2013 Noah Adrien Lyons

Submitted to Prof. Michael Morris O.P.

Graduate Theological Union

Tarot and Christian Iconography: The World and Magdalene

Introduction
The Tarot, in both its origin as a card game and in its transformation into an occult
divinatory tool, functions as an iconographic mirror of a particular culture's time and place. By
examining the evolution of the World card, from the 14th century Italian decks to contemporary
ones, we will see a shift from male Christ imagery to female anima mundi imagery. Parallel to
this iconographic shift is the figure of Mary Magdalene, who in Renaissance painting began to be
portrayed less as a sinner and more of a penitent saint. The assumption of Mary Magdalene in art
correlates with the finalized form of the World card. The alterations of Christian iconography
and symbolism in Tarot cards are the result of occultists reappropiation of the Tarot in the late
1700s. The fear/distrust/disbelief of God and Christianity that began at this time funneled into an
interest in the occult; in the Tarot, we see a preservation of the luminous but a problematic
relationality with Christianity. The World card, as it has been handed down to us today, is a
synthesis of the assumption of Mary Magdalene, the Christus Victor, and the anima mundi;

I.

A Brief History of Tarot

Contrary to popular belief, Tarot cards did not originate in mysterious esoteric origins,
nor were the cards invented for divination purposes. Modern day playing cards and Tarot decks
originate from the same source. The earliest recorded instance of Tarot cards is from
fourteenth-century Italy. After playing cards were introduced into Europe from the Mamluk
Empire, one Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of the Italian city Milan commissioned a deck which
1

had not only numerical suit cards (our modern-day hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds) but
picture cards that featured various figures and scenes.1 All references to these cards in the 14th
and 15th century clearly imply that they were used for play; when the cards spread to France and
Switzerland in the 16th century, all of our sources mostly from French literature, understand the
cards as a game. The original images from the Visconti decks were transformed and underwent
many variations over time.
The Tarot of Marseilles deck, most likely from the late 15th century, is the blueprint for
most contemporary Tarot cards, but when one examines other decks it is clear that there was
never one unified symbolism or structure to the cards. Even more problematic, one needs to ask:
when do we start calling a deck Tarot, rather than a mere playing-card deck? Tarot historians still
do not have a consensus on when we should date the split between Tarot and playing cards.
Playing cards as we know them are based on the four-suit structure of Tarot, but they drop the
sequence of the 22 picture cards, which are called the Major Arcana by Tarot users. The only
remnant is the Joker, a bastardized version of the first Major Arcana card, the Fool. The four
suits of hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs correlate to the Tarot suits of hearts, wands, swords,
and coins/pentacles.
Before examining the early Tarot decks and considering their symbolism in light of
Christian iconography and cultural context, it is important to identify and delineate the period
when the cards began to be used by occultists for divinatory and esoteric purposes. Tarot
historians are in agreement that the appropriation of the cards by occultists occurred in the late
18th century. The first known interpretation of the Tarot through an esoteric lens was penned by
the French occultist Court de Gebelin. He believed the deck was the lost Egyptian Book of Thoth,
1

Helen Farley, A Cultural History of Tarot, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 170-74. Also Michael Dummet, Ronald
Decker, and Thierry Depaulis, A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot, (Ne York: t. Marti s
Press, 1996), 29-33.

containing the secret mysteries of Egyptian wisdom and magic; following Gebelin, occultists
began syncretizing the Tarot with the systems of Kabbalah, Hermeticism, and alchemy.2 I
believe we can locate the apex of this appropriation in the Waite-Smith deck from 1909 the
most familiar and popular deck to the contemporary reader. Later we will consider the effect this
had on the Tarot symbolism and its relationship to the shifts in religious understanding in France
and other European countries.
Although there is a clear historical distinction between Tarot as playing cards and as
occult divination tools, this is not to say that the imagery of the early decks are absent of
symbolism or meaning. Rather than esoteric, the early cards are exoteric in their imagery; the
symbols are clear referents to religion, culture, and mythology. While they seem esoteric today,
as much of Christian iconography is to the contemporary viewer, these cards were probably not
hard to decipher by their audiences. While much is admittedly conjecture, (as is a lot of Tarot
historical studies), there is still much we can tease out of the visual evolution of the cards over
time.

II.

Initial Connections

It is surprising that there has been so little work done on the correlations and similarities
between Tarot and Christian symbolism and iconography. My research hit a lot of dead-end
roads in terms of proof, but I believe it is important to reveal my initial observations to show
that, while perhaps not conscious, there is a great deal of Christian symbolism in Tarot, even in
decks from the post-occult turn of the 18th and 19th centuries and from today as well.

