Origins of Tarot

There will always be a difference of opinions between tarot card readers and tarot card historians about the purpose and origins of tarot cards. However, the two blend together and the overlap is hard to set apart, like a blurry venn diagram. Historically, tarot cards were not originally invented to be used for divination, they were created to be a simple card game. Dating back to the 1440s, they were created in Spain, and had a total of 56 cards. What made up the deck were four face cards (king, queen, knight, and knave), numbered values from 1-10, a Fool card, and then 21 trump cards. It started as a game of trick taking in which a suit of trump cards could beat only cards of a lower rank. The trump cards being (in descending order) the world, sun, moon, star, temperance, death, traitor, old man, wheel of fortune, fortitude, chariot, justice, love, pope, emperor, popess, empress, mountebank, and 3 angel cards. As time went on and tarot cards were circulated and replicated, people would use them to create new games, with their own interpretations of what each card meant. Italians in the 1500s started to play them as a game called “tarocchi appropriati” in which players were dealt random cards and then used thematic associations with these cards to write poetic verses about one another. Similar to the popular childhood game “MASH”. This is where the overlap starts, and both historians and tarot card readers both have merit in their purpose.