Where Did Tarot Cards Originate?
The history of tarot cards begins in fifteenth-century northern Italy, not in the civilization of ancient Egypt. The earliest surviving references to playing cards with triumphs, carte da trionfi, appear in Italian records of the 1440s. Tarot combined an established four-suit card pack with a sequence of special trump cards and a Fool. It was used for games long before the developed occult and divinatory interpretations familiar today.
The Italian cities and courts associated with early tarot include Milan, Ferrara, Florence and their surrounding regions. Wealthy patrons commissioned hand-painted and gilded cards, while less expensive printed cards later helped the game spread. There is no documented evidence that the original fifteenth-century tarot creators designed the 78 cards as a secret Egyptian book of prophecy.
Before Tarot: European and Islamic Playing Cards
Playing-card traditions reached Europe during the later Middle Ages through complex commercial and cultural exchanges, including contact with the Islamic world. Suit forms changed from place to place. In the Italian tradition that became the basis of tarot, the suits were Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins. These were not newly invented for magical interpretation: they belonged to the ordinary playing-card culture of the time.
Why the Four Suits Matter
A standard Italian pack contained ten numbered cards in each suit and four court cards. The resulting fifty-six suited cards were incorporated into tarot alongside the trumps. Understanding this history explains why the so-called Minor Arcana resembles other playing-card systems, while the twenty-two-trump sequence has a separate artistic and gaming function.
Fifteenth-Century Italy: The Birth of the Tarot Trumps
The Italian word trionfi, or triumphs, referred to the special sequence that gave these packs their distinctive character. The trumps show allegorical and socially recognizable images: rulers, moral virtues, religious figures, Death, the Wheel of Fortune and celestial emblems. In a trick-taking game, a trump could outrank ordinary suit cards according to the rules.
The Visconti-Sforza Tarot
Some of the most important surviving cards were produced for the ruling circles of Milan during the mid-fifteenth century. The richly painted Visconti and Visconti-Sforza groups preserve examples of court cards and trumps adorned with elaborate costume and heraldic motifs. Their survival in museum and manuscript collections helps historians distinguish documented early designs from later esoteric claims.
Were the First Tarot Decks Always Identical?
No. Historical pack designs, trump order, regional rules and artistic details varied. Not every surviving fragment gives a complete 78-card sequence, and alternative tarot games used different pack sizes. The standardized 78-card structure became especially influential, but it should not be projected backward as a perfectly uniform design shared by every surviving early card.
From Italy to France: The Development of Tarot de Marseille
As tarot spread across Europe, regional workshops established recognizable design families. The term Tarot de Marseille refers to an influential pattern of trumps, court cards and ornamented pip cards associated with French-speaking printing traditions. It developed from earlier card-making practices rather than constituting the first tarot deck ever created.
Marseille Pip Cards and the Illustrated Trumps
The four suits retain Cups, Batons, Swords and Coins. Numbered cards normally arrange suit emblems in balanced or elaborate patterns. The trumps feature figures such as Le Bateleur, La Papesse, Le Pape, the Wheel, the Tower and Le Monde. Marseille readers may interpret the number, orientation and relationships between these figures, but that modern use should not be mistaken for the only function the cards originally served.
When Did Tarot Become a Divination Tool?
Tarot’s association with fortune-telling developed substantially after its invention as a card game. Cartomancy—the practice of divination with cards—existed in various forms, but detailed tarot-specific occult systems became prominent especially from the late eighteenth century onward. In France, Antoine Court de Gébelin interpreted tarot through an imagined ancient Egyptian origin, an assertion unsupported by historical documentation. Etteilla, born Jean-Baptiste Alliette, helped establish printed tarot divination practices and a specialized cartomantic deck.
Court de Gébelin and the Egyptian-Origin Myth
Court de Gébelin connected the images to supposedly preserved Egyptian wisdom, influencing generations of occult authors. The appeal of that story was enormous, but it rested on speculation rather than the archival record of fifteenth-century Italian games. A modern historical account can explain the Egyptian narrative as a consequential belief in tarot’s reception without presenting it as a fact about the deck’s actual origin.
Etteilla and the Professionalization of Tarot Reading
Etteilla published methods for divination and developed card meanings and arrangements designed for fortune-telling. His system differs in image, numbering and interpretive sequence from modern Rider–Waite–Smith teaching. The development of cartomantic tarot was therefore not a single continuous set of meanings handed down unchanged from the Renaissance.
Nineteenth-Century Occultism: Lévi, Golden Dawn and the Tree of Life
Writers including Éliphas Lévi helped connect tarot to Hebrew letters, magic and Christian or Hermetic interpretations of the Kabbalah. Later, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn organized detailed correspondences between trumps, astrological signs, planets, elemental suits, decans and paths of the Tree of Life. Those mappings are culturally and historically important, but they were later occult constructions and cannot be assumed to describe original Renaissance gameplay.
Why Astrology Entered Tarot Interpretation
The Golden Dawn’s system mapped twelve zodiac signs, seven classical planets and three elemental principles to the twenty-two trump attributions. It also used planetary decans for thirty-six numbered cards from Two to Ten in four suits. This explains many later tarot manuals and especially Thoth’s numbered-card titles. Different schools sometimes revise those systems; a correspondence table should state which one it follows.
The Rider–Waite–Smith Tarot: A New Visual Language
In 1909, the deck created by artist Pamela Colman Smith under Arthur Edward Waite’s direction introduced a widely influential set of fully illustrated numbered cards. Smith’s scenes provided intuitive visual material for a reader without requiring that every card be interpreted solely from rank and suit. Rider–Waite–Smith Tarot remains central to numerous modern derivative decks.
Pamela Colman Smith’s Contribution
Smith’s role as the visual artist is essential. The deck should not be described only as Waite’s work: its illustrated imagery, staging and artistic solutions are hers, developed in collaboration with the project’s textual and esoteric aims. Naming the deck Rider–Waite–Smith makes that authorship clear.
The Thoth Tarot: Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris
Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris worked on the paintings for the Thoth Tarot in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Crowley’s Book of Thoth was published in 1944. The Crowley–Harris Thoth Tarot makes conspicuous use of color, geometry, named minor cards, astrology and Thelemic theology.
The titles of several trumps differ from Rider–Waite–Smith: Adjustment, Lust, Art, The Aeon and The Universe. Their meanings require attention to Crowley’s occult system and Harris’s visual choices. The Thoth paintings do not represent a surviving ancient Egyptian tarot pack, regardless of the deck’s name.
Tarot in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
Twentieth-century readers increasingly used tarot for psychological reflection, personal development and creative storytelling alongside established divination. New artists have created decks around local folklore, contemporary imagery, literature and different communities. Decks also continue to be used for games, particularly in parts of continental Europe. These parallel histories show that tarot has never had only one purpose.
A Timeline of Tarot History
| Period | Development |
|---|---|
| Fourteenth century | Playing cards circulate in Europe |
| 1440s–1450s | Early documentary references to Italian triumph cards |
| Mid-fifteenth century | Luxury Milanese tarot cards, including Visconti-Sforza groups |
| Early modern period | Regional tarot patterns, including the later Marseille family |
| Late eighteenth century | Tarot divination and speculative Egyptian-origin narratives gain influence |
| Nineteenth century | French occultism and Golden Dawn correspondences develop |
| 1909 | Rider–Waite–Smith deck first published |
| 1938–1944 | Crowley–Harris Thoth project and publication of The Book of Thoth |
| Modern era | Diverse artistic decks, game traditions and reflective reading practices |
Common Myths About Tarot’s Origins
- Tarot was invented in ancient Egypt: no surviving evidence establishes that origin; the documented tarot cards appeared in Renaissance Italy.
- The Minor Arcana was added centuries after the trumps: early tarot already incorporated established suited cards.
- All early tarot cards were made for prophecy: the original context was the card game.
- Marseille is one unchanged original deck: it is a family of patterns with regional and chronological variation.
- Every tarot card has a fixed ancient Hebrew attribution: elaborate tarot–Kabbalah systems developed much later.
Explore Rider–Waite vs Marseille vs Thoth Tarot for a practical comparison of the three major modern systems, and How to Choose a Tarot Deck for selecting a deck to study.
