What is Tarot?

Tarot was actually developed initially as a card game for Italian aristocracy. It was first known as trionfi. The earliest references to tarot are in the 1440’s & 50’s but at this point the game was already wildly complicated & evolving so it’s assumed it’s creation predates that.

Initially it was created with just the 4 suits, what we refer to today as the Minor Arcana & these were as they often still are today: swords, cups, coins & wands. Like normal playing cards each suit went from 1-10 plus face cards. Tarot varies from normal playing cards however by having four members of court: King, Queen, Knight & Knave. There was also one wild card, the fool, similar to the joker in a standard pack.

What we now call the Major Arcana was then called the tarocchi & was the addition of 21 trump cards. Interestingly although the initial game is thought to have been designed in Northern Italy it is likely that the trump cards came from elsewhere in Europe. The trump cards seem to have started in Germany as part of a game called Karnöffel which was being played in the 1420s. Both games changed & evolved over time, independently of each other, before the trump cards & 4 suits were joined together.

The game would have been extremely expensive to produce as mass printing was a very complex & involved practice. Having a set of these beautifully decorated cards would have certainly been a display of wealth.

Tarot is not thought to have been broadly connected with fortune telling until the 19th century although there is some evidence that it was used for divination, or cartomancy as early as 1750. The way that tarot is used as a divination tool is completely detached from the rules of the medieval game.

I’ll go more into the development of tarot as cartomancy in a future post. 🖤