See Dummet, Wicked Pack of Cards; Farley, A Cultural History; Barbara G. Walker, The Secrets of the Tarot:
Origins History, and Symbolism, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984).

In the Waite-Smith deck, the most obvious Christian card is the 20th Major Arcana,
Judgment, in which an angel blows a trumpet and the souls of dead bodies rise from coffins.
Another obvious example is the Tower card, clearly a depiction of the fall of the Tower of Babel.
Less obvious, perhaps, is the Fool card. It depicts a young man walking up to a cliff precipice, as
though he does not see it; he carries a bag of money and is followed by a dog. Does this not
recall the story of blind Tobias, who also carries money and is followed by a dog? Although in
painting he is normally portrayed being guided by the angel Raphael, the similarities are
astounding. How did this come to be?
The Hanged Man card is surprisingly consistent from the early Italian decks to the
contemporary post-occult decks, and is one of the most mysterious within esoteric interpretation.
In the Waite-Smith deck, it depicts a man hanging from a Tau cross by one leg; his other leg is
crossed underneath the other to form another cross, and a nimbus glows around the head. Most
occult interpretations of this card go along the lines that it is a symbol of self-sacrifice for
spiritual gain. Robert Place argues that this can be understood as Christ, in that Christ was
executed as a traitor by the state.3 Furthermore, a numerical reading of the card offers insight
being card 12, it might refer also to the self-sacrifice and martyrdom of the twelve disciples. By
employing basic gematria, we can add the digits one and two to reach three, which could be the
Trinity.
However, Jesus was not crucified upside-down. Looking at the Visconti-Sforza deck, we
have an almost identical depiction of the Hanged Man. Helen Farley points out that in
Renaissance society, there was an art form called pittura infamante shame painting in
which a person was depicted as a traitor, particularly when beyond the reach of legitimate legal

Robert M. Place, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, (New York: Penguin, 2005), 149.

recourse.4 By depicting someone hanging upside-down, this could alternately mean the person
had turned away from God. It also was used for the execution of Jews, witches, and Christians
who had committed perfidy.5 I immediately thought of Peter, who is said to have asked to be
crucified upside-down because he was unworthy to die as Christ died. In Christian iconography,
he is the only individual portrayed in this manner. Peter could be said to be a traitor, in that he
denied Christ three times, but the negative associations of shame paintings dont seem to
correlate with Peters sainthood. Judas is also said to have hung himself, and is traitor par
excellance, but I remained convinced that this card was based upon Peter.
While the usual understanding of Peters request for an upside-down crucifixion is his
humility in relation to Christs death, there is a different explanation in apocryphal accounts. In
the Acts of Peter, Peter speaks from the cross, saying that, when the first man [Adam] came into
the world, he came headfirst. That means that Adams perspective, as the one who brought sin
into the world, was entirely reversed and upside down. That is why people seem to think that
what is true is false and what is false true.All of this is because humans have reverse vision,
due to the actions of Adam.6 Thus, hanging upside-down is a model for Christians to live by, to
see the world correctly. This is nearly identical to how Tarot esotericists interpret the Hanged
Man; it is both Christ in its self-sacrifice, and also an inversion of corporeal reality and
perspective through which one gets a better understanding of how to reach God. While one
cannot veritably locate a thread between the Acts of Peter and the Hanged Man, this connection
exemplifies the latent Christian symbolism that flows through the Tarot, from 14th century Italy
to now.

Farley, 70.
Farley, 71.
6
Bart D. Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 85. Cf. Acts of Peter, 38.
5

III.

Case Study: Evolution of the World Card City of God to Anima Mundi

The World card, the highest ranked Major Arcana card, exists in the early ViscontiSforza, Marseilles, and contemporary decks. It will serve as our loci in considering the
relationship between Tarot and Christian iconography, the evolution of Mary Magdalene in
Christian depiction/understanding, and the rise of the female anima mundi in occult and esoteric
movements.
To recall, the Visconti-Sforza is one of our earliest known decks. Helen Farley notes that
the decks symbolism reflects concerns and themes of the Italian Renaissance:

The proximity of death, the fickle hand of fortune, the desirability of living a life
of virtue, the importance of spirituality but also the contempt with which
corporeal concerns were held, namely the corruption of the Church[it]
portrayed the lives and history of the Viscontisas a game: a potent allegory of
Visconti life.7

