A Short History of Tarot: From Card Game to Reflection Tool

It started as a game

The earliest surviving tarot cards were painted in northern Italy in the fifteenth century, for noble families such as the Visconti and Sforza of Milan. They were called carte da trionfi, or "cards of triumphs", and they were used to play a trick-taking game much like bridge. The extra picture cards — what we now call the Major Arcana — acted as permanent trumps.

Nothing in the historical record from that period suggests people used these cards to tell fortunes. They were luxury objects and pastimes. The word tarocchi appears in the early sixteenth century, and the game spread through France, Switzerland and Austria, where versions of it are still played today.

The occult turn in France

In 1781 the French scholar Antoine Court de Gébelin published an essay claiming that the tarot preserved the secret wisdom of ancient Egypt. There was no evidence for this — the hieroglyphs had not even been deciphered yet — but the idea was irresistible. Shortly afterwards a Parisian occultist known as Etteilla produced one of the first decks designed specifically for cartomancy, or divination with cards.

Through the nineteenth century, writers such as Éliphas Lévi connected the 22 trumps to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and to Kabbalah. These links are symbolic inventions rather than historical origins, but they shaped how tarot has been read ever since.

The deck most people picture

In 1909 the artist Pamela Colman Smith illustrated a new deck under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Published by the Rider company in London, it was the first widely available deck to give every one of the 78 cards — not just the trumps — a full scene. Those images made the cards far easier to interpret intuitively, and most modern decks still follow their layout.

Smith received little credit or money in her lifetime. Many readers now call it the Rider–Waite–Smith deck to acknowledge her work.

How tarot is used today

Today tarot sits somewhere between art, game, and journaling prompt. Many people who use it do not believe the cards predict anything. Instead they treat a card as an outside image that interrupts their usual thinking: you ask a question, see the Tower or the Star, and notice what you feel before you have time to argue with yourself.

That is the spirit in which Oracle Answers offers tarot. Our cards are drawn at random. They cannot know your future, and we will never claim otherwise. What they can do is give a busy mind a pause and a picture to think with.

A simple way to try it

Write your question down before you draw. After you see the card, write one sentence about what you hoped it would be and one about what it actually shows. The gap between those two sentences is often more interesting than the card itself.