Esoteric and occult symbols

Symbols of the Western occult and divinatory traditions, and where each came from.

Symbols of the Western occult tradition, starting with the tarot: a card game that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century occultists, from Court de Gébelin to Éliphas Lévi, read as a book of hidden knowledge. The pages give each symbol's history and the meanings its writers gave it, as theirs.

Sources

Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards, by William Andrew Chatto, John Russell Smith, London, 1848 (Project Gutenberg text, on the Internet Archive), Introduction; Tarocchi
A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, by W. H. Willshire, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1876 (scan on the Internet Archive), General history

Last reviewed September 27, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research

Tarot cardsThe 22 trumps of the tarot’s Major Arcana: a fifteenth-century Italian card game that became a tool of divination.78 entries