These themes, particularly the tension between spirituality and Catholicism, will reveal
themselves more as we follow the orbit of the World card around the sun of time.
In the Visconti-Sforza deck, the world is shown as a globe, within which is a city
surrounded by turbulent waters (fig. I). The globe is held aloft by two putti. The blue wings
indicate they are Seraphim, the highest rank of angels. In other versions from this time, there is
usually a figure of a woman or angel upon the globe.8 In Medieval and Renaissance art, a walled
city usually represents Jerusalem, the city of God; the microcosm of the city symbolically
linked the earthly (human) body with the heavenly (cosmic) body, observes Farley. This
7
8

Farley, 173-4.
Michael Dummett, The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards, (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1986), 138.

derives, of course, from St. Augustines The City of God, wherein the Christian empire is located
around the Church of Rome, which links humankind with God. The earthly city reflects the
heavenly city, and this card connects the actual city of Milan with the celestial city of heaven.
Duke Sforzas domination of Milan is enforced and made holy through its pictorial self-portrayal
as the Augustinian city. This pride in the city-state enforces the power, wealth, and status of
Milan; interestingly, as the World card follows the Resurrection/Judgment card, Milan is
portrayed as the city Augustine believes will contain the saved souls.9 One also may observe that
the city is separated from the rest of the world by the edge of the globe; it is strongly fortified
and separated by waters, illuminated by the stars of heaven.
The two putti slowly disappeared in other decks, to be replaced by either a male or
female figure. In this example from the Museo Civico, we see a woman holding a wand and a
globe as she stands upon the globe (fig. II). Another early example of a female World card is the
Cary-Yale Visconti deck (fig. III), depicting a royally-clothed woman wielding a scepter and a
crown. It was not uncommon to portray the earth as a feminine figure, but these early examples
seem to be stressing not so much a personification of the earth but rather the domination of earth
by something/someone. Consider figure IV and figure V. Here we have a male figure, one
clothed and the other nude, ruling over the world. Consider also the nude male in the Jacques
Vieville deck and the Bologna deck (fig. VI).
In Christian art, when Jesus is portrayed as the Christus Victor, he looms over the world
holding a globe with a cross fixed to it. He is often surrounded by the four evangelists as he
stands upon Gods throne. When he is surrounded by the four evangelists, Christ is enclosed
within a mandorla, and the four evangelists are often in the four corners. Should we understand
these male figures as Christ? The examples weve looked at that have a clothed male figure can
9

Farley, 81.

clearly be an iconographic Christus Victor; the World card, being the last Major Arcana, is
Christ victorious over the entire world after the Resurrection. But what of the nude figures? The
only instance of Christ nude in Christian art, that I know of, is Michelangelos altar wall in the
Sistine Chapel; there, Christ is nude and beardless, as with these particular cards.
But there is a shift from the Christ standing upon the world to the Christ on Gods throne.
As we see with the Jacques Vieville card (fig. VI), the nude Christ holds his standard
iconographic scepter with attached globe, is enclosed by a mandorla (a laurel wreath), and
surrounded by the four evangelists. Again, following the tradition of Christian art, Matthew is a
human with wings, Mark is a lion, Luke is an ox, and John is an eagle. There is no essential
difference between this Tarot card and an atypical Christus Victor. It should be noted that this
visual structure was also used in alchemy through the 16th to the 18th century. The four
evangelists are correlated with the four elements of the world, the four seasons, and the four
directions. Consider figure VII; note the chalice with the serpent, the attribute of John the
Evangelist, unusually associated with the anima mundi.
But something happened. Recall that the Marseilles deck, circa 16th century, served as the
blueprint structure and pattern for most subsequent decks created in France, Italy, and Belgium,
and also for the decks created by occultists in the 19th century. The World card of the Marseilles
deck is unusual considering its forerunners. We have the same iconography of the four
evangelists and the mandorla, but instead of the Christus Victor or royally-clothed woman, there
is a nude woman (figure VIII). There are many versions of this, of course, but we can say that
she is often portrayed with long hair, with a loose banner rippling around her nude body. She
sometimes holds a bottle and a scepter; more often, two equal wands (that is, wands with a knob
on both ends). She is always enclosed within a laurel wreath, and the four evangelists remain in

