The Origin of Tarot Cards

Tarot cards have become synonymous with the occult in American culture. Whether it's a gypsy telling fortunes in a movie, or the glut of books promising to teach you to read tarot in the new age section of any bookstore, most everyone can recognize the tarot when they see it. However, most people still don't know what the cards are, how they're used or where they were first created. All of that missing information tends to add an air of mystery to the deck and to how it's used.

There are many myths about tarot cards originating in the Far East and coming to Europe with the gypsies, though there are others who claim that tarot cards come from Egypt or before. While these cultures did have their own methods of divination, the name of the tarot cards comes from the French language. Although, despite this, tarot cards are thought to have originated in Italy, and they were originally meant to be a card game rather than a method of telling the future.

The tarot, as far far as most can tell, were commissioned in the 15th century by the Duke of Milan. Filippo Maria Visconti, perhaps the richest man in the early part of the Renaissance, commissioned a deck of cards to be made. This deck was almost identical to the cards at the time, with the four suits, the 1-10 and all of the royal cards (including famous figures like the Suicide King and the knaves) added in. However, there were additional cards added to the deck, called the Major Arcana, which brought the card count up to 78 cards.

How the tarot cards, which were originally meant as a game called Trumps that was similar to Bridge, transformed into fortune telling? That's a very good question. Though regular playing cards were also used for divination and telling fortunes, they weren't originally designed for that. However, many of the modern tarot decks, such as the famous Rider-Waite deck and the Thoth deck (designed by Aleister Crowley) are designed expressly for reading the future and divining fortunes. Of course many of these other decks, such as the Witch's Tarot (which debuted in a James Bond movie) and the Necronomicon tarot deck (based on the fictional writings of H.P. Lovecraft which have been used for stories and games) have extremely questionable origins.

Today there aren't many people who use tarot cards to play games with. However many people of religions that range from Wiccan to Asatru and heathens along with other pagan faiths use tarot cards as a tool to help discern the future and to try and read the likely outcomes to decisions made.

"Tarot Cards: The History, Origin and Use," by Angela Sangster at True Ghost Tales
"The Origin of Tarot Cards," by Anonymous at Psychic Cosmos
"The Oldest Tarot Cards," by Anonymous at Trionfi