History of Tarot
From a card game of the Italian Renaissance to a tool for self-reflection: the history of tarot in six parts, with what is documented and the legends that stubbornly persist.
The origins of tarot: a card game from northern Italy
Tarot does not begin in Egypt but at the princely courts of northern Italy: as a card game with trumps, around 1440.
Tarot de Marseille: how a game found its standard
Woodcut printers in France turned the Italian court game into a mass-produced article. Their pattern still shapes tarot cards today.
The esoteric turn: how a game became a book of secrets
In 1781 a Parisian scholar declares tarot to be the book of the Egyptian priests. Historically wrong, culturally momentous.
Waite, Smith and the Golden Dawn: the deck of 1909
London, 1909: a theatre artist draws 78 cards in a few months and changes tarot for ever. She was paid a flat fee.
Tarot in the 20th and 21st centuries: from secret knowledge to self-reflection
From the US counterculture and the German tarot boom of the 1980s to apps and indie decks: the recent history of tarot.
Timeline: the history of tarot from 1370 to the present
More than 30 milestones from the first playing cards in Europe to the free Waite-Smith tarot: the history of tarot as a table.