the four corners of the card. Suddenly, a nude woman is dancing, or floating, on Gods throne
instead of Christ; perhaps, she is being assumed up into heaven. This card serves as the bridge
between the City of God and the Christus Victor depictions to most of the subsequent World
cards: the rather curious and baffling conflagration of Christian iconography and
feminine/Goddess imagery. What does this shift mean, and how can we situate it within
Christian art?
Let us turn our attention, now, to the portrayal of Mary Magdalene in Christian art. Mary
Magdalene underwent quite a transformation through Renaissance art. The sinner Magdalene
ultimately becomes the penitent, holy reformer to which many upheld as an exemplary and
relatable model. Mrs. Jameson locates the rising popularity of Magdalene as penitent in the 16th
and 17th centuries, where she is praying for forgiveness or being reconciled and/or assumed up
into heaven.10 Jameson disfavors, even bemoans, the change in depictions of Magdalene. She
writes that Magdalene became still more endeared to the popular imagination by more affecting
and attractive associations, and even more eminently picturesqueWe have Magdalenes who
look as if they never could have sinned, and others who look as if they never could have
repented.11 Magdalene became more sexualized just as she became more penitent.
Rachel Geschwind observes that in the 16th century, paintings like Rossiglios
Conversion of the Magdalene began to give Venus-like characteristics to Magdalene; she is both
divine and corporeal.12 The interchangeability of Venus and Mary was purposeful in literature
and art, and sometimes one might even mistake a Venus for a Magdalene. Courtesans at this time
would write of divine love and the desire to enter the paradise of Venus, which was a metaphor
10

Anna Brownell Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art Volume I, (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900), 357.
Jameson, 356.
12
Rachel Geschwind, The Pri ted Pe ite t: Magdale e I agery a d Prostitution Reform in Early Modern Italian
Chap ooks a d Broadsheets , Mary Magdalene: Icongraphic Studies from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, eds.
Michelle A. Erhardt and Amy M. Morris, (Boston: Brill, 2012), 120.
11

for the city.13 (Recall the City of God from the Visconti deck). Magdalene seemed to serve as a
perfect model for passion and romance that was acceptable religiously, and as a locus for the
world of divine love. The dichotomy between the corporeal and the divine is also inherent in
Correggios Noli Me Tangere; Margaret A. Morse writes that Correggio evoked a natural style,
while maintain a beauty and sanctity for which his subjects called, whereby the beholderwould
be able to recognize the divine in the physical.14 She is a bridge between the viewer and Christ,
between the body and the spirit. Given that Neo-Platonism was on the rise during the
Renaissance, it makes sense that this balance between two kinds of love, sacred and profane,
formulated by Plato in the Symposium15, found Mary Magdalene as the perfect template and
model. In addition to Venus-like characteristics, Magdalene was also beginning to assume the
role as a new Eve from the Virgin.16
Furthermore, we can locate similar attributes to Magdalene from apocryphal sources as
well as the writings of Origen. In the apocryphal Pistis Sophia, Magdalene is the sole recipient
of Christs gnosis, rather than Peter and the other disciples. Christ says, Well done, Mary. You
are more blessed than all women on earth, because you will be the fullness of fullnesses and the
completion of completions.17Although this apocryphal account could not have been known to
people during the Renaissance, it reveals that even within the early Christian communities there
was a holiness attributed to Magdalene that transcended all others. Yet the Gnostic contempt for
materiality seems to clash with the embrace of dualism during the Renaissance. This dualism can
be found in Origens writings, however. In his commentary on the Song of Songs, he

13

Ibid., 121-22.
Margaret A. Morse, Mary Magdale e Bet ee Pu li Cult a d Perso al De otio i Correggios Noli me
tangere, Mary Magdale e, 313.
15
Jane Eade, Refle tio s o a Glass Madelei e Pe ite te, Mary Magdalene, 320.
16
Annette Lezotte, Mary Magdale e a d the I o ography of Do esti ity , Mary Magdalene, 393.
17
Pistis Sophia, 36, quoted in Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary.
14

