@Alrah said
"The book by Idries Shah that I've been reading has a note on the Tarot at the back.
He quotes one Feliciano Busi as saying they were brought to Viterbo as a game of cards from Saracinia "and is called by them Naib". He writes "Naib is an arabic word meaning "deputy" and the material from which the Tarot cards were copied is still extant. It is "deputy" or substitute material, forming an allegory of the teachings of a Sufi master about certain cosmic influences upon humanity. This is divided into four sections, called the turuq (four ways), the word from which "Tarot" is undoubtedly derives."
He goes on to note that the Spanish word naipe (card) derives from the arabic naib, and that "The tarot now known in the west has been influenced by the Cabalistic and Judaizing process, designed to bring it into line with certain doctrines not implicit in the original...the essential cipher element contained in the meaining of the suits and trumps is still Sufi property." (This was published in 1964 btw).
"The pack, as it stands today, is only partially correct because there have been transpositions of the significances of some of the atouts, the trumps or emblematic figures of the pack. This error has been caused by a mistranslation from Arabic of certain words, due to literal conversion into a different culture system. Another factor may be the substitution of one picture for another one. This is not a subject upon which I may be more explicit. Temperance is incorrectly portrayed and interpreted; so is the fiftheen trump; the meaning of the sixteenth trump is a classic case of misunderstanding of a word; the twentieth is wrongly emphasized. Many of the attributions, however, are still in use amongst the Sufis, though in the west the essential associations with Sufi texts have been lost.""
Many Sufi allegories can definitely add insight to the Tarot cards i.e. this snippet on The Chariot from Tales of the Dervishes by Idries Shah:
"Intellect is the ‘vehicle,’ the outward form within which we state where we think we are and what we have to do. The vehicle enables the horse and man to operate. This is what we call tashkil, outward shape or formulation. The horse, which is motive power, is the energy which is called ‘a state of emotion’ or other force. This is needed to propel the chariot. The man, in our illustration, is that which perceives, in a manner superior to the others, the purpose and possibilities of the situation, and who makes it possible for the chariot to move towards and to gain its objective."
As a side note on Idries Shah, he definitely has his critics as well: