A History of the Tarot

In brief

The tarot began in the courts of northern Italy in the 1440s as *carte da trionfi*, cards with a fifth suit of allegorical trumps, used for a trick-taking game. The hand-painted Visconti-Sforza decks of Milan are among the oldest survivors. Printed decks such as the Tarot de Marseille spread the game across Europe. In 1781 Antoine Court de Gébelin claimed the cards preserved ancient Egyptian wisdom; Etteilla produced the first deck designed for divination (c. 1789); Éliphas Lévi linked the trumps to the Hebrew letters (1856); and the Golden Dawn built a complete system of correspondences. The Rider–Waite–Smith deck (1909), illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, and Crowley and Harris's Thoth deck (painted 1938–43) shaped modern reading.

Key ideas

• ✦A Renaissance game before it was an oracle
• ✦The Egyptian theory was an 18th-century invention
• ✦The Golden Dawn system of correspondences
• ✦Pamela Colman Smith's illustrated pips transformed reading

Why it matters

Knowing the real history lets you honour the tarot's genuine depth, its Renaissance imagery and its esoteric development, without repeating myths about its origins.