Visconti-Sforza tarot deck. The Devil card is a 20th-century replacement for the card missing from the original 15th-century deck.

The tarot ( /ˈtæroʊ/; first known as trionfi and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of playing cards (most commonly numbering 78), used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot. From the late 18th century until the present time the tarot has also found use by mystics and occultists in efforts at divination or as a map of mental and spiritual pathways.

The tarot has four suits (which vary by region, being the French suits in Northern Europe, the Latin suits in Southern Europe, and the German suits in Central Europe). Each of these suits has pip cards numbering from ace to ten and four face cards for a total of 14 cards. In addition, the tarot is distinguished by a separate 21-card trump suit and a single card known as the Fool. Depending on the game, the Fool may act as the top trump or may be played to avoid following suit.^[1]

François Rabelais gives tarau as the name of one of the games played by Gargantua in his Gargantua and Pantagruel;^[2] this is likely the earliest attestation of the French form of the name.^{[citation needed]} Tarot cards are used throughout much of Europe to play card games. In English-speaking countries, where these games are largely unknown, tarot cards are now used primarily for divinatory purposes.^[1][3] Occultists call the trump cards and the Fool "the major arcana" while the ten pip and four court cards in each suit are called minor arcana. The cards are traced by some occult writers to ancient Egypt or the Kabbalah but there is no documented evidence of such origins or of the usage of tarot for divination before the 18th century.^[1]

Etymology[link]

The English and French word tarot derives from the Italian tarocchi, which has no known origin or etymology. One theory relates the name "tarot" to the Taro River in northern Italy, near Parma; the game seems to have originated in northern Italy, in Milan or Bologna.^[4] Other writers believe it comes from the Arabic word طرق turuq, which means 'ways'.^[5] Alternatively, it may be from the Arabic ترك taraka, 'to leave, abandon, omit, leave behind'.^[6] According to a French etymology, the Italian tarocco derived from Arabic طرح ṭarḥ,^[7] 'rejection; subtraction, deduction, discount'.^[8]

There is also the question of whether the word tarot is related to Harut and Marut, who were mentioned in a short account in the Qur'an. According to this account, a group of Israelites learned magic, for demonstration and to test them, from two angels called Harut and Marut, and it adds that this knowledge of magic would be passed on to others by the devil.^[9] What can be taken into account here is the phonetic resemblance of tarot تاروت to Harut هاروت and Marut ماروت.

History[link]

Playing cards first entered Europe in the late 14th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, with suits very similar to the tarot suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins (also known as disks, and pentacles) and those still used in traditional Italian, Spanish and Portuguese decks.^[10]

However, the earliest written document mentioning a tarot-like card set occurs as early as 1227, and it says that "Italian children are instructed in the knowledge of the virtues via sheets (cards) denominated carticellas". A perfect example of these "carticellas" comes from a 1460 set known today as "Tarot de Mantegna" or "Tarot de Baldini" created by artist Francesco del Cossa. This set was composed of 50 cards and split in 5 categories (Social Classes, The Muses, Arts & Sciences, Virtues & Cosmic Principles, and the Planets & Spheres).^[11] Nevertheless,the first direct mention of playing cards was in 1299 in a manuscript written in Siena titled "Trattato del governo della familia di Pipozzo di Sandro", in which the existence of naibbe is mentioned, which is the first term used for playing cards (naipes in Spanish), originating from the Arabic word naib (`deputy') suggesting the name of the game -`the Game of Deputies'.^[12][13]

Starting in 1310, German territories start shunning the game of naibbe (cards). Additionally, In 1332, king Alfonso XI of Castile advises his knights to not play such games.^[12] However, the first direct documented evidence of a ban on their use is in 1367, Bern, Switzerland. Wide use of playing cards in Europe can, with some certainty, be traced from 1377 onwards.^[14]

