History & Origins of Tarot

Tarot cards first appeared in northern Italy during the mid-15th century, in cities such as Milan, Ferrara, Florence, and Bologna. Originally called carte da trionfi (triumph cards), they were created by adding a set of illustrated trump cards — known as trionfi — to the existing four-suit playing card deck that used the Italian suits of batons, coins, cups, and swords.

The oldest surviving tarot cards belong to the Visconti-Sforza family of decks, hand-painted in the mid-1400s for the rulers of the Duchy of Milan. These were luxury items — hand-gilded and commissioned by the aristocracy — not mass-produced cards for common use. A lost tarot-like pack was commissioned by Duke Filippo Maria Visconti sometime between 1418 and 1425, described by Martiano da Tortona as a 60-card deck featuring images of Roman gods.

European playing cards themselves likely evolved from the Egyptian Mamluk deck, which arrived in Europe through trade routes following the introduction of paper from Asia. The first records of playing cards in Europe date to 1367 in Bern, Switzerland, and they spread rapidly across the continent.

Tarot spread beyond Italy during the Italian Wars of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, first reaching France and Switzerland. The most influential deck to emerge from this expansion was the Tarot of Marseilles, of Milanese origin, which became the standard pattern across much of Europe. The oldest Tarot deck produced in Marseille is attributed to Philippe Vachier, dated 1639.

Before the invention of the printing press, tarot decks were hand-painted, limiting their production to wealthy patrons. Mass production of cards changed everything, making tarot widely accessible. By the 18th century, tarot experienced its greatest revival as one of the most popular card games in Europe, played everywhere except the British Isles, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Ottoman Balkans. French tarot saw another resurgence in the 1970s and remains the second most popular card game in France today.

The ordering of the trump cards was not standardized across regions. The historian Michael Dummett identified three main regional traditions for trump ordering: a Bolognese-Florentine pattern (where the Angel is the highest card), a Ferrarese pattern (now extinct), and a Milanese pattern (which became the basis for the Tarot of Marseilles).

For over three centuries, tarot cards were used exclusively for playing trick-taking card games. There is no historical evidence of tarot being used for divination until the late 18th century. The earliest known evidence of tarot cartomancy comes from an anonymous manuscript from around 1750 which documents basic divinatory meanings for the cards of the Tarocco Bolognese.

The transformation of tarot into a tool of divination and occult practice began in Paris during the 1780s. Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Swiss-born Protestant clergyman and Freemason, published two essays on tarot in his encyclopedia Le Monde Primitif (1781), claiming — without historical evidence — that the cards had ancient Egyptian origins and contained encoded divine wisdom. His contemporary, Jean-Baptiste Alliette (known by his pseudonym Etteilla), created the first tarot deck designed specifically for divination around 1789 and developed a systematic method of cartomancy.

The terms "Major Arcana" (greater secrets) and "Minor Arcana" (lesser secrets) were first coined by Jean-Baptiste Pitois, writing under the name Paul Christian. These terms are used exclusively in the context of divination and occult tarot — players of tarot card games simply refer to "trumps" and "suit cards."

The French occultist Éliphas Lévi (1810–1875) reinvigorated the esoteric tarot by drawing connections between the 22 trump cards and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, associating tarot with the mystical Kabbalah. Lévi's work became the primary channel through which the Western tradition of ceremonial magic flowed into the modern era.

In 1888, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded in London. This secret society — whose members included W.B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, A.E. Waite, and Pamela Colman Smith — placed tarot at the center of its magical and initiatory practices. The Golden Dawn developed elaborate systems of correspondence linking tarot cards to astrology, the Kabbalah, and the elements.

Three major esoteric tarot decks emerged from this tradition and remain the most widely used today:

• The Tarot of Marseilles — the oldest pattern, originally a playing card deck, adopted by French occultists as their primary tool
• The Rider-Waite-Smith Deck (1909) — created by A.E. Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, the first widely available deck with fully illustrated Minor Arcana
• The Thoth Tarot (1944) — designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris, reflecting Crowley's own magical system

In the 20th century, tarot found new audiences through psychology and self-help movements. In 1980, Sallie Nichols, a Jungian psychologist, published Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, arguing that tarot's imagery encodes the entire process of Jungian individuation — the psychological journey toward wholeness. Her work helped reframe tarot from fortune-telling into a tool for self-understanding.

Today, tarot is used in many ways: as a meditative practice, a journaling prompt, a creative inspiration tool, and yes, as a method of divination and fortune-telling. Thousands of unique tarot decks have been published, spanning every artistic style and cultural tradition, but the Rider-Waite-Smith deck remains the most widely recognized, with estimates of over 100 million copies in circulation worldwide.

Whether you approach tarot as a psychological mirror, a spiritual practice, or simply a beautiful art form, its enduring power lies in its rich symbolism, which invites reflection and new perspectives on the human experience.