to act quickly. A council of priests gathered to decide how to pass their knowledge into the next life after reincarnation. They wanted to preserve it in a form that only priests would understand after rebirth. At the same time, since they didn’t know where or when they would be reborn, the information had to be available everywhere.
The priests’ proposal (according to the legend)