Additionally, in a 1377 document, naibbe was one of the favorite games of a German priest called Father Johannes where he writes about the existence of 7 different types of decks, one of which consists of 78 cards, which could only refer to a Tarot deck. It is believed Tarot could have evolved out of traditional playing cards , with the addition of the major arcana being influenced by the previously mentioned carticellas, which already depicted cards such as The Sun, The Moon, Justice, Temperance, Strength, The Emperor, and the Pope (Hierophant.) Other theories by occultists point out how the mysterious rise to tarot coincides with the spread of the Holy inquisition in the 12th century, and the formation of Kabbalah, theorizing that the esoteric symbolism of the cards are remainders of pagan Europe disguised as playing cards in order to escape persecution.^[15]

The first known documented tarot cards were created between 1430 and 1450 in Milan, Ferrara and Bologna in northern Italy when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the common four-suit pack. These new decks were originally called carte da trionfi, triumph cards, and the additional cards known simply as trionfi, which became "trumps" in English. The first literary evidence of the existence of carte da trionfi is a written statement in the court records in Ferrara, in 1442.^[16] The oldest surviving tarot cards are from fifteen fragmented decks painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan.^[17]

Divination using playing cards is in evidence as early as 1540 in a book entitled The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forli which allows a simple method of divination, though the cards are used only to select a random oracle and have no meaning in themselves. But manuscripts from 1735 (The Square of Sevens) and 1750 (Pratesi Cartomancer) document rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards of the tarot as well as a system for laying out the cards. Giacomo Casanova wrote in his diary that in 1765 his Russian mistress frequently used a deck of playing cards for divination.^[18]

Early decks[link]

Le Bateleur: The Juggler from the Tarot of Marseilles. This card is often named The Magician in modern English language tarots

Picture-card packs are first mentioned by Martiano da Tortona probably between 1418 and 1425, since the painter he mentions, Michelino da Besozzo, returned to Milan in 1418, while Martiano himself died in 1425. He describes a deck with 16 picture cards with images of the Greek gods and suits depicting four kinds of birds, not the common suits. However the 16 cards were obviously regarded as "trumps" as, about 25 years later, Jacopo Antonio Marcello called them a ludus triumphorum, or "game of trumps".^[19]

Special motifs on cards added to regular packs show philosophical, social, poetical, astronomical, and heraldic ideas, Roman/Greek/Babylonian heroes, as in the case of the Sola-Busca-Tarocchi (1491)^[20] and the Boiardo Tarocchi poem, written at an unknown date between 1461 and 1494.^[21]

Two playing card decks from Milan (the Brera-Brambilla and Cary-Yale-Tarocchi)—extant, but fragmentary—were made circa 1440. Three documents dating from 1 January 1441 to July 1442, use the term trionfi. The document from January 1441 is regarded as an unreliable reference; however, the same painter, Sagramoro, was commissioned by the same patron, Leonello d'Este, as in the February 1442 document. The game seemed to gain in importance in the year 1450, a Jubilee year in Italy, which saw many festivities and the movement of many pilgrims.

Three mid-15th century sets were made for members of the Visconti family.^[22] The first deck, and probably the prototype, is called the Cary-Yale Tarot (or Visconti-Modrone Tarot) and was created between 1442 and 1447 by an anonymous painter for Filippo Maria Visconti.^[22] The cards (only 66) are today in the Cary collection of the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University, in the U.S. state of Connecticut. The most famous was painted in the mid-15th century, to celebrate Francesco Sforza and his wife Bianca Maria Visconti, daughter of the duke Filippo Maria. Probably, these cards were painted by Bonifacio Bembo or Francesco Zavattari between 1451 and 1453.^[22] Of the original cards, 35 are in The Morgan Library & Museum, 26 are at the Accademia Carrara, 13 are at the Casa Colleoni^[22] and four: 'The Devil', 'The Tower', 'Money's Horse (The Chariot)' and '3 of Spades', are lost or else never made. This "Visconti-Sforza" deck, which has been widely reproduced, reflects conventional iconography of the time to a significant degree.^[23]