A short history of the cards

Honest history makes the symbols more interesting, not less. Here is the short version, in the order it really happened.

A card game in Renaissance Italy

Most historians agree that tarot began as a card game in fifteenth century northern Italy. The early decks were called carte da trionfi, triumph cards, because the special picture cards worked as trumps in the game. Some of them were luxury objects for wealthy families. The Visconti-Sforza cards, painted for the rulers of Milan, are among the best-known survivors: hand-painted, gilded and clearly made for play and display.

The trump pictures mixed allegories, social types and moral virtues: an emperor, a pope, love, death, the wheel of fortune, the sun and the moon. To a player in the 1400s, these were familiar images from art and sermons, not secret codes.

Marseille and the printed decks

Printing made decks cheaper, and regional patterns grew up in France, Switzerland and beyond. The family of designs that English speakers call the Tarot de Marseille took shape in France across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many people still learn with these cards today. If you have seen a woodcut tarot card with bold red, blue and yellow, it was probably a Marseille card.

The occult revival

In 1781 a French writer, Antoine Court de Gébelin, claimed in his book Le Monde primitif that the trumps preserved the wisdom of ancient Egypt. There was no evidence for that, but the idea caught on. Soon after, the Paris card reader known as Etteilla published one of the first decks designed for divination.

In the nineteenth century the French occultist Éliphas Lévi linked the 22 trumps to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In 1888 the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded in London, and its members built tarot into a large system of astrology, elements and Kabbalah. That is why many modern decks print zodiac signs or Hebrew letters on the cards. Those layers can enrich your study later. You do not need them to read clearly.

The deck most beginners use

In 1909 the London publisher Rider issued a new deck designed by A. E. Waite, a Golden Dawn member, with pictures by the artist Pamela Colman Smith. Smith gave every one of the 78 cards a scene, including the number cards, which earlier decks often showed simply as rows of cups or swords. Waite explained the cards in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1910. Today this deck is usually called the Rider-Waite-Smith, so that Smith gets the credit she deserves.

In 1970 Eden Gray’s A Complete Guide to the Tarot included an epilogue called “The Fool’s Journey”, a story that reads the Major Arcana as the stages of a life. Many teachers, including me, still use that idea. It is a modern teaching aid, not a medieval doctrine.

Why this matters for you

Game first, esoteric reading later. You can love the symbols without needing them to be older than the paper they were printed on. And knowing the history protects you from people who claim secret ancient authority. Tarot is a living craft, and you are now part of its story.

Try this

Today’s exercise: Pick one card and write two lines: what it might have meant to a player in 1450, and what it means to you today. Keep it short. Two or three lines in your notebook are enough, and there are no wrong answers. If you like, come back to the page tomorrow and add one more line about anything you noticed in the meantime. Small, regular notes like these are how the cards slowly become familiar.

Quick recap

• Tarot began as a card game in fifteenth century Italy.
• The Egyptian origin story was invented in 1781.
• Occultists added astrology and Kabbalah in the 1800s.
• The 1909 deck with Pamela Colman Smith’s pictures shapes most modern reading.

Keep going

When you have done the exercise, press “Mark as done” and continue with the next lesson, Myths to drop on day one. There is no hurry. If a lesson needs a second day, give it one.

To go deeper, read “The History of Tarot” in my book The Novice’s Guide to Tarot.

Need a refresher? Go back to What tarot is, and what it is not or see the whole course.

Go deeper: The Novice's Guide to Tarot: The History of Tarot

Mark as done