✦ The science behind… · by Wooly the scientist
The Real History of Tarot
From a 15th-century card game to the world's most famous oracle.
The story you usually hear — that tarot came from ancient Egypt or timeless mystic priests — is beautiful — but it isn't what really happened. The real history is better documented and, honestly, more human and more surprising. Let's follow it, century by century.
It began as a card game in Renaissance Italy
Tarot first appears in northern Italy in the early-to-mid 1400s as trionfi (later tarocchi) — a trick-taking card GAME for the nobility, a cousin of bridge. The oldest surviving cards are the exquisite hand-painted Visconti-Sforza decks (Milan, ~1440s). The 22 “trumps” we now call the Major Arcana were allegorical pictures of virtues, fortunes and fates.
The popular claim that tarot descends from ancient Egypt, the Kabbalah, or wandering Romani mystics has no historical evidence. It was invented centuries later.
Knowing tarot began as a beloved game makes its imagery feel wonderfully human — a Renaissance picture-book of the human condition, painted for play.
How it became divination (the 1700s)
Using tarot to tell fortunes is documented only from the late 18th century. In 1781, Antoine Court de Gébelin declared — with no proof — that the cards held ancient Egyptian wisdom (the “Book of Thoth”). Soon after, Jean-Baptiste Alliette (“Etteilla”) published the first system for reading tarot.
So tarot divination is roughly 250 years old, not ancient — and the whole “Egyptian” mystique was one man's speculation in the 1780s, repeated ever since as if it were fact.
A 250-year-old tradition is still a rich, living one. It just deserves an honest birthday.
The decks you actually use
The Tarot de Marseille (17th–18th-c. France) standardised the classic pattern. The world's most famous deck, the Rider-Waite-Smith (1909), was illustrated by the artist Pamela Colman Smith — long under-credited — under A. E. Waite's direction. Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris created the Thoth deck (1940s).
The “ancient symbols” you read are, to a large degree, the vision of one brilliant Edwardian illustrator working in 1909.
That's not a letdown — it's a gorgeous story: much of tarot's emotional power is Pamela Colman Smith's art, finally getting her name back.
Why the Egyptian myth stuck
A deep-time, exotic origin sounds authoritative and magical — and our brains love a good origin story (the same meaning-hungry wiring behind seeing signs everywhere). So the myth spread faster than the paperwork.
Repeated as fact, it actually buries the real history — which is more traceable, more human, and arguably more magical.
You can enjoy the mystique AND know the facts. Truth doesn't dim the wonder; it earns it.
What tarot's real history gives you
A continuous, 600-year lineage of art, allegory and symbolism — from Milanese courts to an Edwardian studio to your kitchen table.
And a mirror: knowing the cards were made by human hands for human questions is exactly why they still work so well as a tool for reflection. (More on that in why tarot works.)
Older and younger than you think
Tarot is older than the myth in one way — six centuries of art — and far younger in another: only ~250 years as an oracle. The honest history takes nothing away. It hands you a richer story: a Renaissance game, an Edwardian artist, and a picture-book of the human soul you can still open today. ✦
Sources
- Michael Dummett & Ronald Decker, A History of the Occult Tarot et The Game of Tarot — référence sur l’origine ludique du tarot.
- Jeux Visconti-Sforza (Milan, années 1440-1450) — les plus anciens tarots conservés, peints à la main (Morgan Library, New York).
- Antoine Court de Gébelin, Le Monde primitif (1781) — première affirmation (erronée) d’une origine « égyptienne ».
- Jean-Baptiste Alliette dit « Etteilla » (1780s) — premier système de cartomancie par le tarot.
- Jeu Rider-Waite-Smith (1909) — illustré par Pamela Colman Smith, dirigé par A. E. Waite, publié par Rider & Co.
- Jeu Thoth d’Aleister Crowley & Lady Frieda Harris (peint 1938-1943, publié 1969).
A documentary article, for reflection. It reports established science and clearly names what is belief or interpretation.