A standard Tarot deck is comprised of 78 cards: 22 trump cards and 56 pip cards divided into 4 suits. Each suit has cards numbering Ace through 10 and 4 court cards. Traditional suit titles are wands, cups, swords and coins. The Tarot’s structure is what distinguishes it from standard playing cards and other divination decks.
The Tarot is believed to have originated in Italy for playing a card game similar to bridge. The earliest surviving decks date back to the 1400’s. As Tarot became more popular, variations of the deck began to appear outside of Italy, such as the 1JJ Swiss Tarot. The Marseille Tarot became a standard deck in France in the 1500’s. While most French cards used clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds as suits, the Marseille Tarot retained the Italian suits of wands, cups, swords, and coins, respectively.
When French occultists discovered the Tarot, its origins had become lost in time and its Italian suits seemed very exotic. This led to a shift from Tarot as a game to Tarot’s occult associations. In 1781 Protestant Freemason Antoine Court de Gebelin was introduced to the cards, and he wrote about them in his work monde primitif, where he claimed that the cards had Egyptian origins and esoteric significance.
The (false) claims in monde primitif sparked interest in Tarot and inspired others to explore the cards in a new way. A few notable figures in occult Tarot history are:
~ French occultist Etteilla (Jean Baptiste Alliette) (1738-1791), who popularized fortune telling with playing cards and commissioned the first modern Tarot deck.
~ Eliphas Levi (1810-1875), a French Kabbalist who devised Hebrew letter correspondences to Tarot
~ Gerard Encausse (Papus) (1865-1916), a Theosophist, Rosicrucian, and medical doctor who wrote “Tarot of the Bohemians.”
~ Oswald Wirth (1878-1951), a Swiss occultist who designed a modern Tarot based on the teachings of Levi
In 1888 the Hermetic Order of the Golden dawn was formed by William Wynn Westcott (1848-1925) and Samuel Liddell Mathers/MacGregor Mathers (1854-1918). The Golden Dawn organized numerous attributions and ideas about Tarot from occult writers and published them in “Book T.” Many of today’s popular divinatory meanings are derived from attributions popularized by the Golden Dawn. Two famous decks created by Golden Dawn members are the Rider Waite Smith Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, and the Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris.
These highlights of Tarot history were pulled from these great sources. Check them out to learn more about the fascinating history of the cards.
A History of the Occult Tarot by Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett – the follow up to A Wicked Pack of Cards
A Wicked Pack of Cards: Origins of the Occult Tarot by Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis & Michael Dummett
Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson
Tarot and Other Meditation Decks: History, Theory, Aesthetics, Typology by Emily Auger
The Tarot: History, Mystery, and Lore by Cynthia Giles
The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination by Robert M. Place