Tarot cards came from northern Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century, where they were made for a card game: an ordinary four-suit pack with an extra series of picture cards that acted as trumps. The oldest surviving cards, the hand-painted Visconti-Sforza decks, were made for the rulers of Milan in the mid-1400s. Using tarot to tell fortunes came more than three centuries later, in Paris in the 1780s, and the images most people picture today were drawn in London in 1909.
The popular story says tarot is ancient, Egyptian or secret. The documented story is younger and, honestly, better. Here's what's known, in order, and where the myths came from.
Tarot's history at a glance
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1370s | Playing cards appear in Europe, probably arriving from the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt |
| 1440 | A Florence record mentions decks of trionfi, the early name for tarot |
| Mid-1400s | The Visconti-Sforza cards are painted for the rulers of Milan |
| 1490s | The Sola Busca deck gives illustrated scenes to its numbered cards |
| About 1502 | The name tarocho appears, in Brescia |
| 1600s to 1700s | Woodblock decks in the pattern now called the Tarot de Marseille spread through France |
| 1781 | Antoine Court de Gébelin claims tarot is Egyptian |
| About 1789 | Etteilla produces one of the first decks designed for divination |
| 1888 | The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn is founded in London |
| 1909 | The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is published, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith |
| 1938 to early 1940s | Lady Frieda Harris paints the Thoth tarot for Aleister Crowley |
Who invented tarot?
No one person. Tarot grew out of ordinary playing cards, which reached Europe in the late fourteenth century. By 1377 cards were common enough in Florence for the city to ban a newly arrived card game.
Sometime in the early fifteenth century, players in the courts of northern Italy added a fifth series to the pack: picture cards of allegorical figures, such as Love, Death, Fortune and the Sun, which could beat any card in the four ordinary suits. They were called trionfi, triumphs, and the English word "trump" comes from the same idea. One earlier deck, made for Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan in the late 1410s or early 1420s, showed classical gods. It's often treated as a precursor, though it doesn't survive.
The earliest firm record of tarot proper is a Florentine document from 1440 about two decks of trionfi. Within a few decades, decks were being made in Milan, Ferrara and Bologna. The game itself was a trick-taking game, a distant cousin of whist.
Where the word "tarot" comes from
For its first sixty years or so, tarot was simply trionfi. Around 1502 a new word, tarocho, turns up in Brescia, and tarocchi became the Italian name. Nobody knows for certain where the word came from; several theories exist and none is proven. French players turned tarocchi into tarot, and that's the word English borrowed.
When tarot became a fortune-telling tool
For about three hundred years, tarot was mainly a game. There are scattered earlier hints of people attaching meanings to cards, but the big turn came in Paris.
In 1781, the scholar Antoine Court de Gébelin published the eighth volume of his large work Le Monde primitif, in which he argued that tarot preserved the wisdom of ancient Egyptian priests. The same volume included an essay by the Comte de Mellet, who linked the trumps to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and described a way of reading the cards for divination.
A Parisian cartomancer, Jean-Baptiste Alliette, who wrote as Etteilla (his surname backward), took the ideas and ran with them. He wrote guides to reading cards and, around 1789, produced one of the first tarot decks designed specifically for fortune-telling. From then on, tarot had two lives: a game still played across Europe, and a practice of reading the cards for meaning.
Myths about where tarot came from
Tarot came from ancient Egypt. It didn't. This idea starts with Court de Gébelin in 1781 and had no evidence behind it then or since. He was reading Egyptian symbolism into a European design. The one genuine Egyptian link is to playing cards in general, which probably reached Europe through the Mamluk sultanate. The trumps that make tarot tarot were added in Italy.
Romani people brought tarot to Europe. There's no evidence for this. The idea was popularized by nineteenth-century French occultists, notably Papus, whose book Le Tarot des Bohémiens appeared in 1889. "Bohemian" was a common, inaccurate label for Romani people, and the story attached a romantic myth to them without any historical basis.
Tarot is a coded version of the Kabbalah. The links between tarot and Jewish mysticism were added by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers, starting with the Comte de Mellet and developed by Éliphas Lévi in the 1850s. They're part of how many readers use tarot now, but they weren't there when the cards were made.
Tarot is thousands of years old. The cards are nearly six hundred years old. That's old enough.
From the Golden Dawn to the deck on your table
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in London in 1888, built tarot into a large system of correspondences tying each card to astrology, the elements and the Hebrew letters. It also swapped two cards, putting Strength at number 8 and Justice at 11, so they would fit its astrology. Many modern decks still use that order.
Two members, the writer Arthur Edward Waite and the artist Pamela Colman Smith, produced the deck most people learn with. Published in London by Rider in 1909, it gave every one of the 56 Minor Arcana cards a scene, where most earlier decks simply showed arrangements of cups or swords. Smith very likely studied photographs of the Sola Busca deck, one of the rare early decks with illustrated numbered cards, and a few of her designs echo it. For decades the deck was called the "Rider-Waite," after its publisher and author. Today it's increasingly known as the Rider-Waite-Smith, in recognition of the artist. If you're choosing a first deck, our guide on how to choose a tarot deck explains why her scenes make learning easier.
The other great twentieth-century deck, the Thoth tarot, was painted by Lady Frieda Harris to Aleister Crowley's design between 1938 and the early 1940s, though it wasn't printed as a full deck until years after both had died. For the 22 Major Arcana and how they differ from the rest of the deck, see Major Arcana vs Minor Arcana.
Is tarot still played as a game?
Yes, widely. French Tarot is one of the most popular card games in France. Versions are played in Austria (Königrufen), Denmark, parts of Germany and Switzerland, and around Bologna in Italy, often with decks whose trumps show everyday scenes rather than mystical figures. Players at those tables aren't reading anyone's future; they're trying to win tricks, just as the first owners of the Visconti-Sforza cards were.
For a longer narrative of the same story, including the Visconti-Sforza cards in detail, read our short history of tarot. Or see how those old trumps read today with a free daily tarot card.
Questions readers ask
How old is tarot?
Nearly six hundred years. The first documented tarot decks date from northern Italy in the 1440s, and the earliest firm record is from Florence in 1440. Tarot wasn't widely used for fortune-telling until the 1780s.
Did tarot come from Egypt?
No. The Egyptian theory was invented by the French writer Antoine Court de Gébelin in 1781, without evidence, and historians reject it. Tarot began as a card game in Renaissance Italy.
Who made the first tarot deck?
No single maker is known. The oldest surviving cards are the Visconti-Sforza decks, hand-painted in Milan in the mid-fifteenth century and often associated with the workshop of the painter Bonifacio Bembo. Earlier decks existed but haven't survived.
Why is it called the Rider-Waite deck?
It was named after its publisher, William Rider & Son, and the author who designed its system, Arthur Edward Waite. The artist, Pamela Colman Smith, drew all 78 cards and was barely credited for decades, which is why many people now call it the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.
