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, but in the courts of northern Italy in the fifteenth century. In cities like Milan and Ferrara, a card game called 'tarocchi' was popular, and the structure of the 78-card deck we use today was established then.

The 78 cards consist of 56 cards divided into four suits of fourteen, plus twenty-two trump cards. These trumps were called 'trionfi' in Italian at the time, a term that referred 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, created in Milan in the 1440s. These cards, painted with gold leaf and lapis lazuli pigment, were actually owned by nobility. The key point is that these cards were made for play, not for 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.

In 1781, a Single Essay Turned a Game into an Oracle

The transition from game to divination was both late and surprisingly simple. 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 condensed version of ancient Egyptian esoteric wisdom.

There was no evidence for this claim, but it was also difficult to refute. Egyptian hieroglyphs were not deciphered until Champollion's work in 1822. Since no one could read the script, the argument gained strength without being verified for a long time.

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

In 1909, Pictures Changed How We Read

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

The crucial innovation of this deck was the addition of scenes to the 56 Minor Arcana cards for the first time. Previously, number cards only repeated suit symbols, and interpretations relied 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 78 illustrations and contributions were only recognized much later.

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

The Kabbalistic Connection Is a Nineteenth-Century Invention

The correspondence between the 22 Major Arcana 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 derive from 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, it remains useful as a symbolic language that connects ideas. It is safer to distinguish between evidence and interpretation.

Literature and Psychology Adopted the Cards

In 1922, T.S. Eliot included the 'famous clairvoyante, Madame Sosostris' in *The Waste Land*, who deals 'a wicked pack of cards.' This marked tarot's full emergence as a literary motif.

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 Jung's archetypes. Instead of predicting the future, it serves to view present questions from a different angle.

In 1980, History Was Set Straight

Philosopher and card researcher 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 was no longer accepted as fact in academic circles.

Thus, the history of tarot is not a continuation of ancient mysteries but a cultural history built on accumulated misunderstandings. The same applies to reading the thirteenth card as a death omen. This card was originally a trump indicating change and closure; the frightening imagery was added 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 do not claim that 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 traditional dancheong painting. They are illustrations, not made from physical materials. Najeonchilgi is a craft of slicing abalone shell thinly 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 protect and adorn wooden buildings. The five cardinal 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, while the composition of scenes and the choice of colors are overseen by the operator. Even for the same card, this deck reinterprets it through 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 traditional symbolism and card layout structures. 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 content of this blog are intended for entertainment and self-reflection. They do not replace professional judgment in medical, legal, or investment matters. If you are struggling emotionally, we encourage you to speak with a professional or someone you trust.