Eliphas Levi

Have you ever wondered why fortune tellers use Tarot cards? Why the pentagram represents the Devil? Of course, you haven't!...

We'll tell you anyway:

It all goes back to Eliphas Levi, a French occultist/alchemist (in the 19th century!)/"magician". (Quotes are an obvious necessity here.) Levi wrote numerous tomes and influenced many, having a profound effect on modern-day fortune-telling/charlatanism/"magic". It was because of him that Tarot became entrenched in occultism. The pentagram as a symbol of evil was his idea as well.

Levi was also a Kabbalist (born Alphonse Louis Constant, he came up with his pseudonym to sound more Hebrew), and, in a huge plot twist... a socialist. Go figure. (Some might get the idea that pentagrams are socialist? Maybe we should strike that from this profile...)

One thing that he wasn't:

A Jew.