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allegorically reads the bride as the Christian church. The bride anoints her lover with an
ointment; Origen connects this with the scriptural account of Mary Magdalene anointing Christ.
He interprets the line spoken by the bride, I am dark but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem
(Song 1:5), as follows: She has repented of her sinsbeauty is the gift conversion has
bestowed; that is the reason she is hymned as beautiful. She is called black, however, because
she has not yet purged of every stain of sin, she has not yet been washed unto salvation,
nevertheless she does not stay dark-hued, she is becoming white.18 The dualism of black/evil
and white/good is unfortunate, but the connection between the Bride of the Song of Songs and
Magdalene reinforces her movement away from sin into penitence, and her positive association
with the Church and Christ. The sexual language employed in the Song of Songs has always
been difficult for commentators; however we see that when Magdalene is associated with the
Bride, the sexuality is compounded with Magdalenes penitence, in the same way weve seen in
Renaissance painting.
The portrayals of Magdalenes assumption into heaven connect us back to the Tarot. Mrs.
Jameson observes, dryly, that Italian paintings of Magdalenes assumption began to recall the
idea of a Venus Meretrix.19 Let us consider Giovanni Lanfrancos La maddalenan portata in
cielo, (fig. IX) and Sandro Botticellis Birth of Venus (fig. X). Jameson is quite correct in her
observation, despite her negativity towards this shift. In the Lanfranco, Magdalenes hair barely
covers her nude body as she is borne aloft by three putti. She holds out her hands at an angle, and
below her is the worlds expanse of mountains, lakes, and forests. It is sexual and chaste,
physical and divine. Her figure is very much the Platonic divine love, the ideal Venus. In some
of the Assumptions, she is almost dwarfed by the sublime immensity of the landscape. The fact
18

Origen, The Song of Songs, Commentary and Homilies, trans. R.P. Lawson, ed. Johannes Quaster, S.T.D., and
Joseph C. Plumpe, (Westminster: Newman Press, 1957),276, quoted in Malvern, Venus in Sackcloth, 64.
19
Jameson, 375.

11

that the very earth is prominent in these paintings underscores Magdalenes dualistic
characteristics of corporeality and divinity; the world gapes below her as she rises above it into
the sky. Although she is always borne by putti in her assumption, she seems to float and dance in
ecstasy as she rises.
We observed the replacement of the Christus Victor with a female nude in the Marseilles
World card. That card is remarkably similar to the Lanfranco, Durers Assumption of the
Magdalene, and others. One gets the same sense of elevation and completion (recall Christs
words in the Pistis Sophia) in the rise of Magdalene as one gets in the World card. I argue for a
parallel between Magdalenes evolution and the World cards evolution; just as painting was
infusing Magdalene with traits of divine love and worldliness, Tarot decks began to see the postResurrection world not in light of Christ but in a neo-Platonic Venus, a Magdalene/New Eve that
encompasses the new World. We saw that some World cards have the woman holding a bottle of
some sort, which is an attribute of Magdalene. Also, the instances of the two equal wands
supports the dualism of divinity and corporeality, dark and light, sinner and penitent, in the
portrayals of Magdalene. Robert Place agrees, writing that She takes her position in the sacred
center, which identifies her as the Anima Mundi and the Quinta Essentiashe has mastered or
transcended dualitythe World Soul is depicted as both Christ, or Sophia his female
counterpart.divine wisdom.20 She is the completion, the alchemical Great Work, the
culmination of all earthly phases into the elevation of the world into heaven. This is, of course,
an esoteric alchemical interpretation, which as we noted did not apply to Tarot until the late
1700s.
I hold that Magdalenes iconographic transition in the Renaissance parallels the exoteric
symbolism of the World; but what to make of the occultists appropriation of this image in the
20

Place, 166-7.

12

late 1700s? Farley argues that, With tarot removed from its original environment, its symbolism
lost its previous relevance and context, rendering its imagery mysterious.21 Institutionalized
religion was being questioned at this time; indeed, the first publications by occultists on the Tarot
coincide with the French Revolution. While we cannot delve deeply into the Revolution here,
suffice it to say that it was characterized by a rejection of Christianity but a preservation of
Christian structure. It had its creeds, liturgies and sacred texts, its own vocabulary of virtues and
vicesand the ambition of regenerating mankind itself, even if it denied divine intervention or
the afterlife. The result was a series of deified abstractions worshipped through the denatured
language and liturgy of Christianity.22 Much of the Revolutions tactics was the replacing of old
symbols with new ones, but maintaining the same essential religious structure. Similarly, I argue
that the occult appropriation of the Tarot was also an appropriation of Christian iconography, in a
general sense; esoteric interpretations and the revisions of Tarot symbolism was an attempt to
escape Christian doctrine through fabricated ancient lore (Egyptian roots, e.g.) and synthesized
connections between the Tarot and old esoteric traditions such as Kabbalah.
If late 18th century France turned toward secularism and humanism, why was there a rise
in the occult? Farley argues that this freedom of belief cleared the way for the rediscovery of
occultismthe renewed interest in the occult arts developed as a response to the upheavals and
dislocations in the maturation of modern France.23 It was also a nostalgic yearning for a lost age
of humanity, for archaic lore that may hold the truth for a world that was turned upside-down.
This occult turn, along with the increasing tendency to place humanity at the center of the
universe, explains the cementation of the Marseilles World card. Prominent Christian elements

21

Farley, 174.
Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the
Great War, (Great Britain: HarperCollins, 2005) , 81.
23
Farley, 98.

22

13

of the old Tarot cards were changed the Pope became the High Priest, the Popess became the
High Priestess. It is possible that the Popess card reflected the Middle Age legend of a female
who dressed as a man and became the Pope. Either Christians uncomfortable with this legend
changed the Popess to the High Priestess, or occultists uncomfortable with Christianity took the
Christian symbolism out of the card. Interpretations of the World card started to see the four
creatures not as the four evangelists but as representative of the elements or the seasons. But just
as laurel leaves never wilt, the laurel wreath surrounding the female anima mundi symbolizes the
eternal presence of Christian symbols within the Tarot. Although occultism, into the 20th century,
is a reworking or artificial creation of already established structures and symbols, we should
acknowledge that it simultaneously refuses the Christian hierarchy while retaining a belief in the
numinous and the divine.
In her book Venus in Sackcloth, Marjorie M. Malvern believes that the Magdalene myth
was fictionalized and mythologized in order to fulfill the desire for a Venus, an Ishtar, an Isis,
as a companion for the male dying and reviving deity.24 With the rise of Mary Magdalene
spiritualties in the New Age movement of the 1970s and the feminist spiritualties of the 80s and
90s, she was reclaimed to express the divinity in the body and the earth. Yet we see this is
hardly new. Christianity always contained these elements. In his discussion of gothic architecture
and the relationship between vegetation and the cross, Simon Schama notes that the boundaries
between nature and architecture were dissolved; the latent pagan earthiness of Christianity the
female portrayals of the anima mundi - manifested itself through the fruitful virgin.25
Tarot cards are iconographic. If we look at the proliferation of different decks in the 20th
century, we see that cultures use the structure to reflect their own particularities. In a Native
Marjorie M. Malvern, Ve us i Sackcloth: The Magdale s Origi s a d Meta orphoses, (Carbondale: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1975), 169.
25
Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), 229.
24

14

American deck, the lion becomes a bear; in a Pagan deck, the World is the great Mother
Goddess. They are icons of a particular cultures time and place in history, mirrors to their
beliefs and fears, to the past and the present. Wells of Christianity bubble within the Tarot. If
Tarot is an iconographic book of a culture, an application of a Christian lens helps us better
understand the reasons for one deck or anothers alteration and/or reappropiation of Christian
iconography. Our case study of the World card revealed the change in understandings of society,
God, and the earth. The parallel to Mary Magdalene is not conjecture; it is a recognition that
shifts in worldviews of the divine and the body will manifest itself in both fine art and in Tarot,
in both religion and occultism. The Assumption of Magdalene is an affirmation that even a
sinner may be redeemed; likewise, the World card affirms that our relationship to the earth and
each other is spiritual and guided by the Spirit. Rather than seeing the shift from Christ to
Magdalene as a replacement, a de-Christianization of the image, I argue that it is an affirmation
of our agency in the world. Just as Magdalene had agency in her sins and in her penance, so is
the balance of the corporeal and the divine equalized in the World.

15

Fig. I. World, Visconti-Sforza Deck, circa 1450-1480

Fig. II. World, Museo Civico, Catania, circa 1500.

16

Fig. III. World, Cary-Yale Visconti Deck, circa 1450-1500.

Fig. IV. Recreation of World card from uncut sheet, circa 1500.

17

Fig. V. World, Unknown Parisian Deck, circa 17th C.E.

Fig. VI. World, Bologna Deck circa 16th century (left); World, Vieville Deck, circa 16th to 17th century (right)
18

Fig. VII. Alchemical drawing of Anima Mundi, Solidonius, 18th C.E., Paris

Fig. VIII. World, Marseilles Deck,

19

Fig. IX, Giovanni Lanfranco, Mary Magdalene Raised by Angels, circa 1616.

Fig. X. Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus, c. 1485.

20

Works Cited

Burleigh, Michael. Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the
French Revolution to the Great War. Great Britain: HarperCollins, 2005.
Dummet, Michael. The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1986.
Dummet, Michael, Thierry Depaulis, and Ronald Decker. A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins
of the Occult Tarot. New York: St. Martins Press, 1996.
Ehrman, Bart. D. Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and
Legend. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
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