The History of Tarot: Six Hundred Years of Cards

A Deck of Cards Was Originally a Game

Tarot did not first appear in Egypt or Atlantis. It emerged 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 78-card structure we use today was established then.

The 78 cards consist of four suits of fourteen cards each (56 cards) plus 22 trump cards. These trumps were called 'trionfi' in the Italian of the time, a word that referred to the triumphal processions of Renaissance festivals. Today's 'Major Arcana' is a renamed version of that term.

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 nobles. The key point is that they were not used for divination but for play.

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 Turned a Game into an Oracle

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

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 a script no one could read gained strength for a long time without being verified.

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

1909: Pictures Changed How We Read

The most widely used format today appeared 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 of this deck was the addition of scenes to the 56 Minor Arcana cards for the first time. Before that, number cards repeated only symbols, and interpretation had to rely on numbers and suits. With pictures, reading by imagery became possible.

Smith's name was omitted for a long time. For decades, the deck was called only 'Rider-Waite,' and her 78 illustrations and contribution were not fully recognized until much later.

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

The Kabbalah Connection Is a Nineteenth-Century Invention

The correspondence between the 22 Major Arcana cards and the 22 Hebrew letters was popularized by Éliphas Lévi in the mid-nineteenth century. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, systematized this, 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 linking symbols together, it remains useful. It is safer to keep the distinction between evidence and interpretation clear.

Literature and Psychology Took the Cards Further

In 1922, T.S. Eliot included 'the famous clairvoyante, Madame Sosostris' in 'The Waste Land,' who deals out 'a wicked pack of cards.' This was a moment when tarot became a full-fledged literary subject.

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 the characters, having lost their speech, converse only through the cards.

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

1980: What History Has Established

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

Thus, the history of tarot is not a continuation of ancient mystery but a cultural history built on accumulated misunderstandings. The same applies to reading the thirteenth card as a death omen. That card was originally a trump representing change and conclusion; the terrifying imagery was overlaid by twentieth-century popular culture.

Knowing these facts does not make 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 78 cards on this site draw colors and patterns from Korean mother-of-pearl lacquerware (najeonchilgi) and dancheong (traditional decorative painting on wooden buildings). They are illustrations, not made from physical materials. Najeonchilgi is a craft in which thin pieces of abalone shell are inlaid 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 protect and embellish wooden structures. The five colors—blue, red, yellow, white, and black—were used as symbols of directions and seasons. The border patterns and colors of the cards follow that grammar.

The images are created with an image generation model, and the composition of scenes and the choice of colors are made 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 illustrations, not physical objects made from those materials.

How This Blog's Articles Are Written

Card interpretations are written by an AI (a large language model) based on the traditional symbolism of the cards and the structure of the spreads. They are not individually authored by a human.

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

Readings and the articles on this blog are for entertainment and self-reflection. They do not replace professional judgment in medicine, law, or investment. If you are struggling emotionally, we recommend talking to a professional or someone you trust.