Tarot originated in 15th-century northern Italy as a card game called tarocchi—not as a divination tool. The cards were first used for fortune-telling in France and Germany in the late 18th century. Occultists then wove them into a rich esoteric framework linking them to Kabbalah, astrology, Hermeticism, and the Hebrew alphabet—a tradition culminating in the 1910 Rider-Waite deck, which remains the foundation of most modern tarot.
Origins: The Italian Card Game (1430s–1500s)
The tarot's true origin story is more humble—and more interesting—than the popular myths that place it in ancient Egypt, among the Gypsies, or in the mystery schools of Atlantis. The historical record is clear: tarot began as a card game.
The earliest surviving tarot decks date to northern Italy in the 1430s and 1440s, most likely Milan under the Visconti and Sforza dukes. The Italian word tarocchi refers to the game played with these cards, and the trump cards (which later became the Major Arcana) were added to enrich an existing four-suit card game (carte da trionfi—triumph cards).
The 78-card structure we recognize today—22 major trumps plus 56 suit cards in four suits—was established by the late 15th century. The suits varied by region: the Italian tradition used cups, wands, swords, and coins, which survive in modern tarot; the French tradition used hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades, which survive in standard playing cards.
Manly P. Hall observed that the esoteric traditions have always used the language of games, arts, and common objects to encode initiatory wisdom—precisely because such "trivial" vehicles could pass through cultural upheavals, censorship, and persecution without attracting hostile attention. He noted that playing cards, chess, and similar games often preserve symbolic systems with roots in ancient cosmology. The tarot, beginning as a game, may have been seeded with intentional symbolism by humanist scholars steeped in Neoplatonism and Hermeticism who used the court patronage system to embed philosophical allegory into the imagery. Whether this was planned encoding or organic cultural absorption remains debated—but the symbols themselves carry unmistakable initiatory weight.
Early Tarot Decks
The earliest surviving tarot decks—mostly from the 15th century—are extraordinary works of art painted for noble patrons:
- Visconti-Sforza Tarot (c. 1450–1480) — the oldest nearly complete deck, painted for the ruling family of Milan. Lavish gold-leaf work; multiple versions survive in museums across Europe and America.
- Cary-Yale Tarot (c. 1441–1447) — an early 15th-century deck featuring extra court cards for female figures. Only 67 of an original 86 cards survive.
- Charles VI Tarot (c. 1470–1480) — misattributed for centuries to Charles VI of France; likely Florentine in origin.
- Tarot of Marseille (c. 1500s–1600s) — the first widely printed woodcut deck; became the standard French deck and the basis of most subsequent European tarots. Its imagery established the iconic trump archetypes that persisted into the modern era.
The Tarot of Marseille is particularly significant: because it was printed rather than painted, it spread throughout Europe and standardized the imagery. Its schematic, somewhat stark woodcut style emphasized symbolic geometry over courtly naturalism—accidentally making it better suited for esoteric contemplation.
The Turn Toward Divination (1700s)
The earliest documented use of tarot for divination appears in 18th-century France and Germany. The key figure is Antoine Court de Gébelin (1719–1784), a French scholar and Freemason who published an influential chapter on tarot in his encyclopedic work Le Monde Primitif (1781).
Court de Gébelin claimed—without any scholarly evidence—that tarot was the sacred book of Egyptian priest-magicians, a survival of the wisdom of Thoth, brought to Europe by Gypsies who had preserved ancient Egyptian lore. This theory was historically false (Egypt was not yet deciphered; the Rosetta Stone wasn't discovered until 1799), but it was enormously influential.
The claim that tarot encoded ancient Egyptian wisdom gave it an esoteric prestige that transformed it from a card game into a mystical object. Cartomancy (divination by cards) with tarot spread rapidly through French occult circles in the late 18th century, and the practice of reading tarot for fortune-telling entered mainstream European culture.
The Occult Revival: Kabbalah & Hermeticism (1800s)
The 19th century saw an explosion of Western occultism, with Paris and London as its twin capitals. Tarot was drawn into this synthesis and dramatically enriched—or, depending on your perspective, dramatically complicated—by its association with Kabbalistic and Hermetic philosophy.
The pivotal figure is Etteilla (Jean-Baptiste Alliette, 1738–1791), the first professional tarot card reader in the historical record, who published the first book dedicated to reading tarot and redesigned a deck to his specifications.
Then came Eliphas Lévi (1810–1875), the most influential French occultist of the 19th century. Lévi's major contribution was the systematic linking of the 22 Major Arcana trump cards with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet—a connection that became foundational to all subsequent Western esoteric tarot. He also connected the four suits with the four Kabbalistic Worlds and the four elements.
Lévi's framework was adopted and expanded by several organizations:
- The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888) developed an extensive correspondences system linking tarot to astrology, numerology, Kabbalah, and alchemical symbolism
- The Theosophical Society (founded 1875) contributed concepts of karma, spiritual evolution, and the Akashic Records to tarot interpretation
- Papus (Gérard Encausse, 1865–1916) published influential tarot texts synthesizing these traditions
- The 22 Major Arcana ↔ 22 Hebrew letters and 22 paths on the Tree of Life
- The 4 suits ↔ 4 Kabbalistic Worlds (Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah, Assiah)
- The 4 suits ↔ 4 elements (Wands=Fire, Cups=Water, Swords=Air, Pentacles=Earth)
- The 10 numbered cards per suit ↔ 10 Sephiroth of the Tree of Life
- Court cards ↔ astrological signs (Knight/Knave system)
The Golden Dawn & the Rider-Waite Revolution (1888–1910)
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was perhaps the most influential magical organization in Western history. Among its members: W.B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Arthur Machen, Florence Farr, and Arthur Edward Waite—who, with artist Pamela Colman Smith, created the deck that transformed tarot forever.
The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot (published by the Rider Company in December 1910) made three revolutionary changes to tarot design:
- Fully illustrated pip cards — for the first time, all 56 Minor Arcana cards received narrative scenes with human figures, not just geometric arrangements of suit symbols. The Three of Cups showed three women dancing; the Ten of Pentacles showed a family scene. This made the cards immediately accessible to intuitive reading without requiring rote memorization of esoteric systems.
- Reversed card significance — Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910) introduced the practice of reading reversed cards as modified or inverted meanings—now standard practice.
- Pamela Colman Smith's artistry — Smith's images are among the most psychologically precise ever produced. Working from Waite's instructions, she created imagery that resonates across cultures and centuries. She was a practicing synesthete, and her capacity for image-feeling made the deck unusually alive.
The Rider-Waite deck became the template for nearly all subsequent English-language tarot decks. It remains the most widely used deck in the world more than a century after its publication.
Aleister Crowley & the Thoth Tarot (1938–1943)
Aleister Crowley—the most notorious figure in 20th-century Western occultism—collaborated with Lady Frieda Harris to produce the Thoth Tarot, painted between 1938 and 1943 but not published until 1969 (after both creators had died).
The Thoth Tarot is the most intellectually complex deck in existence, integrating:
- Crowley's Thelemic philosophy and magical system
- Revised Hebrew letter-Trump correspondences (different from the Golden Dawn system in several details)
- Projective geometry principles in Harris's paintings, giving the images a dimension-warping quality
- Astrological, numerological, and Kabbalistic symbolism at extreme density
The Thoth deck requires years of study to read deeply but rewards that study with a precision that some practitioners find unmatched. Harris's paintings are among the most sophisticated geometric art ever produced in service of spiritual symbolism.
