The History of the Tarot

The early history of the 78 tarot cards is shrouded in mystery and speculation. Some believe that they derived from the sacred books of ancient Egypt. Others that they originated in India or China and were brought to Europe by gypsies. Some think that they were invented by a group of medieval cabalists. Influences as varied as Greek mystery religions, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Hermetism, Catharism, ancient Arabian and Indian philosophies, and the Jewish cabala have been detected in their symbols. The Tarot has been claimed to enshrine the secrets of the universe and to hold the key to the true nature of human beings.

Early Cards
The oldest description we have of a set of Tarot cards dates from 1392, when three decks were bought for King Charles VI of France. The cards, commissioned from an artist – through to have been Jacques Gringonneur, who was also an astrologer and cabalist – were undoubtedly magnificent, as befitted their royal beneficiary. Seventeen cards, painted on vellum, with gold edgings and depicted in silver, lapiz lazuli and dark red pigment known as ‘mummy’s dust’, were long thought to belong to this set. They are now however, judged to be Italian and of later manufacture.

Tarot cards almost certainly preceded playing cards designed for entertainment, to which they are related. Examples exist of 15^th century decks of cards used for games and also for education – a set depicting the order of the universe, for example. But records show that playing cards were widespread in Europe earlier than this. Gambling with cards was banned in what is now Germany as early as 1378 but in 1379 card-playing was one of the events at a festival in Brussels, and in the same year, the ledgers of the Duke of Brabant (also in modern-day Belgium) recorded money paid for a set of cards. In the following year the Code of Nuremberg permitted card-playing and three years later it was sanctioned in Florence. But in 1397 people in Paris were still prohibited from playing cards on working days.

The imagery of the Tarot and other cards has been linked with the pageants held in Italian cities in medieval times. Called Triumphs, these were usually commissioned by one of the noble families and were dramatic stories with a moral theme, possibly related to the ancient mystery plays. Arranged in honour of dynastic marriage or a visiting Church dignitary, or to celebrate a saint’s day, the pageants developed into costly and complicated tableaux that eventually required the invention by engineers of mechanisms to animate them, and the designs of famous artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, to stage them. A card game named Triumphs existed from the 14^th century and may have developed from cards commemorating one such pageant, commissioned by the patron or presented to him as a souvenir by the grateful artist.

Burning of the Tarot
During the later Middle Ages many sets of Tarot cards were burned by the church, which opposed gambling with its emphasis on luck, and saw card-playing as a means of uniting people in sin. The first known attach on card-playing was written in 1377 by a Swiss monk. The target of his criticism seems to have been a deck not of 78 cards, nor even the 22 major cards of the Tarot, but a set of 56 cards possibly the fore-runner of our modern playing-card deck. In 1450 a Franciscan friar in northern Italy denunciated the pagan images on the picture cards. His attach on card-playing continued the theme or a crusade against the widespread Italian practise of gambling led by St Bernadine of Sienna. In 1423 Bernadine was responsible for the destruction of many decks of cards designed for the great Italian families. The Visconti deck, created for Filipa Visconti, Duke of Milan, was fortunately saved from the flames and remains one of the most famous Tarot decks in existence today.