The Evolution of

the Tarot
Tarot cards first appeared in northern Italy,
not many years after the introduction of
playing cards into Europe about 1375. In
fact, most of the cards of a typical tarot
pack, the 56 known as the minor arcana,
are nothing but a set of playing cards, with
the variation that instead of a jack there are
two cards (a knight and page) in each suit.
The suits themselves seem a little strange
to American eyes, because they are the
traditional Italian suits of staves, cups,
swords, and coins, rather than the French
equivalents of clubs, hearts, spades, and
diamonds.

What distinguishes the tarot deck is an

additional 22 cards bearing various
images, often rather allegorical in
character. These are the major arcana or
trumps. For most of its history, tarot cards were used to play a trick-taking game similar to bridge, in
which the trump cards were played if one could not follow suit, and would "triumph" (Italian trionfi is
the origin of the term "trumps") over the suit cards and win the trick. During the 17th and 18th
centuries, most tarot decks closely followed a classic (if somewhat crude) set of woodblock designs
known as the Tarot of Marseilles. These designs are still commonplace, especially outside the US.

The trumps are a motley collection of images, ranging from rather ordinary human figures (The Fool,
The Magician), through powerful figures of the medieval world (The Emperor, The Pope), to
allegorical images of virtues (Fortitude, Justice, and Temperance) and the great forces of life (The
Wheel of Fortune, Death, and The Devil), finally reaching rather cosmological imagery in such cards as
The Sun, The Moon, and the final Judgment. I've always thought that playing the game of trumps must
often have involved more than a bit of wry humor. Imagine a contemporary version of the game, with
cards representing The Journalist, The President, The TV Evangelist, followed by depictions of forces
such as Popularity, Scandal, War, and Economic Collapse. It seems like playing such a game would
surely raise a smile on occasion, as one card falls to the next in sequence.

The modern interest in the tarot as a metaphysical tool stems from the 18th century occult movement in
France. Antoine Court de Gebelin noticed a deck of tarot cards and decided that the trumps must surely
carry lost religious secrets from ancient times. His speculation spawned a great interest in "uncovering"
(some would say "inventing") the mystical meanings of the cards. The occultists are also responsible
for a great many erroneous but oft-repeated tarot myths: that the cards were brought to Europe by the
gypsies, that they were invented in ancient Egypt, and so on. By the beginning of the 20th century, tarot
cards were a main focus for occult societies, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in
England. The occultists redesigned the deck to emphasize their own interpretations of the cards, which
they connected with such traditions as qabala, astrology, and alchemy. Apparently, the widespread use
of tarot cards for fortune telling also dates from this time period. The evidence suggests that they were
hardly (if ever) used for anything but game playing before the 19th century.

Two members of the Golden Dawn had a great influence on the development of modern tarot. A. E.
Waite, a Christian mystic, published his own deck in 1909. The deck was drawn by artist Pamela
Coleman Smith. The major arcana, naturally, are rich with occult symbolism. The most innovative
aspect of the deck, however, is the minor arcana, which (instead of resembling playing cards) show
various scenes that seem to suggest stories. With this change, every card in the deck makes an
immediate psychological suggestion in the mind of the viewer. In a sense, all the cards now resemble
the trumps. This deck became the most popular deck in the English-speaking world. It is still widely
available, and most books that teach tarot reading use the Waite-Smith deck as the starting point. (It is
often called the Rider-Waite deck, because Rider was the original publisher. It seems more appropriate
to honor the artist Smith, who apparently created all the innovative minor arcana cards without much
specific direction from Waite.)

The other influential Golden Dawn member was the infamous Aleister Crowley. His Thoth Tarot
(named for the Egyptian god of magic) was painted by Lady Frieda Harris in the 1940s, but was not
published until 1966. This deck is very intense psychologically (almost to the point of psychedelia),
and the artwork is very abstract and visceral. Crowley's interpretations of the cards differ somewhat
from Waite's, but they are both derived from a common framework that draws heavily on Hermetic
qabala, a mystical doctrine of the stages through which the divine force of creation descends into
matter.

In the 1970s, the blossoming interest in alternative religious and spiritual practices launched a burst of
popularity for the tarot, which continues to the present day without any sign of receding. Many new
decks were published, most adaptations of the Waite-Smith (or sometimes Crowley-Harris) deck,
redrawn to reflect the artist's esthetic sensibilities or personal philosophy. Hence there are now Wiccan
decks, feminist decks, Native American decks, and so on. There are even such curiosities as Tarot for
Cats and a deck where each card shows a different style of shoe. The tarot has proved itself to be a
facile vehicle for the expression of new-age creativity.

We've left one question unanswered, though. Why were the tarot trump cards created in the first
place? Was it simply, as the external evidence seems to suggest, a clever card game created by an
unknown Italian artist early in the 15th century? Or, as the occultists suspected (albeit without
evidence), a set of images deliberately conceived to depict a philosophical, religious, or mystical
system? The earliest surviving cards were lavishly hand-painted collection pieces made for the court of
the Duke of Milan around the middle of the 15th century. If they were modeled on a more mundanely
produced set of playing cards, the physical evidence is gone. Robert O'Neill, in his book Tarot
Symbolism, argues persuasively that the tarot were designed to depict the mystical ideas of
neoplatonism and perhaps Jewish qabala that were becoming known in Italy at the time. An especially
interesting piece in this puzzle is the so-called Tarocchi of Mantegna (which are neither tarot cards nor
the work of renaissance artist Andreas Mantegna). This set of 50 pictures depicts the various ranks of
medieval society, the academic sciences, the muses, the virtues, and the cosmos. Many of the pictures
resemble the tarot trumps, but the "Tarocchi of Mantegna" were clearly intended for philosophical
edification rather than game playing.
The history of the tarot is a window on one of the philosophical/religious strands in the story of
European culture. That strand reaches back in time to ancient gnosticism, through the medieval
practices of alchemy and astrology, through the fascination with the occult in recent centuries, and on
into the modern "new age" movement. It is a cultural strand that is not always easy to follow, with the
suppression, secrecy, and obscurity under which many of these ideas lived for centuries. It is a strand
full of false histories, deliberate obfuscations, and odd gaps. To pursue the various phases of tarot
history further, look at my introductions to modern, occult, and classic tarot decks.

Because the tarot has passed through so many different circumstances and subcultures, it is a feast for
the curious, whether your interest is religion, art, magic, games, or philosophy. Perhaps the tarot is a
kind of cultural flypaper, catching everything that happens to bump into it.

Want to learn more about tarot history? Visit The Hermitage.