History of Tarot Cards

Tom Tadfor Little, a tarot card historian says that at first the tarot card reading was observed in Europe in 1375. And, they learned this from the Islamic societies who used tarot cards hundreds of centuries before the Europeans. He says that at first there was no concept of showing the tarot cards but then this concept evolved gradually that these cards were considered as tarot cards. They created their own deck and then started using them to predict the future. At first, there was no concept of the tarot cards or any type of deck which claimed anything about life.
Tarot Cards to be considered as a game in ancient days:
In the initial days, there was no concept of tarot card reading but it was used for entertainment. The origin of tarot cards was not mentioned until 1440. Instead, the Duke of Milan introduced through his letter of request to use a deck of triumph cards at special events only. This letter then gave a difference between the purposes of triumph cards that these are different from the regular playing cards. That is why it was first taken the tarot cards as a purpose of playing cards in ancient times. 
How were tarot cards used for playing triumph?
Since these cards were divided into categories, there were four suits which were numbered from 1 till 10 and the court cards which had king, queen, knight, and page in them. There were symbolic pictures drawn on the other 22 cards and they were not a part of the suit cards. In this way, the suit deck was used to play triumph and this game was similar to ‘bridge’. In this deck of game, there were 21 cards which were a set of trump cards out of these 22 cards. This game became so popular and spread quickly in entire Europe. People then started relating this game with an Italian game named ‘tarocchi’ in around 1530.
The discovery of Tarot Card Reading:
Around 1781, the discovery of tarot card reading was made by the French and British. They started reading and analyzing the symbol on the cards. They understood those symbols and extracted meanings out of those symbols. They realized that these cards mean more than just playing trump cards. They then gradually started using these cards as divination tools to introduce the readers and writers about the ‘Tarot’. Soon after this discovery, these cards became an occult philosophy.
The misconception of the origination of Tarot Cards:
Many people perceived that the tarot cards originated from the ancient history of Egypt. They thought that these cards originated from the burning books and libraries of Egyptian History. They thought that these cards depicted symbols and keys of life for the Egyptian hieroglyphs. This misconception was later proved wrong and soon the correct origination of tarot cards was introduced by the French and the British. 


Tarot cards reading is meant to be reflective of our inner beings and meditative for us. Instead of looking for external reasoning after tarot cards reading, one should always look within and reflect on how the fortune could play out. ​

Check out our Tarot Card Reading Happy Hour event: