Reading Waite-The Doctrine Behind the Veil

Teheuti

Sentences 36 - 40

Sentence 36:
"The two classes of significance which are attached to the Tarot in the superior and inferior worlds, and the fact that no occult or other writer has attempted to assign anything but a divinatory meaning to the Minor Arcana, justify in yet another manner the hypothesis that the two series do not belong to one another.

Sentence 37:
"It is possible that their marriage was effected first in the Tarot of Bologna by that Prince of Pisa whom I have mentioned in the first part.

Sentence 38:
"It is said that his device obtained for him public recognition and reward from the city of his adoption, which would scarcely have been possible, even in those fantastic days, for the production of a Tarot which only omitted a few of the small cards; but as we are dealing with a question of fact which has to be accounted for somehow, it is conceivable that a sensation might have been created by a combination of the minor and gambling cards with the philosophical set, and by the adaptation of both to a game of chance.

Sentence 39:
"Afterwards it would have been further adapted to that other game of chance which is called fortune-telling.

Sentence 40:
"It should be understood here that I am not denying the possibility of divination, but I take exception as a mystic to the dedications which bring people into these paths, as if they had any relation to the Mystic Quest."

Earlier, Waite says that the Bolognese Tarot was "said to have been invented--or, as a Tarot, more correctly, modified--about the beginning of the fifteenth century by an exiled Prince of Pisa resident in the city."

Francesco Fibbia of Pisa (died 1419) was said, although without proof, to have been the inventor of playing cards. He is credited with a so-called “tarocchino of Bologna” comprised of 62 cards, 22 Triumphs and 40 suit cards from which the 2, 3, 4, and 5 have been dropped. This theory is generally discounted.

Would anyone like to summarize what Waite seems to believe about the origins of the Tarot according to the above statements along with any other related text?

Mary