CHAPTER XXI.

APPLICATION OF THE TAROT TO GAMES.

The Royal Game of Human Life played by the Egyptians.
The Unity of Games in the Tarot.

The Royal Game of Human Life,

ACCORDING TO THE EGYPTIANS.

1. When the players have chosen their Magian, they also
choose from amongst the non-players a man and a woman,
whom they name Osiris and Isis.

2. When commencing a game, the Magian having taken
the central place, the players settle the amount of the
principal fine together (we will suppose it to be one
halfpenny), and a basket is placed on the table to receive
the money.

3. When all the players are seated, the Magian takes
the Book of Thoth, i. e. the pack of Tarot cards, and
shuffles them, carefully placing their heads alternate ways,
but without looking at them, lets them be cut bv some
player on his left, and then deals the cards to his right,
giving as many as he likes, up to seven, to each player
and to himself.

336 THE TAROT.

4. Each player should notice that the top of the card
(when the Magian deals it) is facing his chest ; it is there-
fore in that sense, and according to the order in which the
cards are dealt, that the players should read the oracles
traced upon it, which thej refer to whomever they choose
amongst the persons in the house.

5. When one of the players reads an oracle he assumes
the character of an interpreter, and if the person to whom
he refers the oracle will not give him a present, he must
pay half the fine.

6. When a person has received three veracious oracles
upon the past, the present, or according to probabilities
the future, and he refuses to reward the interpreter, the
players will hold a council, and judge by a majority of
voices whether his refusal is justified or not. In the latter
case, the Magian must pronounce the word Pamenes,
which warns all the household that there is one person
present who does not join in the royal game of the Human
Life, and then Osiris and Isis are obliged to pay for him,
for when they accepted these titles, they undertook to
diffuse peace and abundance over the heroes who are
playing.

7. When one of the spectators asks to buy the hand of
one of the players, the Magian fixes its price, which is
divided into three parts : the first third is paid into the
fine-box; the second to the Magian; and the third to the
player, who however can avoid parting with his cards by
paying the two first thirds of the price fixed by the
Magian.

8. When one of the spectators has acquired the hand of
one of the players, he takes with it all the player's chances
of fines and presents.

9. When one of the players cannot read the oracles, he

APPLICATION OF THE TAROT TO GAMES. 337

places his seven cards on one side and pays one-fourth of
the fine.

10. If the player, although able to read the oracle, cannot
find any one to whom he can refer it, he must lay his cards
upon the table, face upwards, and read the meaning that
he sees in them, without paying anything. If, on the other
hand, he interprets them badly, according to the judgment
of the other players, the Magian condemns him to pay
half the fine.

11. When the interpreter has pronounced the oracle,
aloud or privately, and has received a present, he can have
his seven cards re-shuffled by the Magian, who will return
them to him to cut ; and finally, if the same cards produce
three presents from the same or other persons to whom
the oracles have been uttered, all the players, except the
Magian, give the interpreter three times the value of the
fine. This is the civic crown.

12. The Magian arranges and directs the games as he
likes ; he awards the fines according to the nature of the
faults, such as showing the cards to other players, hiding
them from the spectators, any indiscretion in the utterance
of the oracles, reading oracles which are not justified by
the cards, etc.

13. The spectators can join in the game until the
Magian indicates that it will soon end, by saying in a
quarter of an hour, or half an hour, the game will close.

14. If the Magian should forget to announce the coming
end of the game, all the spectators have a right to share
the fines, which are divided equally amongst all the
players, when the expenses have been paid.

338 THE TAROT.

THE UNITY OF GAMES.

Is it not true that man has displayed more inventive
faculties to satisfy his vices, than for anything else ?
To convince ourselves of this fact we need only look at the
innumerable inventions destined to aid him in losing the
time which has been so parsimoniously dealt out to us all.

But the human brain acts in accordance with a very
small number of laws, and the inventor cannot escape from
the effect of this rule. Look at the basis of most sanies,
however they may differ in appearance. Is it not possible
to find one single game, from which most of the others are
derived ?

Follow me in thought, dear reader, over one of the hiodi-
roads of Spain or Italy, and let us ask some old Gypsy to
leave her camp for a moment and tell our fortunes. Look
at the strange cards she draws from her greasy bag : the
Universe, the Sun, the Stars, Death, Fortune, Love, are
only a few of the names of these eccentric figures, which
depict the phases of our daily life with so much simplicity.
What is this game ? The Gypsy Tarot.

It is composed of our cards with four additional figures
called Knights, who are placed between the Queen and
the Knave. But its originality lies in the twenty-two
supplementary and symbolical figures. Each of them
represents an image, a number, an idea. Court de Gébelin,
a savant of the eighteenth century, has shown us that this
game, as possessed by the Gypsies, is of Egyptian origin,
that it also existed in China and India from the earliest
antiquity, and we shall see that it is the father of most of
the games now known.

