Tarot – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the playing cards created for trick-taking games and later used for divinatory and esoteric/occult purposes. For other uses, see Tarot (disambiguation). Not to be confused with taro.

The tarot (; 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 for divination as well as a map of mental and spiritual pathways.

Like the common deck of playing cards, 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 one (or Ace) to ten and four face cards (King, Queen, Knight, and Jack/Knave) for a total of 14 cards. In addition, the tarot has 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]

Franois 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 unplayed, tarot cards are now used primarily for divinatory purposes.[1] 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]

The English and French word tarot derives from the Italian tarocchi, which has no known origin or etymology.[3] The singular term is tarocco, commonly known today as a term for a type of blood orange in Italian. When it spread, the word was changed to tarot in French and Tarock in German. There are many theories to the origin of the word, many with no connection to the occult.[4] 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.[5] Other writers believe it comes from the Arabic word turuq, which means 'ways'.[6] Alternatively, it may be from the Arabic taraka, 'to leave, abandon, omit, leave behind'.[3]

Playing cards first entered Europe in the late 14th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, with suits of Swords, Batons or Polo sticks (commonly known as Wands by those practicing occult or divinatory tarot), Cups, and Coins (commonly known as disks, or pentacles by practitioners of the occult or divinatory tarot). These suits were very similar to modern tarot divination decks and are still used in traditional Italian, Spanish and Portuguese playing card decks.[7]

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 Florence, in 1440. 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.[8] During the 16th-century, a new game played with a standard deck but sharing the same name (triomphe) was quickly becoming popular. This coincided with the older game being renamed tarocchi.[1]

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".[9]

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)[1] and the Boiardo Tarocchi poem, written at an unknown date between 1461 and 1494.[10]

Two playing card decks from Milan (the Brera-Brambilla and Cary-Yale-Tarocchi)extant, but fragmentarywere 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.

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Tarot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia