History of Tarot Cards

History of Tarot Cards

A very popular form of fortune telling is reading the tarot cards. Tarot cards is a deck with 78 cards that can interpret your past, present, and future. There are two part to a deck of tarot cards, the major acana which has “21 trump cards” and a “single Fool’s card, and the minor acana which has 56 cards. Tarot cards have dated back as far as 15 century in Italy as a regular card game. It wasn’t until later in 1781, Antonie Count de Gebelin claimed that the tarot cards had symbols that could be used to foresee the future. He was so convinced, he wrote and published a book on tarot readings called “Le Monde Primatif” roughly translated as “Secrets of the Egyptians” which he claimed the tarot cards showed him. Although no evidence of this being accurate was ever found, many people believe it to be true.

The most famous seer to use this form of fortune telling was Alliette, also known as Etteilla before the French Revolution. He designed the very first official tarot cards deck with astrology symbols. Yet his traditional deck was not always accepted as the correct way to make the cards. When tarot cards became popular in 1910, many other people created different types of tarot decks to use in fortune telling. A few examples of different tarot cards are: the Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot which emphasizes on the artwork on each card rather then the symbols, Paul Foster Case’s B.O.T.A. Tarot cards are mainly black line drawings on white cards, the Tree of Life Tarot Cards are all complicated, colorful symbols, the Motherpeace Tarot cards are filled with images of females on white circular cards, and the Marquise Tarot cards are very similar to a regular deck of playing cards with numbers and geometric symbols such as cups, rods, coins, and swords.

Picture of Tarot deck


Sources - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot_cards, and Yahoo Images

Over word count, and even a picture, well done Jenn - 50 points.