What’s the deal with the Tarot and the Kabbalah?
Are they linked? Can you have Tarot without it? Can you use it to make the Tarot better? I keep seeing it mentioned but I don’t really understand what people are talking about.
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Tarot is pretty flexible when it comes to interpretation. Some readers incorporate Kabbalah, astrology, numerology, and chakras, but plenty of us just work with the cards on their own. Tarot and Kabbalah have been linked by occultists over the years, but you don’t need to know anything about Kabbalah to read tarot. I don’t use it in my practice (partly because it’s from a tradition that isn’t mine) and my readings work fine.
Tarot started as a card game. It wasn’t used for divination until much later, so there’s really no single ‘correct’ way to read. You can read with intuition, traditional meanings, or make up your own system. Whatever works for you.
The connection is maybe not as old as you might think. 18th-century French occultists basically just made it up. Court de Gébelin in 1781 claimed Tarot was ancient Egyptian wisdom preserved through Jewish mysticism, but that was pure speculation. No historical evidence at all.
Then, Eliphas Levi in the 1850s created the first real system linking the 22 Major Arcana to Hebrew letters. The Golden Dawn took it further, and that’s pretty much what ended up in the Rider-Waite deck most people use. You absolutely don’t need any of it to read cards well. Plenty of us read intuitively without touching the Tree of Life stuff. I would imagine at least half of the forum doesn’t know what you’re talking about.
I use bits of it sometimes, like when I do pathworking or want structure for a complex reading. But treating it as mandatory? That’s just gatekeeping. The Hermetic Qabalah they use isn’t even Jewish Kabbalah - it’s this whole syncretic Western thing mixing in Egyptian mythology, alchemy, astrology.
Some Jewish practitioners find it appropriative, which is worth sitting with, but a lot of their traditions can be traced further back so it’s not exactly logical or a reason to change the Tarot we’ve all used for years.
Learn it if you’re curious, skip it if it doesn’t call to you. Your readings won’t suffer either way.
That’s a huge question, I’m actually pretty impressed. Better than our usual “where can I find a deck with cats on it?”. This is one of the deeper topics in Tarot.
As pointed out, the link was added later on, and it won’t really change much. So yes, you can absolutely read Tarot without knowing a thing about Kabbalah. Lots of readers, especially those using older styles like the Tarot de Marseille, don’t use it at all.
For some people, learning the system (specifically Hermetic Qabalah, which is different from traditional Jewish Kabbalah) adds a ton of structure and symbolic depth. It maps the cards onto a whole spiritual system. It’s not a requirement to be a good reader, just one powerful lens to look through.
The Golden Dawn system puts The Fool at Aleph (beginning), but Eliphas Levi’s Continental system puts it at Shin (near the end). Crowley switched The Emperor and The Star because of some channeled text.
Three different “authentic” systems that contradict each other. That should tell you everything about how essential these correspondences really are and why everyone keeps telling you to find what resonates with you and be consistent with that.
As someone who works with tarot and runes, I don’t see Kabbalah as vital to reading tarot. The Golden Dawn later bent tarot to fit their system; they even shuffled some of the Majors so the Hebrew letters and Tree of Life paths matched their scheme.
Rider-Waite-Smith came out of that group, and most modern decks lean on RWS art, so those links are stuck in a lot of current practice. Like I don’t call on Norse cosmology when I cast runes, you don’t need Kabbalah to read well. If the Kabbalistic stuff feels heavy, try a pre-Golden Dawn approach like the Tarot de Marseille. TdM has a straightforward feel, more like working with Elder Futhark, simple symbols without the extra layers. That might be a better fit.
Or use any Oracle deck which won’t use it either.
The Kabbalah connection actually came much later in tarot’s history! Originally, tarot cards were just for playing games, no mystical associations at all. It wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries that occultists started layering on the Kabbalistic correspondences, astrological symbols, and other esoteric systems.
You can use tarot without any Kabbalah knowledge. If you work with older decks like the Tarot de Marseille, you’ll find they’re pretty straightforward, no Hebrew letters or Tree of Life paths baked in. The imagery speaks for itself, which makes them good for intuitive reading and shadow work.
Modern decks like Rider-Waite-Smith and Crowley’s Thoth are different. They’ve got all these correspondences built right into the artwork. Some readers find this enriches their practice, others think it overcomplicates things.
So yeah, they’re linked in many modern tarot systems, but it’s a constructed link, not an original one. Whether it makes tarot ‘better’ depends on what you want from it. Some people like the extra layers, some prefer just working with the images.
My tarot mentor always encouraged me to study the cards and the Tree of Life as separate systems first. She thought we’d each find our own connections that might work better than the traditional Golden Dawn attributions.
Some of my personal associations have ended up being more useful in readings than the textbook ones.
