The History and Origins of Tarot

1. Origins in 15th Century Italy

The story of tarot begins not in a fortune-teller's tent or a mystic's study, but in the courts and parlors of Renaissance Italy. The earliest documented tarot cards appeared in the mid-15th century in northern Italian cities like Milan, Ferrara, and Bologna. They were used to play a trick-taking card game called tarocchi (also known as tarocco in some dialects), which was popular among the Italian aristocracy.

The most famous early tarot decks were commissioned by wealthy noble families. The Visconti-Sforza deck, created around 1440 to 1450 for the ruling families of Milan, is among the oldest surviving tarot decks in the world. These were hand-painted, gilded works of art, far too expensive for common use. The cards featured allegorical figures and scenes drawn from Christian symbolism, classical mythology, and the social hierarchy of medieval and Renaissance Europe.

It is important to understand that these early tarot decks had no occult or divinatory purpose. They were game cards, plain and simple, used for entertainment in the same way that bridge or poker cards are used today. The game of tarocchiinvolved a standard 56-card deck (similar to modern playing cards) plus an additional set of 22 illustrated trump cards, known as “trionfi” (triumphs). These trump cards would later become the Major Arcana, but in their original context they were simply a suit of higher-ranking cards used to win tricks.

The imagery on these early trump cards drew heavily from the pageantry of Italian Renaissance culture. Triumphal processions, moral allegories, and depictions of virtues and cosmic forces were common themes. Figures like The Pope, The Emperor, The Wheel of Fortune, and Death reflected the religious and philosophical preoccupations of the era. While these images would later be interpreted through an esoteric lens, their original purpose was simply to provide visually striking and culturally meaningful illustrations for a card game.

2. Tarot Spreads Across Europe

Over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, tarot cards spread from Italy to France, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. The game evolved and adapted to different cultural contexts, and regional variations in deck design began to emerge. The most important of these regional traditions was the Tarot de Marseille, which developed in southern France and became the dominant tarot design across much of continental Europe.

The Tarot de Marseille standardized the 78-card structure that we still use today: 22 Major Arcana (or “atouts” in French) and 56 Minor Arcana divided into four suits. The Major Arcana featured bold, woodcut-style illustrations with strong colors and iconic imagery. The Minor Arcana, however, used simple pip designs, showing only the appropriate number of suit symbols (cups, batons, swords, or coins) without scenic illustrations. This meant that the numbered Minor Arcana cards provided little visual guidance for interpretation, which would later become a significant limitation for readers using the Marseille tradition.

Throughout this period, tarot remained primarily a card game. There are scattered references to the cards being used for divination or fortune-telling from the late 16th century onward, but these were isolated practices rather than widespread traditions. It was not until the 18th century that tarot would undergo its radical transformation from a game to a system of esoteric wisdom.

The Italian and Marseille traditions continue to influence tarot today. Many modern decks, particularly those from European publishers, still follow the Marseille style. Readers who work with the Marseille tradition often develop a distinctive approach to interpretation that relies more heavily on numerology, color symbolism, and the directional gaze of the figures, since the Minor Arcana cards lack the detailed scenes found in Rider-Waite-Smith-style decks.

3. The Esoteric Revival

The pivotal moment in tarot's transformation from card game to divination tool came in 1781, when Antoine Court de Gebelin, a French Protestant clergyman and Freemason, published a remarkable essay in his multi-volume work Le Monde primitif. Court de Gebelin claimed that the tarot was not merely a card game but a surviving fragment of the legendary Book of Thoth, an ancient Egyptian text containing the hidden wisdom of the god of knowledge. According to his theory, the tarot had been smuggled out of Egypt by the Romani people and had survived in disguise as a common card game for centuries.

Modern historians have thoroughly debunked Court de Gebelin's claims. There is no evidence connecting the tarot to ancient Egypt, and the historical record clearly shows its origins in 15th-century Italy. However, the factual accuracy of Court de Gebelin's theory mattered far less than its cultural impact. His writings ignited an explosion of interest in the tarot as a tool for spiritual and occult exploration that would shape the cards' trajectory for the next two and a half centuries.

