I fell down a rabbit hole on the history of the Tarot cards.
Crazy how the RWS cards evolved from aristocratic parlor games to spiritual tools. It’s like watching The Fool’s journey itself - starting as something simple and innocent, then transforming into something much more profound through centuries of human connection and meaning-making.
I think the symbolism was always there, even when people were just playing Tarocchi. Perhaps we recognized something deeper in those archetypal images that transcended their original purpose, just like how a game can become a mirror for the human experience.
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That rabbit hole is deep.
Playing an actual hand of tarocchi using the pagat rules was cool. It’s a dated game, and it shows, but it might help inform your readings.
The trump hierarchy and the Fool as an excuse suddenly made sense in a way reading about it never did. For visuals, check out the Beinecke Library scans of the Cary-Yale deck and the British Museum’s Sola-Busca images.
The World of Playing Cards site has good write-ups that aren’t too academic. If you lay out the Fool’s way with your RWS deck, then print some early card images (like the Sola-Busca Sun or a 19th-century Soprafino World) and swap them in. You’ll see which meanings stay consistent and which ones shift.
You’re onto something here.
I do think more readers should pay attention to the history of the deck. We use it to look to the future, but you can’t know where you’re going without paying attention to where you came from.
Those Italian court cards, which transform into esoteric tools, show how humans love to find deeper meaning in ordinary things. Cards have practical benefits that other divination methods lack.
Reading tea leaves is pretty vague, and calculating astrology charts requires serious math skills. Tarot gives you immediate visual symbols while still having layers to explore. The affordability aspect is huge. Wealthy Renaissance families commissioned astrologers and bought expensive crystal balls, but Tarot (or cartomancy) cards were accessible to everyone.
By the 1700s, people were already creating cartomancy systems aimed at regular citizens rather than nobility. What I find cool is how modern deck creators continue this democratic tradition. You’ve got everything from faithful historical reproductions to completely reimagined artwork. Each deck becomes its own cultural statement, reflecting the creator’s perspective.
The symbolism in those early Tarocchi decks was definitely there waiting. The images already carried archetypal weight. They just needed the cultural shift to move from gaming tables to spiritual practice.
Quick bit of history: in 1781, Court de Gébelin wrote that tarot carried ancient Egyptian wisdom. That claim didn’t hold up.
He also described sitting quietly with a single card and thinking it through, and that idea later influenced meditation-style use of the cards. From there, the move from card game to divination feels pretty natural.
The imagery-Death and The Lovers-puts big themes on the table even when you’re just keeping score. People end up reading into it, and it goes from play to practice.
There’s this ongoing argument about tarot origins (but we all play nice together here right?)
Were they just playing cards or spiritual tools? The skeptics say entertainment only. The mystics trace everything back to Renaissance occultism and hidden knowledge.
Looking at those old images, they do have this quality that sticks with you. Whether that was purposeful or something people projected onto them over the centuries, who knows. The symbols work either way.
Been researching tarot for about 30 years now, the history, art, origins, all of it.
I have this theory about how the cards split up early on. The major arcana went one way, mostly used by women for fortune-telling at parties and social events. The pip cards went another way, straight to the gaming tables and gambling halls.
Found this saying once: ‘What the gambler sees as chance, the seer reads as fate.’
Sums up how one deck could do two totally different jobs. You could split it right down the middle and have fortune-telling on one side of the table, poker on the other. Then Rider Waite Smith came along in the early 1900s and put pictures on all the pip cards.
Suddenly, the whole deck could be used for divination. That’s when tarot really took off in England and America. You’re right about The Fool’s path, the cards went through their own version of that. Simple playing cards becoming something more meaningful.
I think people were already using the major arcana for divination back in the 1300s, even with all the card games going on.
I think the ‘game first, divination later’ narrative misses some things.
The Sola Busca deck had all that symbolic imagery right from the start, and tons of historical decks have their Devil cards missing - people must have been spooked by them. Regular playing cards still carry symbolic weight (Ace of Spades = death), so those Renaissance Tarocchi players were probably picking up on the deeper meanings too.
They weren’t just playing a game. It might have been cover they used when asked at the time to hide the occult nature.
Tarot runs in my family, we’ve been reading cards for generations. One of my ancestors apparently worked with the Golden Dawn back in the day.
He saw the whole shift happen, from Italian card game to mystical practice. The Golden Dawn took these Renaissance playing cards and layered their ceremonial magic and Kabbalah concepts onto them.
The archetypal images were already there in the cards, they just gave them new meaning.
People have been turning random objects into fortune-telling tools forever.
From reading coffee grounds to using fancy playing cards. Reminds me of Marie Kondo talking about objects sparking joy, but with Tarot, it’s more about finding meaning in cards that started as entertainment for rich people back in the day.
Regular playing cards descended from tarot’s minor arcana. Standard decks still have that divinatory aspect; each suit relates to those tarot elements.
If you’ve played poker, you know reading the cards won’t guarantee a win since other players have their own hands. However, it can become apparent when you’re overplaying yours. The cards might tell you to fold before you do something dumb.
Speaking of transformation from parlor games to mystical tools, I’ve been trying to track down Helen Farley’s 'A Cultural History of Tarot’ for ages.
It apparently goes deep into this evolution you’re describing. The book seems impossible to find, which is really frustrating. I’ve heard it covers how tarot symbolism changed through different cultures and time periods.
Has anyone here actually found a copy? I’d love to know what it says about tarot going from aristocratic entertainment to spiritual practice.
Look at how Tarocchi cards were discussed in church records versus personal letters from the same period. The tone shifts pretty dramatically. In official documents, it’s all innocent entertainment. But in private correspondence, people sometimes hint at deeper uses. Maybe some families genuinely just played the game, while others saw the symbolic layers from day one.