It is composed of numbers and figures, which mutually
react upon and explain each other. But if we separate

APPLICATION OF THE TAROT TO GAMES. 339

the figures and arrange them upon a paper in the form of
a wheel, making the numbers move in the shape of dice,
we produce the Goose game, with which Ulysses, according
to Homer, practised cheating beneath the walls of Troy.

If we fix the numbers upon alternate black and white
squares, and allow the lesser figures of our game to move
upon them — the King, Queen, Knight, Foolish Man or
Knave, Tower or ace — we have the Game of Chess. In fact,
the primitive chessboards bore numbers, and philosophers
used them to solve problems of logic.

If, leaving the figures on one side, we confine ourselves
to the use of numbers, the Game of Dice appears, and if we
weary of throwing the dice, we can mark the characters
upon horizontal plates and create the Game of Dominoes.

If the symbolical figures are in our way, we replace
them by black and white draughts, and by using the
numbers upon the dice we invent Backgammon, another
combination of the Goose game.

Chess degenerates in the same way into the Game of
Draughts.

Lastly, our pack of cards, instead of first appearing under
Charles X., according to the common report, is of far older
date. Spanish regulations are in existence dated long
before this reign, forbidding the nobles to play at cards,
and the Tarot itself is of very ancient origin.

The sceptres of the Tarot have become clubs, the cups
hearts, the swords spades, and the pentacles or money
diamonds. We have also lost the twenty-two symbolical
figures and the four knights.

But if all these crames are derived from the Tarot, what
is its origin and its primitive derivation ?

These are grave questions, which for their solution
lead the mind into dangerous researches. Let me

340 THE TAROT.

therefore relate to you a certain confidence upon this
subject which I received from a dusty old manuscript,
forgotten in a corner of a library. Take it as romance or
as history, whichever you like, it does not matter so long
as your curiosity is gratified.

Now, let us transport ourselves in imagination three
thousand miles away, into the midst of the wonderful and
grandiose Egyptian civilization, which archaeologists are
each day revealing more fully to our century.

Let us enter one of those cities, of which Paris would
form but one district, passing through the defensive out-
works guarded by a well-equipped body of soldiers, and
glide amongst the inhabitants, who are as numerous and
as busy as those of our greatest cities.

On all sides immense monuments of strange architecture
rise to enormous heights ; the terraces of rich houses
indicate the first steps of a gigantic staircase, formed by
the palaces and temples, and dominated by the silent
residence of the supreme head of the Empire.

The great cities are everywhere fortified, the Nile is
restrained by moles, and enormous reservoirs are ready to
receive its surplus waters, and thus transform terrible
inundations into beneficent irrigation.

All this involves science and savants, but where are
they ?

At this epoch science and religion were blended in a
single study, and all the men of science, engineers, doctors,
architects, superior officers, scribes, etc., were called priests
or Initiates. We must not confuse the priest of antiquity
with the word taken in the modern sense, or we shall fall
into many errors, amongst others that of believing that
Egypt was given over to clerical despotism in its worst
form.

APPLICATION OF THE TAROT TO GAMES. 341

Instruction of every kind was given in the temples in
various degrees, according to methods perfectly established,
and, at that epoch, imitated in every country in the world.

The highest instruction which man can acquire was
given in the great temple of Egypt, and it was there that
the great reformers of the future completed their studies :
Orpheus, Lycurgus, Pythagoras, and Moses amongst many
others.

Astronomy was one of the sciences which became the
object of constant investigation. We now know through
Pythagoras, who has perpetuated the knowledge of the
wise men of Egypt, that they were acquainted with the
movement of the earth round the sun, as well as with the
position of the latter in relation to its satellite planets.
Many of the mythological stories relate to these mysteries
and the wise men of the epoch, that is to say, the priests
taught astronomy to their disciples, by means of small
cards, which represented the months, seasons, signs of the
zodiac, planets, sun, etc., etc. In this way they imprinted
upon the imagination of the students the data which later
on they verified in nature.

A time followed when Egypt, no longer able to struggle
against her invaders, prepared to die honourably. Then
the Egyptian savants (at least so my mysterious informant
asserts) held a great assembly to arrange how the know-
ledge, that until that date had been confined to men
judged worthy to receive it, should be saved from
destruction.

At first they thought of confiding these secrets to
virtuous men secretlv recruited bv the Initiates them-
selves, who would transmit them from generation to
generation. But one priest, observing that virtue is a
most fragile thins:, and most difficult to find, at all events

342 THE TAKOT.

in a continuous line, proposed to confide the scientific
traditions to vice.

The latter, he said, would never fail completely, and
through it we are sure of a long and durable preservation
of our principles.

This opinion was evidently adopted, and the game
chosen as a vice wTas preferred. The small plates were
then engraved with the mysterious figures which formerly
taught the most important scientific secrets, and since
then the players have transmitted this Tarot from gener-
ation to generation, far better than the most virtuous men
upon earth would have done.

Such is the story or the history confided to me by this
old manuscript, upon the origin of the father of our great
games, and I am very glad that it provided me with the
means of proving my perhaps paradoxical assertion of
their original unity.