Following Court de Gebelin, a French occultist named Jean-Baptiste Alliette, working under the pseudonym Etteilla, became the first person to create a tarot deck designed specifically for divination rather than gaming. Published in the 1780s and 1790s, Etteilla's decks reordered the Major Arcana, assigned specific divinatory meanings to each card, and introduced the practice of reading reversed (upside-down) cards as carrying different meanings from upright cards. Etteilla also published the first comprehensive guide to tarot reading, establishing many of the interpretive conventions that readers still use today.

In the 19th century, the French occultist Eliphas Levi further cemented the tarot's place in Western esotericism by linking it to the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. Levi drew correspondences between the 22 Major Arcana cards and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, creating a system of symbolic connections that influenced virtually every subsequent esoteric interpretation of the tarot. He also connected the four suits of the tarot to the four elements (Fire, Water, Air, Earth) and to the four letters of the divine name in Kabbalistic tradition.

4. The Golden Dawn and the Rider-Waite-Smith Deck

The single most important chapter in the history of modern tarot begins with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a British occult society founded in 1888. The Golden Dawn attracted some of the most brilliant and eccentric minds of the late Victorian era, including William Butler Yeats, Bram Stoker, and, most significantly for tarot, Arthur Edward Waite and Aleister Crowley.

The Golden Dawn developed a comprehensive system of tarot correspondences that linked each card to astrological signs, planets, elements, Kabbalistic paths, and other symbolic systems. This elaborate web of connections transformed the tarot from a collection of interesting pictures into a unified system of esoteric knowledge. Members of the Golden Dawn used the tarot extensively in their magical practices, and the order's influence on tarot interpretation remains dominant to this day.

In 1909, Arthur Edward Waite, a prominent Golden Dawn member, commissioned a young British artist named Pamela Colman Smith to create a new tarot deck based on his vision. The result was the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (named for Waite, Smith, and the publisher William Rider and Son), and it would revolutionize tarot completely.

What made the Rider-Waite-Smith deck revolutionary was Pamela Colman Smith's decision, guided by Waite, to create fully illustrated scenes for every card in the deck, including the Minor Arcana. Previous decks had used simple pip designs for the numbered Minor Arcana cards, showing, for instance, five cups arranged in a pattern without any narrative scene. Smith's illustrations gave each card a specific visual story: the Five of Cups shows a cloaked figure mourning over three spilled cups while two full cups stand behind them, instantly conveying themes of loss, regret, and overlooked blessings.

This innovation made the tarot dramatically more accessible and intuitive to read. A reader no longer needed to memorize abstract meanings for pip cards; they could simply look at the image and derive meaning from the visual narrative. Smith's artwork, influenced by Art Nouveau, symbolist painting, and theater design, was both aesthetically beautiful and symbolically rich. Despite receiving minimal credit during her lifetime, Pamela Colman Smith is now recognized as one of the most important figures in tarot history.

The Rider-Waite-Smith deck became the standard against which all other tarot decks are measured. Its imagery is the basis for most tarot education, most tarot books, and most modern deck designs. When people picture “a tarot card,” they are almost certainly picturing a Rider-Waite-Smith illustration. To explore every card in this tradition, see our complete guide to all 78 tarot card meanings.

5. Aleister Crowley and the Thoth Deck

While the Rider-Waite-Smith deck was taking the world by storm, another former Golden Dawn member was developing his own radical vision for the tarot. Aleister Crowley, one of the most controversial and influential occultists of the 20th century, collaborated with the artist Lady Frieda Harris to create the Thoth Tarot between 1938 and 1943. The deck was not published until 1969, after both Crowley and Harris had passed away.

The Thoth deck represents a fundamentally different approach to tarot than the Rider-Waite-Smith. Where Waite aimed for accessibility and visual storytelling, Crowley created a deck steeped in Kabbalistic, astrological, and alchemical symbolism that rewards deep study but can be intimidating for beginners. Harris's artwork is strikingly abstract and dynamic, using geometric forms, vivid colors, and surrealist imagery to express the energetic essence of each card.

Crowley made several significant changes to the traditional tarot structure. He renamed several Major Arcana cards: Justice became Adjustment, Strength became Lust, Temperance became Art, and Judgement became The Aeon. He also swapped the positions of two Major Arcana cards in the sequence. The Court Cards were renamed as well: Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess replaced the traditional King, Queen, Knight, and Page.

