From Solitaire and Poker, to a divinatory tool for gaining information. How did Tarot evolve from seemingly plain playing cards?
Introduction of Playing Cards and Tarot Decks
In the middle of the 15th century, Tarot emerged as a variation of the standard Italian playing cards, likely originating in Milan or Ferrara. The origins of European playing cards, let alone Tarot, were unknown for centuries. Before the 1980s, theories suggested they might have come from China, Persia, or India, all of which had their own type of playing cards.
The only solid historical evidence came from bans against card games, indicating their widespread use by the 1370s. The earliest known reference dates to 1367, when Bern prohibited gambling with cards. 10 years later, a Dominican monk named Johannes von Rheinfelden wrote the first detailed description in his Tractatus de moribus et disciplina humanae conversationis (A Treatise on Morals and Civilising Teachings to Be Drawn from Frequently Used Things). Rheinfelden’s lecture focused on popular games, including card games, as a tool for moral instruction. He described a deck of fifty-two cards used for trick-taking games, divided into four suits of thirteen cards each. Each suit contained numbered cards (one through ten) and three court cards: a King and two Marschalli (officers), which may have been early ancestors to the modern Queen and Knave.
Unfortunately, he didn’t record the exact symbols used in the early decks. However, we know that northern European card games experimented with all kinds of imaginative suits: Herons, Hounds, Falcons, and Falcon Lures, or Roses, Crowns, Pennies, and Rings. By the mid-15th century, standard suits became more usual. In Switzerland, decks featured Roses, Hawkbells, Shields, and Acorns, while in Germany we saw Hearts, Hawkbells, Leaves, and Acorns. Around 1480, the French introduced the suits we still recognise today: Hearts (Cœurs), Clover Leaves (Trèfles), Pikes (Piques), and Paving Tiles (Carreaux), which eventually became our modern Hearts, Clubs, Spades, and Diamonds.
But where did these suits originally come from? For centuries, their origins remained unknown until, in 1980, Michael Dummett, Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University, found the missing piece to the puzzle. By studying old French and German decks, he proved they evolved from the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese suits of the late 1300s: Cups, Coins, Swords, and Batons. Even more importantly, Dummett showed that these suits themselves traced back to playing cards from the Islamic Near East (today’s Egypt), the true ancestors of all European card decks.
The Chronological Order of Tarot’s Development
Fourteenth Century:
Mamlük playing cards were introduced to Europe, inspiring the development of European playing cards. These early decks featured four suits, each led by a King and one or two Ministers. Over time, the Ministers evolved into Knights, Knaves, and Queens.
Fifteenth Century:
Tarot decks were born by adding twenty-two illustrated trump cards (the Major Arcana) to the standard Italian deck of 56 cards, which used Mamlük-derived suits: Coins, Cups, Swords, and Batons. The trump imagery was drawn from Medieval sources. Hand-painted decks were made for noble families, including the Viscontis of Milan, the D’Estes of Ferrara, and the patrons of the Charles VI Tarot. The Cary-Yale sheet, an early printed set of Tarot, was produced in Milan.
Sixteenth Century:
Printed tarot decks became widespread, with production in Florence, Bologna, and Ferrara. Tarot’s popularity spreads to France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Spain. Captions and Roman numerals were added to the trumps, solidifying their use in card games.
Seventeenth Century:
The Pope calls out the “inappropriate” trump imagery, leading to substitutions in certain decks. The Tarot of Bologna and Florence’s minchiate replaced cards like the Female Pope, Pope, Emperor, and Empress. The Tarot of Besançon substituted the Female Pope with Juno and the Pope with Jupiter. Meanwhile, the Belgian Tarot influenced the development of the Tarot of Paris and the Viéville Tarot.
Eighteenth Century:
The Tarot of Marseille rose in popularity, and Egyptian symbolism was increasingly noted as Tarot’s origin. Beyond playing card games, Tarot was now used for complex cartomancy.
Nineteenth & Twentieth Centuries:
Kabbalistic symbolism and astrology are integrated into Tarot interpretations. This period saw an explosion of decks designed exclusively for divination, marking Tarot’s shift from playing cards to cartomancy.
Want to know more about The Mamlük Cards and the creation of the Court Cards and Trumps, or the Historical use of Tarot? Keep an eye on my website for my next blog post!
Source
Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson, published in 2004, was used to write this post.
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