The tarot cards are best known as a method of divination or 'fortune-telling'. The tarot consists
of 22 major arcana cards, and then 4 suits running from ace to ten and then therough the court cards in the same manner as
the popular playing cards which they inspired.
Each card is packed with religious and mythological symbolism which is used to construct a
'reading'. The origins of the tarot are uncertain, but it is generally thought that the tarot cards were first created as
a way of disseminating ancients wisdom amidst religious persecution, and so the cards are also considered to be a book of
pictorial characters akin to the Egyptian hieroglyphs, hence the esoteric name of the tarot: the book of Thoth. The cards
are therefore also used for meditation or 'pathworking' by those seeking to unlock their arcane wisdom.
