A Complete History of Tarot
The Fool, The Juggler and The Popess Trionfi Cards (Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards, c. 1450-1480) Permanent Collection of The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY
Learn Tarot with That Oracle Guy Patrick. Together we’ll dive into the meanings, symbolism, and history behind each card, with affirmations, journaling prompts, and theme songs to help ground the lessons into your daily life. The wisdom of tarot is yours to claim — and if you're ready to go deeper, Tarot Academy was built for you.
Introduction
Tarot began in 15th-century Italy, specifically in the courts of Milan and Ferrara. The earliest decks, known as “tarocchi”, were not originally designed for divination — they were used for a popular trick-taking card game among Italian nobility and aristocracy. The oldest surviving set of tarocchi, known as the Visconti-Sforza deck, was created for the Duke of Milan’s family around 1440. That’s almost 600 years ago.
Despite its playful origins, tarocchi is where we begin to see the Major Arcana take shape — known as the “trionfi,” or the triumph cards that outscored all the other suits. We also see the beginning formation of all the suits: the cups, the wands, the pentacles, and the swords — as well as the Page, Knight, Queen, and King. All of the symbolism carried on throughout the centuries and exists even to this day.
Fun fact: Il Matto (The Fool) was a special card in tarocchi. Instead of winning “tricks,” it could be played at any time to avoid following suit or losing a valuable card. Everyone wanted Il Matto.
Esoteric Beginnings
Tarocchi eventually spread all across Europe — especially to France, where it evolved into the French Marseilles Tarot. By 1650, all of the original Italian designs were refined and standardized. Mass printing of the time meant that the Marseille Tarot was now widely available for everyone — not just nobility. And it was very popular.
A century later in 1781, a French pastor and writer named Antoine Court de Gébelin published an article claiming that the ever-popular Tarot was actually derived from the Egyptian Book of Thoth — that it contained hidden wisdom from Ancient Egypt. He provided no actual evidence of this, but nonetheless it made a significant impression. Tarot was becoming a curious tool for esoteric knowledge. Could a popular card game really contain secrets from the Ancient Egyptians?
A decade later, a Frenchman named Etteilla (Jean-Baptiste Alliette) published the very first tarot deck explicitly designed for divination, incorporating astrology and alchemical symbolism. It included a guide of explicit meanings for each card, and specific spreads to use for fortune-telling. This deck became known as the Etteilla or Le Jeu de Toth (Toth’s Game) — a pivotal moment in tarot history. Shoutout to Pierre-François Basan, the artist and engraver who worked with Etteilla to develop that first deck.
From there, tarot was firmly established as a fortune-telling tool capable of illuminating a person’s future.
A selection of cards from The Original Etteilla Tarot - Le Jeu de Toth, c. 1791,
Secret Societies & The Occult
Founding Golden Dawn member, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Matthews.
The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed the emergence of professional cartomancers — but this was still largely the domain of freemasons, alchemists, and occultists, not the general public.
In 1856, a French author named Éliphas Lévi linked tarot to the Hebrew alphabet and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, further solidifying its mystical status. His work inspired the establishment of influential occult societies across Europe — most notably the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
(Note: Hermeticism is a philosophical and spiritual tradition based on the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus, emphasizing alchemy, astrology, and the pursuit of divine wisdom through the study of universal laws and the interconnectedness of all things.)
Founded in 1888 in London, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was an esoteric society dedicated to the study and practice of the occult, alchemy, astrology, metaphysics, geomancy, and more. The Golden Dawn placed significant emphasis on tarot, viewing it as a comprehensive symbolic system that encapsulated universal archetypes and esoteric knowledge. Members were encouraged to study and meditate upon the tarot’s imagery to gain deeper spiritual insights.
Prominent figures within the Golden Dawn — including Arthur Edward Waite, Aleister Crowley, and Pamela Colman Smith — would go on to transform the tarot forever.
A Portrait of A.E. Waite
A.E. Waite: The Visionary Who Reimagined Tarot
Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1942) was a scholar of mysticism and alchemy who, unlike some of his Golden Dawn contemporaries, was cautious about ritual magic and divination. He saw tarot not as a fortune-telling tool but as a vehicle for spiritual enlightenment and inner reflection — a system of symbols that could help a person access their own deeper wisdom.
This perspective eventually led Waite to leave the Golden Dawn and establish his own society: The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, which emphasized that true wisdom came from spiritual contemplation, divine grace, and internal connection to the higher self.
From this foundation, he sought to create a new tarot deck — one that aligned with his spiritual, mystical vision of what the cards could offer humanity.
This led him to commission Pamela Colman Smith to illustrate what would become the most famous tarot deck of all time.
A Portrait of Pamela Colman Smith c.1912
Pamela Colman Smith: The Artist Who Captivated The World
Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951) was a British-American artist, writer, and mystic — a fellow member of the Golden Dawn with a background in theater design and symbolism that heavily influenced her artistic approach.
While Waite provided the structure and esoteric meanings behind the cards, it was Smith’s artistic vision that made the Rider-Waite-Smith deck iconic.
