Tarot Through the Ages
Tarot cards, in the images we are most familiar with today, evolved from a kind of table game played in 15th century Italy, becaming popular throughout Europe over the next four centuries.
To fully explore the history of Tarot, you can read the expansive book by Michael Dummet, “The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City” (Duckworth, 1980). Dummet, a British philosopher of high regard, is the author of many books on the Tarot. His scholarship on Tarot is extensive, and provides much of the research available on the origins of the Tarot deck and its variations.
Tarot originally would have been a pastime of the leisure class, those with the time and money to spend on games. Certainly at that time the cards were handmade and illustrated by artists, and each set would vary with the individual artist’s representation of the card’s images. Especially from the 15th to the 18th centuries in Europe, variations of Tarot games were wildly popular, enjoyed by people of some wealth and intellect, very much like chess or bridge. Through the 1700’s Tarot was an absolute craze across the entire continent.
Tarot Decks
There are several Tarot decks that have come to represent a familiar iconography, each with their own history, interpretation and devotees. The 15th Century Italian Visconti-Sforza deck is probably the earliest surviving deck of this era, with original cards in the collections of several museums around the world. These beautiful, artistic images are reproduced frequently.
A 19th century version from the south of France, known as the Tarot de Marseille, is a very popular deck in Europe.
In the United States, the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck