As witches and pagans, it’s almost a given that we have to spend a lot of time thinking about the past. After all we are engaging with practices and faiths that are thousands of years old, many with roots before recorded history. We’re piecing together ancient stories and arts, trying to fit them into our modern lives and so it feels almost like a given that some of the most common and well-known tools of our trade must come from a source shrouded in mystery and magic. That’s the default conception of the Tarot. The default assumption is that these cards are some sort of ancient mystery, handed down from high priests of Egypt, hidden from the church, and only recently revealed. Or it was invented by Romani fortune-tellers and should not be touched by outside hands.
These stories are compelling and captivating … but they’re wrong. The history of the Tarot isn’t quite as complicated or mysterious, though there are some unknown parts. This divination tool has a far more modern origin, at least compared to ancient Egypt. But the story of the tarot is fascinating nonetheless.
Tarot began as a card game, pure and simple and the story of tarot is the same as the history of playing cards in general. Playing cards themselves began to show up in Europe around the late 14th century. These were hand-painted cards, but they were made of paper and used a lot so not many survived the centuries. However, we know these cards had suits like modern tarot and playing cards. The real mystery is where did those come from?
We actually don’t really know but the most likely explanation and origin is Asia, specifically China where games played with cards and tiles like Mah Jong, were popular. Mah Jong itself had suits and special trump-type tiles that are suspiciously similar to Tarot, so it’s probably a distant ancestor of the cards we used today. The games likely moved along the silk road until they made it to Europe.
The oldest known Tarot deck is the Visconti-Sforza deck from around 1440. This Italian deck was used for the game which game tarot its name, Tarocchi. The major arcana, as we now know them, were inspired by allegorical figures used in festivals and carnivals, and so the symbolism of the journey of a soul through life, death, and resurrection, was already built in. The game was popular in Italy and eventually caught on in France as well. Eventually, decks like the famous Tarot of Marseilles became popular aby by the time that deck was popular, around 1750, Tarot as a divinatory tool was popular.
And that’s not surprising. Divination has always been part of human culture, from the most ancient of times, and humans will use anything to do it. But it won’t always be recorded. By the 18th century Tarot as a divination tool was popular enough that occultist Jean-Baptiste Alliette, or Etteilla, wrote a famous work analyzing the mystic meaning of the Tarot … and falsely connecting it to the ancient Egyptians. This isn’t surprising however given that a lot of secret societies at the time, including the Freemasons, were all about connecting their rites to Egypt since it was the most ancient culture that the majority of folks knew of. Alliette was also the first to name the major and minor arcana.
Occultism itself grew and developed into the 19th and early 20th century, perhaps most famously with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which had roots in Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism much like Alliette’s work. Therefore it’s not surprising that the modern Tarot we know best was developed by members of that organization. The deck which made Tarot famous globally is commonly referred to as the “Rider-Waite” but is more accurately called the Rider-Waite-Colman-Smith deck. That’s because while Rider was the publisher and golden dawn member Arthur Waite wrote the guide, it was the amazing Pamela Colman-Smith who created the cards we know so well today and it was she who first put allegorical images to all 78 cards.
Tarot isn’t ancient Egyptian, but it does tap into an ancient practice, that is, divination itself and using it as a tool to speak to the divine, to the otherworld, or even simply to ourselves. The real history of the Tarot may not be as sexy as “ancient manuscript revealed to a select few” but that’s okay. A tool doesn’t have to be ancient to work and a system doesn’t need to be shrouded in mystery to be magical.
Guest Contributor Bio
Jessica Mason lives near Portland, Oregon with her wife, daughter, and corgi. She is a journalist and author of nonfiction, fiction, and fan fiction. She hosts the Reel Magic podcast and when she’s not writing or being a fangirl, she enjoys gardening, writing other things, music, and witchcraft.
The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.
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