Previous decks — including The Etteilla Tarot and The Marseilles Tarot — lacked illustrated Minor Arcana. The Five of Swords in those decks was simply five swords on a card. In Smith’s hands, it became a fully realized scene of conflict and defeat — with expressive figures, dynamic body language, rich symbolic environments, and a narrative quality that anyone could intuitively read.
Smith turned every card into a story. She incorporated psychological depth and symbolic precision into every image, making the tarot more accessible and more resonant than it had ever been.
It is said that Smith had synesthesia — a neurological condition that caused her to perceive colors and shapes when she heard music. This may explain why her visual interpretations of Waite’s esoteric frameworks were so elaborate, layered, and emotionally alive.
The Original RWS Deck and “The Key to The Tarot” Guidebook, Published December 10, 1909
The Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) Tarot Deck
The first RWS Tarot Deck was published by William Rider & Son in London in 1909 — and it changed everything.
Rider, as publisher, wanted to see the newly created deck succeed beyond occult circles. It was marketed as accessible to anyone interested in personal growth and self-exploration, not just secret societies and initiates. A.E. Waite himself wrote the guidebook, The Key to The Tarot, included with every deck.
Suddenly, a complete tarot system was available to beginners. This democratization of tarot played a defining role in its popularization — anyone with curiosity and the price of a deck could begin to learn.
The RWS deck took time to gain momentum. The symbolism was new, the images were unfamiliar, and tarot itself was still considered niche. But the seeds had been planted.
A Spirituality Boom (1960s–1970s)
The 1960s and 1970s changed everything.
This was a period of countercultural exploration, of mass questioning of institutional authority, of people actively seeking alternatives to the spiritual frameworks they had inherited. Astrology, meditation, and tarot became part of the cultural vocabulary in a way they never had before.
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck was at the center of this spiritual revolution. With a publishing boom making reproductions cheaper and more accessible, the RWS and other decks spread rapidly through bookshops, communities, and households that would never have encountered them a generation earlier.
Meanwhile, the influence of Carl Jung, whose theories on archetypes, the collective unconscious, and synchronicity became deeply embedded in how tarot was understood. He gave the practice a new kind of intellectual legitimacy. Tarot wasn’t just fortune-telling. It was a system for understanding the self. For accessing the unconscious. For working with the universal patterns Jung had spent his life describing.
Tarot had arrived.
The Craft, 1996
Tarot’s Mainstream Popularization (1980s–1990s)
The 1980s saw tarot enter the mainstream in a significant way: moving from countercultural subculture into broader public consciousness on the back of the self-help movement.
Personal growth was everywhere. Tony Robbins. Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. The idea that positive thinking, visualization, and conscious self-examination could transform your experience was no longer fringe: it was a publishing category. Late-night infomercials about improving your life ran on loop.
Tarot fit naturally into this landscape. As a tool for accessing the unconscious mind, reflecting on personal patterns, and navigating emotional blocks, it saw a massive uptick in popularity. New decks were being created constantly, each offering tarot through different lenses, philosophies, and aesthetics. There was now a tarot deck for everyone.
By the 1990s, tarot and witchcraft had fully arrived in mainstream pop culture, and the references were everywhere.
The Craft (1996) brought teenage witchcraft to the multiplex and became an instant cult classic.
Practical Magic (1998) romanticized the witch as a figure of depth and power rather than threat.
Hocus Pocus (1993) made the whole thing gleefully fun.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) turned the occult into primetime appointment viewing , Willow's arc from casual magic dabbler to one of the most powerful practitioners on the Hellmouth tracked almost perfectly with how a whole generation was quietly getting more serious about their own practice.
Charmed (1998) put three witches in a Victorian San Francisco manor and made the craft feel like an inheritance worth claiming.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996) made it accessible and playful.
The X-Files (1993) fed a nationwide appetite for the mysterious, the unexplained, and the sense that official reality was leaving something important out.
Even prestige fare leaned in. Interview with the Vampire (1994) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) treated the occult with gothic seriousness. Angel Heart (1987) opened with a tarot reading that set the tone for one of the decade's most unsettling thrillers. Twin Peaks (1990) wrapped its Pacific Northwest murder mystery in dream logic, owls, and supernatural symbolism that felt closer to divination than detective work.
What all of these had in common was a cultural permission slip: it was no longer strange to be interested in the unseen world. The mystical had become, somehow, mainstream. And tarot — already riding the self-help wave of the decade — benefited directly. A generation of people who grew up watching Buffy research demons in Giles's library and Willow cast circles in her dorm room came of age already comfortable with the idea that ancient symbolic systems held real power.
The Internet & The Rise of Online Tarot (2000s)
The internet did for tarot what the printing press did for the Marseilles deck: it made it available to everyone, everywhere, simultaneously.
Online forums in the early 2000s created the first large-scale communities of tarot enthusiasts who had never met in person. People who had learned the cards in relative isolation suddenly had access to thousands of other readers, thousands of interpretations, thousands of perspectives on a shared symbolic language.
Sites like Aeclectic Tarot became foundational resources. The first wave of independent deck creators began publishing outside traditional channels. Online stores made purchasing decks from anywhere in the world possible. The barrier between “tarot practitioner” and “tarot student” began to dissolve as freely available content exploded.
