When was tarot invented?

Tarot appeared in northern Italy in the 1440s, in Milan, Ferrara, and Bologna, as a trick-taking card game called trionfi. It added a fifth suit of permanent trump cards to a regular deck. The name tarocchi shows up around 1500, and versions of the game are still played today.

Did tarot come from ancient Egypt?

No. The Egyptian story was invented in 1781 by Antoine Court de Gebelin, who wrote it before hieroglyphs could be read. There is no evidence for it. Tarot's imagery comes from the allegorical figures familiar to Renaissance Italians.

When did people start using tarot for fortune-telling?

In the late 1700s, roughly 300 years after the game was invented. Jean-Baptiste Alliette, writing as Etteilla, published on card reading in 1770 and issued the first deck designed specifically for divination in 1789.

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A Brief, True History of Tarot (It Started as a Card Game)

Written by the Toe Bean Tarot team Sep 4, 2026 · 4 min read We built a full tarot curriculum: 98 guided lesson sections, spaced repetition, and two original 78-card decks.

The history of tarot is shorter and stranger than the legends. Tarot began in 1400s Italy as a card game, stayed one for about three centuries, picked up an invented Egyptian backstory in 1781, was rebuilt into an occult system by French and British magicians, got its modern look in 1909, and hit the bookstore shelf in the 1970s. Here's the timeline, myths left out.

The Hierophant from the Toe Bean deck: a black cat in a red papal robe and gold triple crown blessing two kneeling cats. For most of the history of tarot this trump was simply called the Pope.

Wheel of Fortune from the Toe Bean deck: a black cat in an Egyptian headdress sits atop an orange wheel lettered TARO, with a snake, a red jackal figure, and four winged creatures reading books in the corners.

Judgement from the Toe Bean deck: a winged black cat angel blows a gold trumpet over robed cats rising from open coffins with their paws raised.

Three eras in three cards: a Renaissance Pope, an occultist's wheel, and a 1909 scene that teaches itself.

1370s: playing cards reach Europe

Playing cards arrived in Europe from the Islamic world in the late 1300s. The Mamluk decks had four suits: cups, coins, swords, and polo sticks. Europeans, not being polo people, turned the sticks into batons, which became our Wands.

1440s: tarot is invented in northern Italy

Tarot shows up in Milan, Ferrara, and Bologna in the 1440s. The earliest decks were hand-painted, gilded luxury objects made for the Visconti and Sforza families of Milan; surviving cards sit in museums and libraries today. The new idea was a fifth suit of permanent trump cards added to a regular deck, so the game was called trionfi, "triumphs." The name tarocchi appears around 1500. It's a trick-taking game, and people still play it: French Tarot, Austrian Tarock, and regional Italian games.

1450 to 1780: three centuries of just a game

For about three hundred years, tarot was a game and nothing more. The trumps' imagery (the Pope, the Emperor, Death, the Devil, the Sun, the Moon, Judgement, the World) came from the parade of allegorical figures every Renaissance Italian recognized, not from any secret doctrine. Those trumps are the cards we now call the Major Arcana, and the one modern decks label The Hierophant was plainly The Pope in the old ones. In the 1600s and 1700s, French printers, especially in Marseille, standardized the woodcut design, and most European decks followed that Marseille pattern.

The Hierophant from the Salty Bean deck: a scowling gray cat in a papal crown on a dark throne, etched in ink and gold, holding a triple cross while two robed cats kneel below. — Salty Bean as the Pope card. He did not ask for the job, and it shows.

1781: the Egyptian story is invented

Antoine Court de Gébelin, in volume 8 of his encyclopedia Le Monde primitif, claimed tarot preserved the wisdom of ancient Egyptian priests. He wrote this before anyone could read hieroglyphs (the Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 and deciphered in 1822), and there's no evidence for it. It stuck anyway. Around the same time, Jean-Baptiste Alliette, writing as Etteilla, became the first known professional tarot fortune-teller: he published on card reading in 1770 and in 1789 issued the first deck designed for divination.

1850s to 1888: tarot becomes an occult system

In the 1850s, Éliphas Lévi linked the 22 trumps to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and to Kabbalah, and tarot became a system for occultists. In 1888 the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded in London with tarot at the center of its teaching; members included A. E. Waite, Pamela Colman Smith, Aleister Crowley, and W. B. Yeats. This is the century that gave tarot its spooky reputation, worth remembering the next time someone asks whether tarot is a religion. It's a card game that went to magic school.

1909: the deck you picture

The Rider-Waite deck was published in London by William Rider & Son. Arthur Edward Waite directed it, and Pamela Colman Smith drew all 78 cards. The big innovation: full scenes on every Minor Arcana card instead of arrangements of pips, which is what makes tarot learnable from the pictures. Today the deck is usually called Rider-Waite-Smith, and her Wheel of Fortune still wears the occult era's fingerprints: the rim is lettered TARO, which also reads ROTA, Latin for wheel.

1938 to 1971: Thoth, then the bookstore

Between 1938 and 1943, Aleister Crowley and the painter Lady Frieda Harris created the Thoth deck, though it wasn't published as cards until 1969. In 1971, US Games Systems, led by Stuart Kaplan, began publishing the Rider-Waite deck in the United States, and the 1970s carried tarot into bookstores and mainstream culture.

Today: thousands of decks, and a quieter way to read

Crowdfunding made small print runs possible, so there are now thousands of independent decks, plus apps, plus a return to a reflective, journaling style of reading. That shift is a big part of why tarot is having a moment again, and of why readings feel so accurate when you use them as a mirror rather than a forecast. Tarot also picked up company: oracle decks, which have no fixed structure at all, and the black cat, which has no historical business here and shows up anyway.

To see the 1909 art next to something newer, the Toe Bean Tarot app includes the public-domain Waite-Smith deck alongside two original decks, so you can flip between them (Android only). Curious what the cards mean? Start with all 78 tarot card meanings, explained simply.