Tarot Decks: A Guide to the Most Important Decks in History

A Brief History of Tarot Decks

The tarot deck as we know it did not spring into existence fully formed. It evolved across several centuries from a card game into the rich esoteric tool it is today. Understanding this history illuminates why different decks make different choices and why the three major lineages carry such distinct characters.

The earliest tarot cards appear in 15th-century northern Italy, created for the aristocratic courts of Milan, Ferrara, and Bologna. These were playing cards for a game called tarocchi, and the earliest surviving examples (the Visconti-Sforza deck, c. 1450) were hand-painted luxury objects with no overt esoteric intention. The trump cards (Major Arcana) depicted allegorical figures drawn from medieval moral literature: virtues, celestial bodies, and figures representing the hierarchy of human experience.

Tarot's transformation into an esoteric tool began in 18th-century France, when Antoine Court de Gebelin (1781) proposed that the trumps encoded ancient Egyptian wisdom, and various Parisian occultists began using the cards for divination. The major esoteric synthesis that shaped the modern deck came from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late 19th century, which mapped the tarot cards onto the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, astrological correspondences, and Hermetic principles.

Tarot de Marseille

The Tarot de Marseille is not a single deck but a tradition of deck design that emerged in southern France in the 17th century and became the dominant European tarot standard for over two centuries. The most widely referenced modern version is the Grimaud (1930 edition of the Nicolas Conver 1760 woodcut deck), though recent scholarly reconstructions by publishers like Lo Scarabeo and Yoav Ben-Dov have made more historically accurate versions widely available.

Key characteristics:

• The Minor Arcana cards use pip designs rather than illustrated scenes. The Six of Cups shows six cups arranged in a pattern, not a narrative scene. The meaning must be derived from the number, suit, and positioning rather than from pictorial interpretation.
• The Major Arcana images follow a specific visual tradition that developed across many hands over centuries, with certain iconographic conventions that differ from the Rider-Waite versions (the Lovers card, for example, shows a young man choosing between two women rather than a divine couple).
• The Justice and Strength cards appear in their original positions (Justice VIII, Strength XI) rather than the Golden Dawn reversal adopted by Waite.

Who reads Marseille: Practitioners who prefer working from numerological and elemental principles rather than pictorial narrative, and those who want to engage with the historical tradition of French cartomancy. Marseille reading requires deeper familiarity with the underlying symbolic system but produces readings of great precision and depth.

Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot

Published in 1909 by the Rider Company, the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck is the most influential tarot deck ever created and the direct ancestor of the majority of modern decks. It was designed by Arthur Edward Waite, a Golden Dawn initiate and scholar of Western esotericism, and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, another Golden Dawn member whose artistic vision shaped the entire deck.

Key innovations:

• Smith illustrated every card, including all 56 Minor Arcana cards with fully realized narrative scenes. This was unprecedented. Previous decks used pip arrangements for the numbered Minor Arcana. Smith's illustrated versions made the cards far more accessible to intuitive readers who could respond to imagery without knowing the formal system.
• The Golden Dawn's esoteric correspondences (Hebrew letters, astrological symbols, elemental attributions) were embedded in the imagery, making the deck a visual encyclopedia of the Western esoteric tradition for those who knew how to read it.
• The artwork operates on two levels simultaneously: as accessible narrative imagery readable by anyone, and as encoded esoteric symbolism readable only with knowledge of the tradition.

Waite-Smith Legacy: The Smith-Waite Centennial Edition (US Games), Universal Waite, Radiant Rider-Waite, and hundreds of themed and reimagined decks all derive directly from Smith's 1909 artwork. When someone says "I use a tarot deck," they are almost always using a Rider-Waite-Smith derivative.

Thoth Tarot

The Thoth Tarot was designed by Aleister Crowley, a Golden Dawn initiate who later founded his own magical tradition (Thelema), and painted by Lady Frieda Harris between 1938 and 1943. Published posthumously in 1969, the Thoth deck represents one of the most intellectually ambitious tarot projects ever undertaken.

Key characteristics:

• Harris used a geometric principle called projective geometry to structure the card compositions, creating a visual depth and dimensionality unlike any other tarot art before or since.
• Crowley renamed several cards (Strength becomes Lust, Justice becomes Adjustment, the Wheel of Fortune becomes Fortune, the World becomes the Universe) to better reflect his astrological and Thelemic interpretations.
• The astrological, Kabbalistic, and numerological correspondences are far more explicit than in the Rider-Waite deck: each card displays its Hebrew letter, astrological attribution, and elemental symbol directly.
• The Minor Arcana are illustrated but with more abstract, elemental imagery rather than the narrative scenes of the Rider-Waite tradition.

Who reads Thoth: The Thoth deck rewards serious study and is particularly suited to practitioners with strong backgrounds in astrology, Kabbalah, or ceremonial magic. It is not recommended as a first deck, but it has devoted practitioners who consider it the most complete and powerful tarot system available.

Other Historically Significant Decks

Visconti-Sforza (c. 1450)

The oldest substantially surviving tarot deck, created for the Visconti and Sforza families of Milan. These hand-painted cards are breathtaking as art objects and invaluable as historical documents, but they are not practical reading decks. Their imagery reflects 15th-century Italian aristocratic and religious iconography before the esoteric layer was added.

Oswald Wirth Tarot (1889)

A 22-card Major Arcana deck created by French occultist Oswald Wirth under the influence of Stanislas de Guaita. The first deck to explicitly incorporate Masonic and Kabbalistic symbolism into the imagery, predating the Rider-Waite by two decades. Its influence on Waite's design choices is unmistakable.

Etteilla Tarot (1789)

The first deck specifically designed for divination (rather than adapted from a playing card tradition), created by the Parisian cartomancer who went by the name "Etteilla." This deck reversed the traditional trump order and introduced astrological attributions, establishing many conventions that later decks would build on or react against.

The Modern Deck Landscape

The tarot market has exploded since the 1970s. There are now thousands of decks available, ranging from scholarly reconstructions of historical traditions to themed decks (cat tarot, witchcraft tarot, art history tarot) to decks designed around specific spiritual or cultural traditions (African oracle systems reframed through tarot structure, Celtic symbolism, indigenous American traditions).

How to Choose a Tarot Deck

Understanding Deck Structure

Regardless of which deck you use, the fundamental structure of the tarot remains constant: 78 cards, 22 Major Arcana, 56 Minor Arcana in four suits, and 16 court cards. The meanings of the cards are largely consistent across the major traditions, though emphasis and interpretation vary. The court cards may be named differently (some decks use Princess/Prince/Queen/Knight instead of Page/Knight/Queen/King), and some cards may be renamed (as in the Thoth), but the underlying symbolic architecture is stable.