medieval cathedrals were the “books of the people.” Kurt 
Seligmann’s statement of this aspect of the cathedral (The  
History of Magic , pp. 415­16) serves to bring out their 
resemblance to the page of medieval scriptural commentary:

          In this quality, the Tarot cards resemble the images 
     of other arts: the paintings, sculpture, and stained glass 
     windows of the cathedrals, which also clothed ideas in 
     human form. Their world, however, is the one above, while 
     the world of the Tarot is below. The trumps depict the 
     relation of the powers and the virtues to man; the 
     cathedrals on the other hand embody man’s relation to 
     the divine. But both images impress themselves upon the 
     mind. They are mnemonic. They contain a wide complex of 
     ideas that would fill volumes were they written down. 
     They can be “read” by the illiterate and the literate alike,