This article was part of an E-mail that the author sent to me regarding the Order of the Tarot. With his approval, I re-wrote it into an article. Feel free to E-mail him.
A book entitled the 'The TAROT in the restored
order',(almost 500 p., with lots of illustrations and diagrams etc) states that originally the Tarot deck must have had 80 cards. Almost all available information on the Tarot states the Tarot deck consists of 78 cards,
forgetting/omitting the two traditional blank cards.
The book, by Onno and Rob Docters van Leeuwen, gives a lot of information about the history, function and meanings, veil and disclosure, diviniation methods, structures and correlations. Also there is a deck of 80 cards with it.
The authors state that traditionally (onwards from Rider-Waite in 1909) the deck of Tarot cards consists of 80 cards of which 2 are left blank.
With the help of the different versions of Tarot decks dating from the 15th
century and later that have been preserved, and research and esoteric
insights, the two blank cards of the major Arcana have been disclosed again.
The book gives a lot of explanations on this based on 20 years of research.
There are for example two different versions of the Marseillan tarot, dating back to the late 16th and early 17th century. The big difference is that the one version has on II Junon and on V Jupiter and the other on II La Papese and on V Le Pape.
The original version of the TAROT has been disguised, by putting 'The High Priestess' and 'The Hierophant' in the place of Junon (Intuition) and
Jupiter (Truth). From then on the two blank cards served as completion to
get 24 major Arcana for adepts.
The relevant missing Major Arcana were marked by putting a small ' - ' and ' + ' on these cards.
I just read in an article in a Dutch magazine (BRES) that the translation of
this book into English is in progress.
Tarot in Restored Order
Peter van den Berg