📖The History of Tarot

Have you ever wondered where tarot cards actually come from? You’re not alone, the tarot’s past is mysterious as the cards themselves. In modern times we think of tarot decks as tools for fortune-telling, but their story begins in a much more down-to-earth setting. It turns out tarot cards weren’t invented by ancient wizards or “gypsy” mystics, but by Renaissance nobles looking for a fun card game. Over the centuries, this humble game deck transformed into a “book of wisdom” loved by occultists and spiritual seekers.

It might blow your mind to learn that tarot cards started out purely as a card game. For this we travel back to 15th-century northern Italy, a time of splendid courts and rich patron families. Imagine a grand banquet hall in Milan or Florence around the 1440s. Nobles in silks are gathered around a table, laughing and playing a trick-taking card game called Trionfi (Italian for “triumphs”).

In their hands are beautiful, hand-painted cards some showing ordinary suits like cups and swords, others depicting allegorical figures: a glittering star, a proud emperor, virtues like Strength and Justice, even a skeletal figure of Death. These were the first tarot decks, known then as “Trionfi”.

They were lavish creations commissioned by aristocrats, often painted with gold leaf by master artists. In fact, the oldest surviving tarot cards the Visconti-Sforza deck from the mid-15th century were made for the Duke of Milan’s family around 1450.

In those days, tarot cards had a full set of four suits plus a special fifth suit of picture cards called trumps. The trump cards (what we now call the Major Arcana) formed a sort of allegorical parade. They featured figures and concepts reflecting the medieval worldview: there were emperors and popes, virtues like Temperance, cosmic bodies like the Sun and Moon.

These images weren’t originally about magic; they likely had moral or didactic undertones, aligned with the era’s love of allegory. In fact, early records suggest that tarot trumps were sometimes used to spark philosophical discussions on the soul’s journey or as prompts for poetry.

By around 1500, the game of triumphs had really caught on. The Italian term tarocchi came into use. French soldiers invading Italy apparently found the game irresistible and carried it back home, where tarocchi became tarot in french. Over the next couple of centuries, tarot card playing spread to various parts of Europe. In France and Switzerland, the Tarot de Marseille style deck became a standard.

People mainly played tarot as a gambling or trick-taking game, much like bridge or spades. Was anyone using tarot cards for fortune-telling back then? It’s hard to know for sure.

It’s fascinating, if you think about it: those early card players had no idea that their tarocchi game, enjoyed over wine and jest in a Renaissance court, would one day be seen as a key to the universe’s secrets.

  Engraved portrait of Antoine Court de Gébelin (1725–1784), whose speculative writings in 1781 transformed the Tarot from a card game into an object of occult study.

The big twist in tarot’s history arrived in 1781, when a Protestant clergyman turned polymath named Antoine Court de Gébelin published an essay that reimagined the tarot as something mystical.

Let me set the scene: Court de Gébelin was at a fashionable Parisian salon, a card party, when he first laid eyes on a deck of tarot cards (the story goes that the hostess had brought them from abroad, and they were a novelty in Paris) As he watched the game, de Gébelin had a flash of inspiration.

He became convinced that this card game from Italy was far more than a game. In his learned eyes, those trumps depicting a juggler, emperors, and the Sun looked like survivors of ancient Egyptian wisdom in disguise! De Gébelin hurried to include his theories in his massive scholarly work Le Monde Primitif. He wrote that the tarot’s 22 trumps were secret arcana of the Egyptians, smuggled into Europe and “Christianized” over time.

For example, he asserted the Tarot’s Papess card was actually the Egyptian goddess Isis. Bear in mind, this was pure speculation de Gébelin had no historical evidence whatsoever.

In fact, when he wrote this, Egyptian hieroglyphs hadn’t even been decoded yet. But de Gébelin was a persuasive writer living in a time fascinated by all things ancient and mystical. His elaborate theory sounded plausible to his readers.

In that same 1781 volume, another contributor the Comte de Mellet chimed in with additional bold ideas. De Mellet agreed that tarot was Egyptian and went on to claim it was actually the fabled “Book of Thoth” from Egyptian legend. He was the first to explicitly propose that tarot cards be used for cartomancy. He also drew an analogy that would become fundamental in occult tarot: the tarot’s 22 trumps plus the Fool correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, linking the cards to the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah.

Both de Gébelin and de Mellet were essentially making up an ancient history for the cards. Modern research has found zero evidence that tarot existed in ancient Egypt or that it was transmitted by wandering “Gypsies” (Romani people) in fact, the Romani originated in India and reached Europe long after tarot was born in Italy. And yet, these Enlightenment-era scholars firmly believed their own theories. Despite the lack of proof (which scholars pointed out even then), the romantic notion that tarot cards carried hidden Egyptian teachings was irresistible.

No one embraced this new idea more energetically than a man named Jean-Baptiste Alliette, better known by his quirky pseudonym “Etteilla” (which is just his surname reversed). If de Gébelin theorized about tarot’s occult significance, Etteilla made it practical.

A Parisian occultist and barber by trade, Etteilla was the first professional tarot reader that we know of. Etteilla published a series of books from 1783 onward basically teaching people how to read tarot cards to tell fortune.

He even coined the word “cartomancy”. Crucially, Etteilla went a step further and in 1789 produced the first-ever tarot deck designed purely for occult use. This deck wasn’t meant for playing games at all it was stuffed with added astrological symbols, Egyptian motifs, and Etteilla’s own interpretations. It was, in effect, the world’s first Tarot oracle.

Thanks to Etteilla’s entrepreneurial zeal, by the end of the 18th century the practice of tarot reading had been born.

The chaos of the French Revolution didn’t dim tarot’s occult appeal, in fact, the 19th century saw its mystical reputation grow. Secret societies and esoteric thinkers across Europe embraced the cards as powerful symbols. In France, Éliphas Lévi became a key figure, linking tarot to Kabbalah and giving us terms like “Major” and “Minor Arcana.” He believed the tarot held universal wisdom, even claiming that with only the cards, one could master all knowledge. Lévi’s passionate vision deeply influenced later occultists and helped solidify tarot’s place as a central tool in Western mysticism.

Following Lévi’s lead, a number of other French esoteric writers contributed to tarot’s occult lore. Papus (the pen name of Dr. Gérard Encausse) published Tarot of the Bohemians in 1889, a book that became a classic in the field. Papus embraced the idea that the Romani people had preserved tarot’s ancient wisdom and brought it to Europe.

Swiss occultist Oswald Wirth created one of the first modern esoteric tarot decks, focused on the 22 Major Arcana. Inspired by Lévi’s work, he infused the cards with Kabbalistic symbols and wrote Tarot of the Magicians, linking tarot to medieval and mystical traditions.

By then, tarot had transformed from simple playing cards into symbols of arcane wisdom. France led the movement, but Britain soon followed. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1887, made tarot a key part of its magical system. Members, including poet W.B. Yeats used the cards for meditation, ritual, and scrying, even crafting their own decks by hand. The Golden Dawn’s rich blend of Kabbalah, alchemy, and symbolism shaped the tarot as we know it today.

To hear the full story, check the video below.