The History of Tarot: Six Hundred Years of Cards

A Deck Originally Meant for Play

Tarot first appeared not in Egypt or Atlantis, but in the courts of northern Italy in the fifteenth century. In cities like Milan and Ferrara, a card game called 'tarocchi' became popular, and the seventy-eight-card structure we use today was established then.

The seventy-eight cards consist of fifty-six cards in four suits (fourteen each) plus twenty-two trump cards. These trumps were called 'trionfi' in Italian at the time, a term referring to the triumphal processions of Renaissance festivals. Today's 'Major Arcana' is a renamed version of that concept.

One of the oldest surviving decks is the Visconti-Sforza deck, made in Milan in the 1440s. These cards, painted with gold leaf and lapis lazuli pigment, were actually owned by nobility. Crucially, they were intended for play, not divination.

Tarot as a game is still alive today. France's 'Jeu de Tarot,' Austria and Germany's 'Tarock,' and Bologna's 'Tarocchini' are card games that use the same structure.

1781: One Essay Turns a Game into an Oracle

The shift from game to divination came surprisingly late and for a surprisingly simple reason. In 1781, French pastor and scholar Antoine Court de Gébelin published an essay in his book *Le Monde primitif* claiming that tarot was the 'Book of Thoth,' a compressed repository of ancient Egyptian esoteric wisdom.

There was no evidence for this claim, but it was also hard to refute. Egyptian hieroglyphs were not deciphered until Champollion's work in 1822. An argument based on an unreadable script gained traction for a long time without verification.

Later in that century, Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Étteilla) created the first deck and interpretive system designed specifically for divination. Most of the tarot reading formats we know today were established around this time and in the nineteenth century.

1909: Pictures Change How We Read

The most widely used format today emerged in London in 1909. Arthur Edward Waite conceived the deck, and Pamela Colman Smith illustrated it, published by Rider & Company. It is known as the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck, after the three names.

The decisive innovation was adding scenes to all fifty-six Minor Arcana cards for the first time. Previously, number cards had only repeated suit symbols, and interpretations had to rely on numbers and suits. With pictures, reading the images became possible.

Smith's name was omitted for a long time. The deck was called 'Rider-Waite' for decades, and her seventy-eight illustrations and contribution only received proper recognition much later.

This was not entirely new. The Sola Busca deck, made in 1491, had already included figures and scenes in the Minor Arcana, and Waite and Smith were aware of that precedent.

The Kabbalah Connection Is a Nineteenth-Century Invention

The correspondence between the twenty-two tarot trumps and the twenty-two Hebrew letters was popularized by Éliphas Lévi in the mid-nineteenth century. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, systematized it, and most modern tarot-Kabbalah interpretations trace back to this lineage.

There is no historical basis for this. No records from fifteenth-century Italy, where the cards were created, support such a correspondence. However, as a language for connecting symbols, it remains useful. It is safer to distinguish between evidence and interpretation.

Literature and Psychology Adopt the Cards

In 1922, T.S. Eliot included 'Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante' in *The Waste Land*, where she lays out 'a wicked pack of cards.' This marked tarot's full entry into literature.

In 1969, Italo Calvino used tarot arrangements as the very structure of narrative in *The Castle of Crossed Destinies*. Laying out cards generates different stories, and characters, having lost their speech, converse only through the cards.

In the late twentieth century, tarot intersected with Jungian archetypes and became a tool for self-reflection. Instead of predicting the future, it serves to view present questions from different angles.

1980: What History Has Established

Philosopher and card scholar Michael Dummett, in his 1980 book *The Game of Tarot*, documented the origins and early records of tarot through textual evidence. After this work, the Egyptian origin theory is no longer treated as fact in academic circles.

Thus, the history of tarot is not a lineage of ancient mysteries but a cultural history built on accumulated misconceptions. The same applies to reading the thirteenth card as a death omen. This card was originally a trump indicating change and closure; the terrifying imagery was superimposed by twentieth-century popular culture.

Knowing these facts does not render reading meaningless. On the contrary, it clarifies what the cards actually contain. On this blog, we read symbols, but we do not claim that the cards determine the future.

Where This Deck Comes From

The seventy-eight cards on this site draw colors and patterns from Korean mother-of-pearl lacquerware (najeonchilgi) and traditional dancheong painting. They are illustrations, not physical objects made from those materials. Najeonchilgi is a craft of cutting thin abalone shell and inlaying it into lacquered surfaces; it reached its peak during the Goryeo period and continues today, centered in Tongyeong and Wonju.

Dancheong is the coloring applied to wooden buildings for protection and ornamentation. The five colors—blue, red, yellow, white, and black—symbolize directions and seasons. The border patterns and colors of the cards follow that grammar.

The images were generated with an image model, while the composition of scenes and choice of colors were directed by the operator. Even for the same card, this deck reimagines it with the colors and light of mother-of-pearl and dancheong. They are pictures, not physical objects made from those materials.

How This Blog's Articles Are Written

Card interpretations are written by AI (a large language model) based on traditional symbolism and layout structures. They are not authored individually by a human.

Before publication, code checks length, paragraph structure, prohibited words, and links. When errors are reported, the operator verifies and corrects them, and cross-checks verifiable information.

Readings and this blog's articles are for entertainment and self-reflection. They do not replace professional judgment in medicine, law, or investment. If you are struggling mentally, we encourage you to talk to a professional or someone you trust.