Imagine if you tried to read tarot using ONLY the Kabbalistic meanings, like pulling Death and instead of transformation, you just go ‘ah yes, the 24th path of Nun, the fish swimming through Scorpio’s waters between Netzach and Tiphereth.’
Your querent would be confused as hell.
The link between Tarot and Kabbalah depends on how you approach it. There are no hard rules to the Tarot, remember.
If you want Tarot without the Kabbalistic layers, the Marseille tradition is a solid pick. It came before most of the esoteric add-ons and keeps the focus on the cards. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck turns Kabbalistic and astrological ideas into clear imagery. You can read it just fine by sticking to the pictures, without digging into the Tree of Life or Hebrew letters. Plenty of modern decks based on RWS skip Kabbalah and still read well. That might suit you if you want that separation.
Some decks lean into Kabbalah-Thoth and the Hermetic Tarot, for example. They go deep if you want that, but you don’t need them for solid readings. Even the Urban Tarot, which borrows from Thoth, suggests reading intuitively or like an RWS deck. You can practice Tarot without Kabbalah. The cards can stand on their own.
My guess is that most people who work with the Tarot don’t really even know what Kabbalah is. Don’t worry about it and don’t overthink it.
And the idea of cultural appropriation of a belief system is laughable. It’s not like Christianity was the first religion to believe in an all powerful God, are we going to pull their Churchs down?
Don’t overthink it. If you don’t want to use it, don’t use it.
For me, Kabbalah sits alongside the images and helps me spot patterns when certain numbers and themes repeat.
The Hebrew letters on Major Arcana cards actually have meaning. Each path on the Tree of Life connects two sephiroth and corresponds to a specific Major. The Fool is Aleph on the path between Keter and Chokmah, for example.
Thing is, French cartomancers like Etteilla created entire divination systems without using any of this stuff, and their readings worked just fine.
This comes up a lot. Many modern tarot systems link the cards with Kabbalah. You can use tarot just fine without knowing any of that. Plenty of readers stick to the images and their own reading of them. The link people mention is usually Hermetic Qabalah (with a Q, to set it apart from Jewish Kabbalah). It grew as Western occultists folded Jewish mystical ideas into their work and, over time, it became its own thing. Think of it like how American pizza and Italian pizza share roots but aren’t the same anymore. People often mix up Hermetic Qabalah with Jewish Kabbalah, but they’re separate traditions.
In decks like Rider-Waite-Smith or Thoth, Qabalah shows up in the symbolism, references to the Tree of Life and to Hebrew-letter/number links. Still, most RWS users I’ve met don’t study those layers and their readings work fine. If Qabalah interests you, it can add depth. If not, skip it and read the cards the way you prefer.
That’s a good point. The Rider-Waite deck was made by Golden Dawn members who put Qabalistic symbolism in every single card.
So we’re probably using those correspondences whether we know it or not. Maybe if we understood what’s actually built into the cards it could help our readings instead of making them more complicated?
The Kabbalah connections weren’t originally baked into tarot, they’re more like a layer added by occultists in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Éliphas Lévi, A. E. Waite, and others). As someone who collects vintage maps, I see it like how cartographers used to add sea monsters and mythical islands to fill empty spaces-interesting additions, but not part of the original territory being mapped.
Some folks swear by the Tree of Life correspondences and Hebrew letter associations, treating tarot like a complete esoteric system where every symbol must align perfectly. If that works for you, great. But the cards work fine on their own. The earliest decks were meant for gaming and didn’t have these mystical overlays. You can read tarot without touching Kabbalah. Many readers work with intuition and the visual symbolism in the cards. The Kabbalah framework is just one lens among many, useful for some, unnecessary for others.
When I’m reading at parties or fundraisers, I sometimes use Kabbalah stuff for quick structure without getting too deep into it. The 36 decans give me ten-day timing windows from the numbered minors, and a mini Tree of Life layout helps me figure out if someone’s problem is about willpower, emotions, or habits.
If you want to try it, match your Tens to ‘where things end up’ and your Fives to ‘where things get tense.’ See if that matches what you’re already picking up in your readings.
Jung had this quote about how when two personalities meet, if there’s any reaction, both get transformed. Kind of like chemical substances mixing.
That’s basically what happened when the Victorian occultists connected Tarot with the Tree of Life. It wasn’t historically accurate, but it turned into its own thing. The two systems ended up working together in ways nobody really expected at the time.
Those layers are woven into the Rider-Waite imagery.
Waite was explicit about it. But a tree doesn’t need to understand photosynthesis to grow toward the light. Sometimes our intuition navigates symbolic systems we don’t consciously grasp, picking up on patterns and resonances the artist embedded.
The key is discernment.
Study the foundations if you’re called to, but don’t let knowledge crowd out the quieter voice of intuition. The symbols work on multiple levels. Some readers benefit from understanding the architecture; others read beautifully by candlelight alone, letting the images speak without translation.