So it's time for some tarot!  As a product of the late Middle Ages (though really, of the very early Italian Renaissance), the Tarot is a great element to add into any Medieval-Authentic game.

That's why RPGPundit Presents #31: The Arcana is all about doing some stuff with Medieval-Authentic Tarot for your campaign! Whether or not you actually own a Tarot deck yourself, you'll want your magic-user to have one, and now my latest sourcebook helps the GM to figure out what to do with that!





The tarot is a series of images that teaches the basics of occult symbolism. It was also a popular parlor game of the very wealthy in the late medieval period. It would, much later, be thought of mainly for fortune-telling, and while of course I include that in this product, there's a lot more you can do with it from an occult perspective and I wanted that to be a big part of the Medieval-Authentic experience. We aren't technically sure whether medieval magicians were using the Tarot (I, as an occultist, would find it very hard to believe they weren't, at the very least as a teaching tool for young magicians), but if they were, this is the sort of stuff they'd be doing with it:

-Using the Tarot to improve Occult Lore

-Using the tarot to perform divination

-Invoking the "Arcana" of the Tarot to gain special abilities

-Using the Arcana of the Tarot as gateways to astral worlds


You get all that in The Arcana, including the full list of divination meanings of each card (with a set of random tables to generate cards in case you don't actually own a tarot deck), full details of the invocation rituals and effects, and an outline of each plane connected to the 22 Arcana of the Tarot, with their environment, contents, and the archetypal power/knowledge they reveal.




So, be sure to pick up this book to finally get the magic users in your campaign the tarot powers they deserve. You can get "RPGPundit Presents #31: The Arcana" at DTRPG, or at the Precis Intermedia webstore.  Either way, it's just $2.99!

I bought it. I have at least three tarot decks kicking around, one of which is always a Thoth Deck. I'll give it a read. I used to have a rather large library of Crowley as well as G.: D.:, A.:A.: and Chaos Magick material, and I spent a ridiculous amount of time working with Liber 777. When I get around to it, I'll even consider reviewing it.

TSR Ravenloft worked out something like that with its Taroka deck which is really just a horror themed tarot deck with the serial numbers filed off. Made for a viable adventure generator or a preloaded DM prop.

My understanding is that while tarot decks appeared in the 15th century, they weren't used for divination until much much later. When they appeared, they were just a card game.

Quote from: Krimson;1039489I bought it. I have at least three tarot decks kicking around, one of which is always a Thoth Deck. I'll give it a read. I used to have a rather large library of Crowley as well as G.: D.:, A.:A.: and Chaos Magick material, and I spent a ridiculous amount of time working with Liber 777. When I get around to it, I'll even consider reviewing it.

Well, bear in mind that this is the Medieval tarot, not any of the more modern occult versions of it.

Quote from: Omega;1039525TSR Ravenloft worked out something like that with its Taroka deck which is really just a horror themed tarot deck with the serial numbers filed off. Made for a viable adventure generator or a preloaded DM prop.

Yeah, this isn't anything at all like that. The Taroka deck was just a playing aid and used (incorrectly, since gypsies didn't use the tarot) as a fortune-telling device of the vistani.

This is the medieval-authentic Tarot, and the ways it's use include fortune telling, but also occultism studies, invocation, and scrying (planar travel, of a sort).

Quote from: jhkim;1039528My understanding is that while tarot decks appeared in the 15th century, they weren't used for divination until much much later. When they appeared, they were just a card game.

This is the perspective of a majority school of historians today.  A lot of occultists would beg to differ, given that the symbols on the Tarot are clearly symbols that were being used in Occultism in the late 14th and 15th centuries. There's no PROOF that the tarot was being used in any kind of occultism at that early period, and really the chief proof against it might be that until the 16th century it was quite expensive and largely a game of the aristocracy, but then, some of the aristocracy were also the people getting into occultism. Including the Sforzas, who created several of the earliest Tarot decks!

Anyways, you can assume that IF medieval magicians were making use of the Tarot, this is the sort of thing they would have been using it for. In fact, the LEAST likely thing out of the ones I included in the sourcebook for them to have been doing was divination.

It's highly likely that the tarot only started being used for divination later on.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1039546Well, bear in mind that this is the Medieval tarot, not any of the more modern occult versions of it.

Ah no worries about that. I'm not exactly a slouch when it comes to history. And unlike other left leaning people, I don't impose modern outlooks on historical material. Certainly I have used modern tarot in D&D before, which was mostly because in addition to studying the stuff myself, our main 1e campaign integrated Amber before Eric Wujcik's game came out, as well as a book called "Coriolanus, The Chariot" by Alan Yates. I did read a LOT of Crowley and even did the regimen that Charles Stansfeld Jones adhered to, aka Frater Achad, as outlined in Gems from the Equinox. I even made my own hand painted Tattwa cards. Sure, I was influenced by Chaos Magick, but it was less Pete Carroll and more Austin Spare, Rosaleen Norton, and even Timothy Leary with a good dose of Roger Penrose, the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford whose "Emperor's New Mind" was far more inspiring to me than Hawking's "Brief History of Time and Space". There might be some Lewis Carroll in there because his Omnibus also included "Symbolic Logic". I was always science first, which is why I don't really do much magic stuff aside from having the occasional conversation with Inari Okami, because she helped keep me alive when my body was trying to kill me the second time a few years ago, and I was hallucinating from bad salmon and hyrdromorphone. Did I mention I kind of liked Tim Leary's writing? Heh heh. Inari mostly sat on my bed and laughed at me. All the same she was pretty good company for an hallucination. Yeah, for some reason I'm not big on Terrance McKenna.

Anyhow, medieval tarot. I kind of like the story of how the Cathars may have used it to teach the new Testament to True Believers (my term for REAL Christians, thank you Stan Lee), because there was no King James version of the Bible until the 17th Century. I also studied Christian Gnosticism ala the Universal Christian Gnostic Movement founded by Samael Au Weor from Mexico, though that was a little radical for my tastes, and Hermeticism was far more appealing when it came to Tantra. Another time I'll talk about all the Eastern Paths from Kundalini Yoga to Taoism to Proto Shintoism, and how it relates to Shamanism, and a nice book by Mircea Eliade. I may also be an ordained Deacon in the Apostolic Johannite Church.

But yes, medieval tarot. I'm going to read this soon. Hopefully tonight soon. I have cats, who are high maintenance so we'll see. I'll read it and keep in mind the context with which it was written. My almost 16 year old cat who recovered from a stroke earlier this year is meowing right now. >.< You're a cat lover, so you probably understand. Oh look, I have time to read. Time to give your book some attention.