The ebook and digital content era of the late 2000s and early 2010s deepened this. Tarot educators began publishing independently. Blogs — including some of the most influential tarot resources that exist today — were built during this period by readers who wanted to share what they knew with an audience they suddenly had direct access to.
The Modern Tarot Renaissance (2015–Present)
What has happened to tarot since 2015 is, without exaggeration, a renaissance.
Instagram transformed the tarot aesthetic. Suddenly the visual quality of decks mattered in a new way — not just for reading, but for sharing. A new generation of independent deck creators, many of them artists first and tarot practitioners second, began producing decks that were visually extraordinary and culturally specific in ways the traditional tarot had never been.
Decks celebrating Black, Indigenous, and queer experiences. Decks rooted in specific mythologies, cultural traditions, and artistic movements. Decks made by one person with a pen and a printing budget, distributed directly to the people who wanted them. The democratization that Rider and Waite began in 1909 had reached its logical endpoint: anyone could make a tarot deck, and anyone could find a deck that felt like it had been made for them.
TikTok, and specifically #WitchTok. accelerated this further.
By 2020 and 2021, tarot content was reaching audiences of millions through short video. A new generation of readers who had never considered themselves “into” spirituality encountered the cards through a fifteen-second clip and found something that resonated. The stigma that had lingered around tarot for centuries — that it was fortune-telling, that it was occult, that it was not for serious people — largely evaporated.
Today, tarot is a mainstream tool for self-reflection, therapy-adjacent journaling, and creative exploration. Therapists reference it. Coaches use it. Writers use it for character development. Artists use it for creative direction. People who would describe themselves as entirely non-spiritual use it as a weekly check-in with themselves.
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck, published in 1909, built on a tradition stretching back to 15th-century Italy, remains the most widely used and referenced tarot system in the world.
Six hundred years after Il Matto helped Italian nobles avoid losing card games, The Fool is still leading the journey.
Tarot Today
We are living through tarot’s most expansive, inclusive, and culturally rich period. The question is no longer whether tarot is legitimate, it is what tarot means for you, and what you want to do with it.
If you are new to the cards, you are arriving at the best possible moment. The resources available today (including this blog) represent centuries of accumulated wisdom, made accessible in a way that would have been unimaginable even twenty years ago. The knowledge that once lived only in secret occult societies now lives in a search bar.
And if you are ready to go deeper, to actually learn the cards, not just collect them: Tarot Academy was built exactly for that.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was tarot invented? The earliest tarot decks — known as tarocchi — were created in 15th-century Italy, around 1440. They were initially used as playing cards for a trick-taking game, not for divination.
Who made the first tarot deck for divination? A Frenchman named Etteilla (Jean-Baptiste Alliette) published the first tarot deck explicitly designed for divination in the late 18th century, incorporating astrology and alchemical symbolism.
What is the Rider-Waite-Smith deck? The Rider-Waite-Smith deck, published in 1909, is the most influential tarot deck ever created. Designed by Arthur Edward Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, it was the first deck to feature fully illustrated scenes on every card — including the Minor Arcana — making tarot dramatically more accessible and intuitive to read.
Who was Pamela Colman Smith? Pamela Colman Smith was a British-American artist and mystic who illustrated the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. Despite creating the most recognized tarot imagery in history, she was largely uncredited for decades — the deck was known simply as the “Rider-Waite” deck until recent years restored her name to it.
Is tarot a religious practice? Tarot is not inherently tied to any religion. It originated as a card game, evolved through occult and esoteric traditions, and is used today by people of every spiritual background — and by people with no spiritual practice at all — as a tool for self-reflection and personal insight.
What is the difference between tarot and oracle cards? Tarot has a fixed structure: 78 cards divided into the Major Arcana (22 cards) and Minor Arcana (56 cards), with four suits. Oracle cards have no fixed structure — each deck is created according to its own system and theme. Both can be powerful tools for reflection; tarot offers a consistent symbolic framework that deepens with study.
About The Author
Patrick is a professional tarot reader, author, and educator offering online tarot readings and structured tarot education. His work approaches tarot as a mirror for self-reflection, and as lived experience. The wisdom of tarot is the wisdom of our lives.
Patrick helps students and clients develop a grounded, thoughtful relationship with the cards; one that strengthens intuition and self-trust.
Based in Brooklyn, he works with clients and students around the world, and considers this work his purpose.
Tarot Academy
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Frequently Asked Questions
Can I learn to read tarot myself? Absolutely. It's a skill like anything else: it just takes study, practice, and determination. Tarot Academy was built exactly for this.
Is tarot right for me? Tarot reading is the practice of interpreting symbols and archetypes to better understand life situations, emotional patterns, and decision points. It is less about prediction and more about intuitive clarity and perspective.
Is tarot about predicting the future? Not at all. Tarot highlights current energies, influences, and themes unfolding now — and helps you navigate them consciously. Your future is always shaped by your choices.
Do I need to be spiritual to get a tarot reading? No. All you need is an open mind and good intention. I'll handle the rest.
