The Tarot was first written of in Italy during the Renaissance. Where did it come from? Was it originally two decks, now known as the Major and Minor Arcana? Was it originally created as a system for the secret (occult) transmission of spiritual knowledge by a group of scholars and magickians or did it evolve over millennia primarily as a game of chance?

Though many theories have been put forward, the only truthful answer is "nobody knows".

Does this diminish the usefulness of the Tarot? Of course not. Even if the Tarot developed from the most mundane sources for the most mundane reasons, it has become perhaps the most beautiful, powerful and accessible of the tools of the Twentieth Century spiritual revival.

Just as the sharp edge of a broken stone evolved into both the skinning knife, with which we steal the beauty of other divine creatures, and the Athame, with which we invoke and direct Divine Energy, so the handful of colored stones tossed on the ground by the pre-historic shaman evolved into both the game of marbles and, ultimately, the Tarot, with which we seek information and direction from Divine Awareness.

The numbers of cards in a Tarot pack, their titles and attributions have varied over the centuries. With the Waite deck, and others created by alumni of the Golden Dawn, becoming widely distributed in the last twenty or thirty years, the pack of 78 cards divided into 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana has become a standard, though many beautiful and functional decks are available which are quite different in structure and origin. (One of my favorites is the unstructured, 88 card "Morgan's Tarot", which has a sense of humor and has always provided illumination.)

The Parrott Tarot follows the Golden Dawn tradition with two exceptions: the titles of the Minor Arcana are from Crowley, and four new cards have been added. These cards are the Mentors. They are face cards placed between the Queens and the Princes, associated with the planet Chiron, the Sephirah Daath, the Abyss and the Hebrew letter Shin, all of which will be explained in the proper place.

Finally, when using the Tarot for any purpose, remember, it doesn't show us what we don't know, it helps us to look at what we do know.

May this deck and this book increase the Divine Light in us all. Blessed be.

THOM PARROTT
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1991

My interest in the Tarot came about as a natural progression. I came to an intellectual interest and belief in Christianity on a very personal level at middle age. It was paralleled by my lifetime interest in masks. When my husband, Raymond Parrott, and I spent three years in Liberia, Africa, I was happily inundated by masks and able to paint them and study their religious significance and social importance. Upon my husband's retirement from the United States government, we settled in New Mexico where my attention was grabbed by the Pueblo and Navajo ceremonials. The study and painting of Kachinas was as fascinating as that of the African masks had been. Then, when my son became interested in Wicca, I studied that and was inevitably led to the Tarot.

My feelings are that all of these religions have the same basic function in our lives--the same moral teachings, the same living lessons, the same positive focus for good, for improvement, for help when we are unhappy or confused.

I wanted to do a Tarot deck that would be as bright and colorful as I felt it should be. I think in color and wanted to use the vivid colors to express the excitement and potential for knowledge and growth that the Tarot represents.

The parrot is included as a personal symbol and because to understand the Tarot, as well as each other, there must be verbal communication.

The stairs in the Major Arcana are used to symbolize levels of consciousness and levels of growth.

The symbols of the Paths and their astrological and Qabalistic correspondences are placed clearly below the pictures to be easily read.

MARGARET PARROTT
Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1991

The Tarot is a physical representation of a philosophical concept of the Universe.

That says the most in the fewest words, but what does it mean?

Well.

The Tarot is a deck of cards. The deck is used for meditation, Magick, self-analysis, Divination, fortune telling and mnemonics. Decks may contain anything from a couple of dozen cards up to a couple of hundred. Common playing cards are often used, but many decks specifically designed for one or more of these purposes are on the market.

For the Tarot to be a valid tool for any of these purposes, it must have enough images to cover every aspect of our Universe, from the most Archetypal Forces to the most mundane events. These images must be finite enough to be understandable and general enough to be flexible. They must communicate, both as a collection of individual images and as a whole, a comprehensive and coherent body of thought about the nature of the Universe.

Clearly, the Universe is, so far as we can tell, infinite and eternal -- and it exists within the Mind of the Divine -- therefore, the Universe is, ultimately, a part of The One, the All in All, UNITY, Which is by definition INDIVISIBLE. For the purpose of discussion, we must divide the Indivisible into a number of parts. How can we divide that which is Eternally One?

In the same way we divide everything we deal with so that we can deal with it. The same way we divide even ourselves -- our feet from our heads, our family from our friends, our needs from our desires, our work from our meaning, our selves from our Selves....

Human beings just don't seem to be able to deal with everything all at once. We have to reduce things to manageable parts. That we often destroy the things we take apart can only be justified by refusing to recognize the existence of the Whole. It must always be remembered, therefore, that the Tarot is One thing, not 82 things -- our intention must always be to use the Tarot as a tool for the reawakening of our Awareness of Divine Unity, for only in this will we find "...the QUINTESSENCE, the Stone of the Philosophers, True Wisdom, Perfect Happiness, the SUMMUM BONUM."

The Parrott Tarot divides Unity into 82 parts. These are the 78 cards of the Golden Dawn tradition with the addition of 4 new cards, the Mentors. They are apportioned among the Five Elements, the Seven Visible Planets, the Twelve Zodiacal Signs, Two Genders and Two levels of maturity, Four Seasons, 36 Decanates, Ten Sephiroth (the Mentors add the Eleventh Sephirah, Daath), 22 Paths of the Sepher Yetzirah, the Three Taoist Aspects of Yin, Yang and Tao.

Each of these sets of divisions is intended to convey the Unity of the Whole. Their interrelationships derive from the set of correspondences developed by the founders of the Golden Dawn, based on the teachings of the Hermetic Qabala.

The primary glyph or symbol of the Hermetic Qabala is the Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life is a physical representation of a philosophical concept of the Universe. Where have we read that before?

The Tree of Life divides Unity into Four Worlds: Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah. The first World or Plane is Atziluth, associated with Divinity. Briah is Archangelic in nature while Yetzirah is ruled by the Angelic rank and file. Assiah is the Plane of Action or Manifestation.

Each of these Four Worlds is further divided into Ten Sephiroth. These Ten Sephiroth are arranged on Three Pillars and are connected by 22 Paths. Above the Tree stretch the Ain, Ain Soph and Ain Soph Auer -- aspects of the concept of Divine Nothingness (or whatever one conceives as existing before Creation). Below the Tree of Life are the Qlippoth -- those entities which/who reject the Light.

The Logos, The Divine, God, Allah, AHYH rules Kether of Atziluth -- the highest Sephiroth in the highest World. At the bottom of the lowest Tree, Malkuth of Assiah, we find the fields of Maya humans often mis-label "real life."

The Tree of Life will be discussed more fully below.

The pack of Tarot cards is divided into Major and Minor Arcana.

The Major Arcana number Twenty-two, from Zero thru Twenty- one, and describe processes, states and forces. They are assigned to the 22 visible Paths on the Hermetic Tree of Life. They are also assigned to the Planets, Signs and Elements. The Major Arcana are also called Trumps and Atus.

The Minor Arcana are divided into Four Suits -- Wands, associated with Fire and Spirit; Cups, associated with Water and Emotion; Swords, associated with Air and Intellect; Disks, also called Pentacles, associated with Earth and the Physical. The Suits also correspond to the Four Worlds of the Qabala -- Wands to Atziluth, Cups to Briah, Swords to Yetzirah and Disks to Assiah.

The Minor Arcana are further divided into Face Cards or Royals and Number Cards or Pips.

The Pips number 1 thru 10 in each of the Four Suits. They describe actions, attitudes and events. These Number Cards are assigned to the Ten Established Sephiroth on the Tree of Life.

The Royals are the King, Queen, Mentor, Prince and Princess of each suit. They represent different human personality types, whether actual people or aspects of personality or ways of being depending on the question, the position and the surrounding cards.

The Face Cards are assigned to certain of the Sephiroth and to the Letters of the Holy Name YOD-HEH-SHIN-VAV-HEH, which has been transliterated as Yeheshuah.