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The Full Story of Tarot

This is the companion to the road. The same twelve stops, told in a little more detail, with the key names and dates.

Tap a number at the top to jump to any stop.

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Before the 1300s

Asia: where cards began

The earliest written mention of a card game comes from China, in the ninth century.

China had paper long before Europe, so cards were cheap and easy to make.

Most historians believe cards then travelled west through Central Asia and Persia, carried along the trade roads. The exact route is not known.

When they reached the Arab world, they were still simply a game.

Key dates

  • 800sCard games recorded in China.
  • 1000s to 1300sCards spread west across Asia.
The 1300s

Mamluk Egypt: a shape we know

The Mamluk Sultanate ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517. Its cards are the direct ancestor of the European pack.

The most complete Mamluk pack is kept in the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. It has four suits: coins, cups, swords and polo sticks.

Each suit runs from one to ten, with three court cards: the king, the deputy king and the second deputy.

The Arabic word for deputy, naib, travelled with the cards. In Spanish, playing cards are still called naipes.

Did you know? Cards did pass through Egypt, but through medieval Mamluk Egypt, and they arrived as a game.

The late 1300s

Into Europe

Cards arrive in Europe in the 1370s, and they spread fast.

In 1377, Florence passes a law about a new card game, and a friar named Johannes of Rheinfelden describes the cards. A chronicle from Viterbo records cards arriving there in 1379.

Coins and cups stay much the same. Swords become straight in Spanish packs and often stay curved in Italian ones. Polo sticks become batons, and later the wands.

Around 1480, the French create hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades, the suits on most playing cards today.

Key dates

  • 1377Cards recorded in Florence and described by Johannes of Rheinfelden.
  • 1379Cards recorded arriving in Viterbo.
  • 1480Around this time, French suits appear.
The 1440s

Italy: tarot is born

In the courts of northern Italy, a new set of picture cards is added to the pack: the trionfi, the triumphs. They become the major arcana.

The earliest records come from 1440 and 1442, in Florence and Ferrara. The most famous early decks were hand painted for the Visconti and Sforza families of Milan.

The trionfi are trumps in a card game. Our word trump comes from them. The court grows to four: king, queen, knight and page.

Around 1500 the game is called tarocchi. In French it becomes tarot, and it is still played in France and Italy today.

Around 1490, the Sola Busca deck shows people in scenes on every numbered card. It is the earliest complete tarot deck to survive.

Key names

  • The Visconti and Sforza families
  • Bonifacio Bembo
  • The Sola Busca deck
The 1600s and 1700s

France: the Tarot de Marseille

Through the 1600s and 1700s, one tarot design becomes the classic. It may have begun in Milan, but French card makers settled on it and made it famous.

Jean Noblet printed it in Paris around 1650. Jean Dodal printed it in Lyon around 1701. Nicolas Conver printed it in Marseille in 1760.

With its bold lines and bright colours, it became the face of tarot for a very long time. Much later it became known as the Tarot de Marseille.

This is the tarot that Court de Gébelin and Éliphas Lévi studied, and the pattern behind many decks today.

Key dates

  • 1650Around this time, Jean Noblet prints his deck in Paris.
  • 1701Around this time, Jean Dodal prints his deck in Lyon.
  • 1760Nicolas Conver prints his deck in Marseille.
1781 to the 1850s

France: the search for deeper meaning

In 1781, the scholar Antoine Court de Gébelin sees people playing tarot and believes the cards carry the wisdom of ancient Egypt. Historians now trace tarot to Italy, but his idea opens a door that never closes.

In the same book, the Comte de Mellet pairs the picture cards with the Hebrew letters.

Etteilla, a Parisian whose real name was Jean Baptiste Alliette, publishes the first full guide to reading tarot, and designs a deck made for reading.

In the 1850s, Éliphas Lévi builds this into a full system. The twenty two picture cards match the twenty two Hebrew letters, and the ten numbered cards match the ten Sephiroth of the Tree of Life. His work shapes esoteric tarot to this day.

Soon after, Paul Christian calls the cards arcana, meaning secrets. This gives us the words major arcana and minor arcana.

Key dates

  • 1781Court de Gébelin links tarot to ancient Egypt.
  • 1783Etteilla begins publishing on reading tarot.
  • 1854Éliphas Lévi begins publishing his system.
1888

London: the Golden Dawn

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn opens its first temple in London in March 1888. Its founders are Westcott, Mathers and Woodman.

Members climb a ladder of grades, studying astrology, tarot, geomancy, the Hebrew letters and the Kabbalah. From 1892, the most dedicated join an inner order.

Their big idea is correspondence: as above, so below. In Book T, the Fool takes the first Hebrew letter, and each picture card becomes a path on the Tree of Life, with its own letter, planet or sign and colour.

Members include W. B. Yeats, Florence Farr, Moina Mathers, Arthur Waite, Aleister Crowley and Pamela Colman Smith.

Key dates

  • 1888The first temple opens in London.
  • 1892The inner order begins its work.
  • 1900The order splits into new groups.
1909

London: the deck

Pamela Colman Smith was born in London in 1878 to American parents. She worked in the theatre with the Lyceum company, telling stories and designing sets and costumes.

She often painted while listening to music, and said it brought pictures to her. W. B. Yeats brought her into the Golden Dawn in 1901.

In 1909, Arthur Waite asked her to illustrate a new deck. She painted all 78 cards in about six months. Waite guided the major cards. The minor cards are essentially hers.

She turned every minor card into a living scene with people, weather and feeling. That is why the cards can be read like a story.

The deck was published in December 1909 by William Rider and Son. Today many people call it the Rider Waite Smith deck, to give Pamela her place.

1910

London: the book

Arthur Edward Waite was born in Brooklyn in 1857 and grew up in England. He wrote about mysticism, Freemasonry and the Holy Grail.

A short booklet came with the deck in 1909. In 1910 Waite expanded it into The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, with a picture of every card.

Part one, The Veil and its Symbols, covers the cards and their history. Part two, The Doctrine Behind the Veil, gives the inner meaning of the major cards. Part three, The Outer Method of the Oracles, gives the meanings of all 78 cards and a way to lay them out.

Waite writes in a careful, veiled style, bound by his promises to the Golden Dawn.

1938 to 1943

England: the Thoth deck

Aleister Crowley joined the Golden Dawn in 1898, and later founded his own system, Thelema.

In 1938 he began a new deck with the artist Lady Frieda Harris. They planned six months. It took over five years.

Crowley published The Book of Thoth in 1944. The deck was first printed in 1969.

He renamed some cards: Strength became Lust, Justice became Adjustment and Temperance became Art. He swapped the Hebrew letters of the Emperor and the Star, and put Adjustment back at eight and Lust at eleven, the older order.

Key dates

  • 1938Work on the Thoth deck begins.
  • 1944The Book of Thoth is published.
  • 1969The deck is printed for the first time.
1970

America: the Fool's Journey

Eden Gray was an American writer who ran a metaphysical bookshop in New York.

In 1960 she published The Tarot Revealed, and in 1970 A Complete Guide to the Tarot.

She is widely credited with naming the Fool's Journey: reading the major arcana as one story, with the Fool travelling through every card. The idea grew through her books.

Her books were written for everyday readers, using the Rider Waite Smith pictures. She helped make tarot something anyone can learn.

Did you know? The Fool's Journey is a modern way of reading the cards. It grew through Eden Gray's books in the 1960s and 1970s.

Our own time

Today

In 1971, an American company reissued Pamela's deck in new colours, and it spread around the world. Most modern decks follow her lead, with a full scene on every card.

Today there are three great families of tarot: the Marseille family, the Rider Waite Smith family and the Thoth family.

In the UK, Pamela's art passed out of copyright at the start of 2022, so the original 1909 cards are free for everyone.

Over six centuries, tarot has gathered layer upon layer of meaning. That depth is what we read today.

Words explained

The trickier words from the timeline, in plain English.

Arcana
From the Latin for secrets. Tarot has 22 major arcana (the picture cards) and 56 minor arcana.
Book T
The Golden Dawn's private paper linking every tarot card to its place in their system.
Cartomancy
Reading cards for insight, or to answer a question.
Correspondence
The idea that a card, a planet, a letter and a colour can all express the same force. As above, so below.
Court cards
The page, knight, queen and king of each suit.
Divination
Seeking insight or answers through a method such as tarot.
Doctrine
A set of teachings. Waite called part of his book The Doctrine Behind the Veil.
Esoteric
Knowledge studied by a smaller group, often about the inner meaning of things.
Fool's Journey
Reading the major arcana as one story, with the Fool passing through each card.
Freemasons
A society with ceremonies, grades and symbols. The Golden Dawn's founders were Freemasons.
Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a London society founded in 1888 to study magic and symbolism.
Hebrew letters
The 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, linked to the 22 major arcana.
Hermetic
From Hermes Trismegistus, a legendary teacher of hidden wisdom. Used for the Western mystery tradition.
Kabbalah
A Jewish mystical tradition about how the divine and the world are connected.
Major arcana
The 22 picture cards, from the Fool to the World.
Mamluk
The rulers of Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517.
Minor arcana
The 56 suit cards: wands, cups, swords and pentacles.
Occult
From the Latin for hidden. Knowledge of the unseen.
Oracle
A source of insight or guidance.
Pips
The numbered cards in each suit, from ace to ten.
Rider Waite Smith
The 1909 deck by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, first published by Rider.
Secret Chiefs
The higher teachers the Golden Dawn said guided their order.
Sephiroth
The ten spheres on the Tree of Life.
Suits
The four families of the minor arcana.
Synaesthesia
When one sense brings another with it, such as seeing pictures when hearing music.
Tarot de Marseille
The classic tarot design made famous by French card makers in the 1600s and 1700s.
Thoth
Aleister Crowley's deck, painted by Lady Frieda Harris, named after the Egyptian god of wisdom.
Tree of Life
The Kabbalah's map of ten spheres and the 22 paths between them.
Trionfi
Italian for triumphs. The first name for the picture cards, and the root of our word trump.
Trumps
The picture cards that beat ordinary cards in the original game.

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