The Thoth deck remains the second most influential tarot deck in history, after the Rider-Waite-Smith. It is particularly popular among readers with a strong interest in Western esotericism, Kabbalah, and ceremonial magic. Its astrological and elemental correspondences are more explicitly integrated into the card design than in any other major deck, making it an excellent tool for readers who want to incorporate these systems into their practice.

The philosophical differences between the Waite and Crowley approaches reflect a fundamental tension in the tarot world that persists today: should tarot be accessible and intuitive, or should it be a complex system of esoteric knowledge that rewards dedicated study? Most modern readers find their own position somewhere between these two poles.

6. The Modern Tarot Renaissance

The late 20th century saw tarot undergo another profound transformation. Beginning in the 1970s and accelerating through the 1990s and 2000s, tarot experienced a cultural renaissance that took it from the margins of occult practice into the mainstream of popular spirituality and self-help culture.

Several factors drove this renaissance. The New Age movement of the 1970s and 1980s created a broad cultural openness to alternative spiritual practices. Authors like Rachel Pollack, whose Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (published in 1980) became the definitive modern guide to tarot interpretation, made the cards accessible to a wider audience. Pollack approached tarot not as occult mysticism but as a tool for psychological self-exploration, drawing on Jungian psychology and feminist thought to create interpretations that resonated with contemporary readers.

Mary K. Greer's influential work, including Tarot for Your Self (1984), further shifted the emphasis from prediction to personal development. Greer pioneered interactive techniques that encouraged readers to engage with the cards through journaling, meditation, and creative exercises rather than simply looking up meanings in a book. Her approach empowered ordinary people to use tarot as a practical self-reflection tool without needing extensive occult training.

The explosion of independent deck publishing has been another defining feature of the modern era. While the Rider-Waite-Smith and Thoth decks dominated for most of the 20th century, the 21st century has seen an extraordinary proliferation of independent and small-press tarot decks. Artists from every background and tradition have created decks that reimagine tarot through the lenses of diverse cultures, artistic styles, and philosophical frameworks. There are now thousands of tarot decks available, featuring everything from traditional religious iconography to anime, botanical illustration, and abstract digital art.

This democratization of tarot design has had a profound impact on the practice. Readers can now choose decks that reflect their personal aesthetics, cultural identities, and spiritual beliefs. The old gatekeeping that limited tarot to a narrow range of European esoteric traditions has given way to a vibrant, inclusive, and endlessly creative global tarot community. For help navigating this abundance of options, see our guide on how to choose your first tarot deck.

7. Tarot in the Digital Age

The internet and digital technology have transformed tarot once again, making it more accessible than at any point in its 500-plus-year history. Online tarot reading platforms, mobile apps, social media communities, and digital resources have removed many of the barriers that once made tarot feel exclusive or intimidating.

Social media platforms have played a particularly significant role in the modern tarot boom. Tarot readers, educators, and enthusiasts have built massive communities where millions of people share readings, discuss card meanings, review new decks, and support each other's learning journeys. These communities have made tarot visible and appealing to demographics that might never have encountered it in a traditional occult bookshop or metaphysical fair.

Digital tarot reading tools have also expanded the practice in important ways. Online and app-based reading tools allow anyone to experience a tarot reading without owning a physical deck, making it possible to explore the practice before committing to a purchase. These digital tools use randomized algorithms to simulate card drawing and provide detailed interpretations that help users learn the card meanings as they practice.

Some traditionalists have questioned whether digital readings can carry the same energy and authenticity as physical card readings. This is a valid discussion, but the practical impact is clear: digital tarot has introduced millions of new people to the practice and has made tarot education available to anyone with an internet connection. For many people, a digital reading is the first step on a journey that eventually leads to purchasing a physical deck and developing a hands-on practice.

The rise of artificial intelligence has added another layer to the digital tarot landscape. AI-powered reading tools can generate personalized interpretations based on the specific combination of cards drawn, the positions they occupy in a spread, and the question asked. While these tools cannot replace the depth and nuance of a reading from an experienced human practitioner, they represent a powerful new resource for learning and daily practice.

As tarot moves further into the digital age, its core essence remains unchanged. Whether you are reading with a hand-painted Visconti-Sforza reproduction, a Rider-Waite-Smith deck shuffled on your kitchen table, or an interactive online tool, the fundamental act is the same: engaging with a rich symbolic system to gain insight, clarity, and a deeper understanding of yourself and the forces at work in your life. The medium evolves, but the wisdom endures.