Kabbalah: definition

Kabbalah is a Jewish esoteric tradition, often mobilised in certain occultist readings of tarot. It does not originally belong to tarot, but was associated with it in the modern era.

Several esoteric schools put the twenty-two major arcana in relation with the Tree of Life and its paths, as well as with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

This correspondence, spread above all from authors like Éliphas Lévi, gave tarot a metaphysical depth that its ludic origin did not possess.

That is why it is important to distinguish what belongs to the history of the Marseille Tarot from what belongs to later occultist interpretations grafted onto the cards.

The kabbalah of tarot is thus an added layer of meaning: fascinating and elaborate, but historically and conceptually distinct from the deck as it was born and circulated as a game.

Knowing it allows reading many claims of esoteric tarot with perspective, without confusing a millennia-old spiritual tradition with its late and debatable application to the cards.

For a Marseille Tarot reader, knowing of these kabbalistic correspondences is useful even if they are not adopted: it helps understand many discourses about tarot and situate them in their historical context. But it is best not to project retroactively onto medieval and Renaissance cards a system applied to them centuries later, so as not to confuse the original image with its later esoteric re-reading.