20th Century: Popularization & Psychology
The mid-20th century saw tarot's gradual move from the closed circles of occult lodges into mainstream culture:
- 1950s–1960s — occult bookshops in London and New York began stocking tarot; the counterculture's interest in alternative spirituality opened new audiences
- 1960s–1970s — the human potential movement and Jungian psychology provided a non-occult framework for tarot (tarot as a tool for self-understanding rather than fortune-telling)
- Sallie Nichols' Jung and Tarot (1980) — the first major book applying Jungian psychology to tarot interpretation, normalizing its use as a contemplative and therapeutic tool
- 1970s–1980s deck explosion — hundreds of new decks appeared: the Aquarian Tarot, the Morgan-Greer, the Marseille revivals, the feminist-reinterpreted decks of the women's spirituality movement
The Modern Tarot Renaissance
The 21st century has seen an extraordinary flowering of tarot culture:
- Thousands of new deck designs from artists worldwide
- Tarot's adoption as a mainstream self-care and creative tool, particularly among millennials and Gen Z
- Academic scholarship on tarot's history and symbolism reaching university presses
- Professionalization of tarot reading as a therapeutic practice
- Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok creating vast tarot education and community spaces
- The integration of tarot with therapy, coaching, journaling, and creative writing
This renaissance represents a significant cultural shift: tarot has moved from forbidden occult object to accessible tool for reflection, creativity, and psychological exploration—while simultaneously becoming the subject of serious historical and philosophical scholarship.
The arc of tarot history is itself a kind of teaching: a tool begins as entertainment, accumulates layers of symbolic meaning across cultures and centuries, is charged with esoteric significance by spiritual seekers who recognize its archetypal depth, and eventually returns to popular culture as something useful to ordinary people in ordinary life. The Fool's Journey—depicted in the Major Arcana—may be the most accurate description of this history: a figure setting out playfully, encountering wisdom after wisdom, descending into shadow, ascending into integration, and arriving not at a destination but at a new beginning. The tarot is not ancient. But it carries ancient patterns. And that, perhaps, is what matters.
- Compare decks across eras — hold a reproduction of the Visconti-Sforza alongside a Rider-Waite alongside a modern indie deck. What remains constant? What changes?
- Read the Pictorial Key — Waite's original companion book to the Rider-Waite deck reveals his symbolic intentions and the esoteric framework behind each card
- Study one Trump in depth — take The Fool or The High Priestess and trace its imagery across five decks from different eras. What is preserved? What evolves?
- Explore the Hebrew letter correspondences — even without deep Kabbalistic knowledge, learning which letter corresponds to which Major Arcana opens a rich contemplative dimension
Every tarot deck is a living archive—a repository of centuries of human longing to understand the patterns behind existence. When you lay out a spread, you are participating in a conversation that has been ongoing since at least the 15th century, one that has drawn in painters, philosophers, occultists, psychologists, artists, and ordinary seekers from across the Western world. The cards don't speak because they are magic. They speak because we have been speaking through them for so long, with such depth and such care, that they have become genuinely wise. Pull from that river. It runs deeper than any of us.
The oldest surviving tarot decks date to the 1430s–1440s in northern Italy. Tarot was not used for divination until the late 18th century.
No—this is a popular myth originating with Antoine Court de Gébelin in 1781. Historical scholarship has clearly established tarot's origins in 15th-century Italy, not ancient Egypt.
The 1910 Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot is the most influential deck in history, establishing the fully illustrated style and symbolic framework used by the majority of decks since. The Tarot of Marseille (16th–17th century) was earlier and equally influential in European tradition.
The systematic connection of tarot to Kabbalah and Hermeticism was primarily the work of Eliphas Lévi in the 1850s–1860s, later systematized by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn from 1888 onward.
The Tarot of Marseille is a family of tarot decks printed in France and Italy from roughly the 16th century onward, using woodcut imagery. It became the standard European tarot before the Rider-Waite revolution and remains the basis of traditional French cartomancy.
- Dummett, Michael. The Game of Tarot. Duckworth, 1980.
- Farley, Helen. A Cultural History of Tarot. I.B. Tauris, 2009.
- Hall, Manly P. The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Philosophical Research Society, 1928.
- Huson, Paul. Mystical Origins of the Tarot. Destiny Books, 2004.
- Waite, Arthur Edward. The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Rider & Company, 1910.