Tarot Cards Were Playing Cards for 400 Years. Here's the Full History.
Quick Answer
What is the real history of tarot cards? Tarot cards were invented in northern Italy in the early 15th century as playing cards for a card game called "tarocchi," similar to modern trick-taking games. The earliest tarot decks were hand-painted commissions for aristocratic Italian families, featuring the standard card suits plus an additional set of illustrated trump cards with allegorical figures. Tarot was used exclusively as a playing card game for roughly 300 years. Divination use of tarot cards first appeared in 18th-century France and expanded significantly in the 19th century. The modern occult tarot, including the Rider-Waite-Smith deck with its richly illustrated scenes, was created in 1909.
Tarot cards are 600 years old and were used as playing cards for the first 300 of those years. The decks you buy in metaphysical shops and the deck someone laid out for you at a party have a documented history that starts not in ancient Egypt or with the Roma, as popular myth has it, but in northern Italian courts in the early 1400s, where wealthy families commissioned hand-painted card sets for a trick-taking game that was fashionable among the aristocracy. The mystical tarot is real and has its own history. That history just started considerably later than most people think.
The Origin: Northern Italy, 1440s
The earliest documented tarot decks date to northern Italy between approximately 1440 and 1450. The Visconti-Sforza deck, commissioned by the Duke of Milan, is one of the oldest surviving examples and is held in collections across several museums. It is a card game deck. The illustrated trump cards it contains, figures like the Fool, the Empress, the Wheel of Fortune, the World, follow allegorical conventions that were standard in 15th-century Italian art: moralizing images drawn from religious iconography, classical mythology, and court culture. They were not occult symbols. They were the visual vocabulary of educated aristocratic Italian society.
The game of tarocchi, from which the word "tarot" derives, was played similarly to modern trick-taking card games: players used the trump cards as wildcards that beat the regular suits. The game spread from Italy into France, Switzerland, and Central Europe over the following century. Tarot game books were published. Rules varied by region. It was a card game that aristocrats and later middle-class players enjoyed, in the same way they played other card games, with no particular spiritual significance attached. In some areas of Europe, notably parts of France and Germany, tarot games are still played today for exactly this purpose.
How Tarot Became a Divination Tool
The use of tarot for divination, specifically cartomancy, the reading of meaning from card draws, is documented from the 18th century. The earliest clear references to tarot cards being used for fortune-telling appear in 1750s France. By the late 18th century, several books had been published claiming ancient origins for the tarot and arguing that the trump cards encoded hidden wisdom from various ancient traditions including Kabbalah, Egyptian mystery schools, and Gypsy lore. None of these claims were accurate, but they were persuasive to a culture primed to find hidden wisdom in old things.
The pivotal figure in connecting tarot to occultism was Antoine Court de Gébelin, a French Freemason and Protestant minister who published an essay in 1781 claiming that the tarot was actually the ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth, preserved by the Roma (whom he incorrectly believed to be Egyptian in origin) and carried into Europe as a concealed mystical text. This claim was fabricated: there was no evidence for it then and none has emerged since. But it was published in an influential encyclopedia and taken seriously by occult scholars. The claim that tarot was ancient Egyptian in origin circulated for over a century before historians established the actual 15th-century Italian origin with documentary evidence.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Occult Tarot
The transformation of tarot from a fortune-telling novelty into a serious instrument of Western occultism happened largely through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Victorian secret society founded in London in 1888. The Golden Dawn, whose members included the poet W.B. Yeats and the occultist Aleister Crowley, developed an elaborate system for interpreting tarot that connected each card to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, to astrological correspondences, and to the Hermetic philosophical system the order was built around. Tarot in the Golden Dawn system was not fortune-telling. It was a visual map of the entire Western occult tradition, a tool for meditation and spiritual self-examination, with each card's symbolism corresponding to multiple layers of esoteric meaning simultaneously.
Aleister Crowley, who broke from the Golden Dawn to pursue his own path, eventually created his own tarot deck, the Thoth Tarot, designed with artist Lady Frieda Harris and published posthumously in 1944. The Thoth Tarot incorporated Crowley's Thelemic philosophy and Egyptian imagery and remains one of the most influential decks in contemporary occultism. For the full history of Crowley's career and how he shaped modern Western occultism, the Aleister Crowley post covers the complete arc from his Golden Dawn training to his influence on Wicca and the Church of Satan.
The Rider-Waite-Smith Deck: The Template Everyone Uses
The deck that defined modern tarot imagery was created in 1909 by A.E. Waite, a Golden Dawn member and occult scholar, and Pamela Colman Smith, an artist and fellow Golden Dawn member. Published by the Rider Company of London, it became known as the Rider-Waite deck (and later the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, finally crediting Smith's work). What made this deck revolutionary was that Pamela Colman Smith illustrated not just the 22 trump cards but all 56 minor arcana cards with fully realized narrative scenes: every card showed a human situation, a visual story that could be interpreted.
Before the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, the minor arcana in most decks showed simple arrangements of suit symbols, the way modern playing cards show arrangements of hearts or spades. Smith's illustrated scenes, drawn at Waite's direction but executed through her own artistic vision and symbolism, created the interpretive framework that almost all subsequent tarot practice has used. When a reader looks at the Ten of Swords and sees a figure lying face down with ten swords in their back, they are using Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 visual invention. She was not credited on the original deck and received no royalties. She died in poverty in 1951.
Tarot Today: From Occultism to Mainstream
Tarot moved from a specialized occult practice into mainstream culture through several routes. The 1960s counterculture embraced tarot as part of a broader interest in alternative spirituality. New Age publishing in the 1970s and 1980s produced hundreds of new decks and interpretation guides aimed at a general audience. By the 2000s, tarot had become accessible enough to be sold in chain bookstores. The internet era and social media accelerated this further: TikTok's "WitchTok" community normalized daily tarot practice for millions of people who had no interest in Western occultism specifically but found the card system useful for self-reflection and psychological processing.
Contemporary tarot practice sits along a spectrum from fully secular psychological tool to committed esoteric practice. The Jungian reading of tarot, which treats the cards as archetypes of the collective unconscious rather than as literal occult instruments, gave the practice intellectual credibility outside occult circles. The psychological interpretation does not require any belief in supernatural guidance: the randomness of the draw surfaces unconscious material, and the symbolic richness of the card prompts reflection. This is the reading of tarot as a projective tool, the same mechanism that makes the Rorschach inkblot test useful without requiring the inkblots to be magical.
The The Moon Tarot T-shirt is for people who understand that the Moon card's imagery of the path between two towers under a full moon, with a crayfish emerging from the water, is a 1909 artistic invention by a woman who wasn't credited for it, encoding a specific Kabbalistic correspondence, and who find all of that more interesting rather than less. The FDT Tarot T-shirt is for people who have found their own uses for the system. The full Witchy Vibes collection is for everyone who pulls from occult imagery, moon phases, and the long tradition of people being called dangerous for knowing things.
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Frequently Asked Questions
When were tarot cards invented?
Tarot cards were invented in northern Italy in the early 15th century, with the oldest surviving decks dating to around 1440 to 1450. The Visconti-Sforza deck, commissioned by the Duke of Milan, is among the earliest documented examples. Tarot was created as a playing card game called tarocchi, similar to modern trick-taking games, with an additional set of illustrated trump cards. It was used exclusively as a game for roughly 300 years before divination use is documented. The popular claim that tarot is ancient Egyptian in origin was fabricated by a French writer in 1781 and has no evidentiary basis.
Who invented tarot card reading for divination?
Tarot card reading for divination is documented from 18th-century France, with the earliest clear references appearing in the 1750s. The figure most responsible for connecting tarot to occultism was Antoine Court de Gébelin, who published an essay in 1781 falsely claiming the tarot was an ancient Egyptian text. This claim, despite having no evidence, circulated widely and inspired occultists to develop elaborate interpretive systems. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late 19th century systematized tarot divination and connected it to Kabbalah, astrology, and Hermetic philosophy, creating the framework for modern occult tarot practice.
What is the Rider-Waite tarot deck?
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck, created in 1909 by A.E. Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith and published by the Rider Company of London, is the most influential tarot deck ever produced. It was the first deck to illustrate all 78 cards, including the 56 minor arcana, with fully realized narrative scenes rather than simple suit-symbol arrangements. These illustrated scenes created the visual framework that almost all subsequent tarot interpretation is based on. Pamela Colman Smith created the artwork but was not credited on the original deck and received no royalties; she died in poverty in 1951.
Is tarot connected to ancient Egypt?
No. The Egyptian origin claim was invented by French Freemason Antoine Court de Gébelin in 1781, who argued without evidence that tarot was the ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth preserved by the Roma, whom he incorrectly believed to have Egyptian origins. This claim was false when made and has no historical or archaeological support. Tarot's actual origin is thoroughly documented in 15th-century northern Italian aristocratic card-game culture. The Egyptian association persisted for over a century before historians established the Italian origin with primary source evidence, and it remains in popular circulation despite its disproven status.
What do tarot cards mean?
Tarot card meanings in contemporary practice derive primarily from the system developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late 19th century and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith in the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck. Each card in the 22-card Major Arcana represents a major archetypal theme or life situation. The 56-card Minor Arcana, divided into four suits, addresses more specific daily concerns. Interpretations vary significantly between readers and traditions. Contemporary secular use often treats cards as psychological prompts rather than literal predictions, using the symbolic richness of the imagery to surface unconscious material and prompt self-reflection.
Did Aleister Crowley create a tarot deck?
Yes. Aleister Crowley designed the Thoth Tarot with artist Lady Frieda Harris over several years. The deck incorporated Crowley's Thelemic philosophy, Egyptian imagery, and the Kabbalistic correspondences developed in the Golden Dawn system. It was completed in the early 1940s and published posthumously in 1944. The Thoth Tarot is considered one of the most complex and influential tarot decks in Western occultism, with card symbolism drawing on astrology, Kabbalah, geometry, and Egyptian mythology. Frieda Harris developed a specific painting technique using projective geometry for the artwork, which gives the deck its distinctive visual quality.
