Did the Hebrew alphabet influence the early Tarot’s design?
This question has been hotly debated now for more than a century. At one end of the spectrum are those who argue that the letters were fundamentally associated with the trumps from the beginning. At the other end are those who argue that there is no evidence to conclude any link between the early Tarot and the Hebrew alphabet. Various pages on my website introduce new research showing a demonstrable correspondence between the Hebrew letters and the Marseilles Tarot. That correspondence lies within the medieval Hebrew lexicon, which contains an alphabetical sequence of words corresponding to the 22 allegorical subjects. Each trump, in effect, illustrates one Hebrew letter in much the same way as a child’s English primer echoes ‘A is for apple’ and ‘B is for boy’. Not only can the allegorical subjects be found in alphabetical sequence, but virtually every item on each trump can be found with the same initial letter, suggesting the Tarot of Marseilles to be a ‘visual abecedarium’ of the H
