Tarot Deck: definition

Tarot is first, historically, a card game, which appeared in northern Italy in the fifteenth century, before being progressively invested with symbolic, divinatory or esoteric uses from the eighteenth century onward.

This historical dimension reminds us that tarot cards belong to a complex visual and structural culture —inherited from medieval art, the Renaissance and popular traditions— and not to a purely abstract system invented for divinatory ends.

As a game, tarot consists of 78 cards: 22 trumps (the future major arcana), 4 suits of 10 numeral cards and 4 court figures per suit, that is 56 minor arcana. It has given rise to numerous local variants still played, among them the French tarot.

Distinguishing the tarot game (a historical and cultural object) from divinatory practice (the symbolic reading of the cards) allows tarot to be approached with more nuance and to avoid confusion between material history and late occultist re-readings.

Keeping this double nature in mind —historical game and symbolic support— allows tarot to be approached rigorously and to avoid both the contempt that reduces it to a mere pastime and the mystification that forgets its origin.

This double heritage is precisely what makes tarot so rich: a cultural object with a documented history, and at the same time a living symbolic language open to interpretation.