(spoiler!! go listen to the episode BEFORE reading this! episode at the bottom of the page for easy listening)

October means one thing: my inbox fills up with spam about the “ancient secret knowledge” of the occult/magic/witches/ and … yes… tarot, and if I had a dollar for every time someone incorrectly used a slur or cited “ancient secret hidden mystical Egypt,” I could finally afford gold-leaf Visconti Sforza cards. For the record, reality is way messier and much more interesting than the Pinterest spiritual boards would ever let on. I thought it would be fun, to do a (brief) history of tarot this season!

Not in the Pyramids, Not in the Pentagram: Tarot Starts With a Game

Tarot’s journey begins in northern Italy around 1440, right at the height of the Renaissance. Europe was having a major glow up: art, science, philosophy, even hygiene took a step forward. So did playing cards. Wealthy families wanted elaborate ways to display their status and intellect, and from this competitive game of class and culture came the Visconti-Sforza tarot decks.

These were not your average playing cards. The Visconti-Sforza decks were commissioned by Filippo Maria Visconti, the Duke of Milan, and later by his successor and son-in-law Francesco Sforza. Created around 1440 to 1460, they were hand-painted masterpieces, often gilded with gold and silver leaf, featuring the familiar suits we recognize today: Swords, Cups, Coins (later Pentacles), and Batons (later Wands). These suits came directly from the Mamluk decks that had traveled to Europe from Islamic regions of Egypt and Persia in the previous century.

The decks were created by artists in the workshop of Bonifacio Bembo, a celebrated court painter specializing in early Renaissance murals, altarpieces, and illuminated manuscripts. The cards themselves were works of art, featuring detailed depictions of courtly life, aristocratic fashion, heraldic symbols, and allegorical images. Many cards bore inscriptions like “a bon droyt” (by good right) or “amor myo” (my love), emphasizing their connection to the noble families who commissioned them.

But here is the plot twist: at their birth, tarot cards were not tools for speaking with spirits or healing your heartbreak. They were used as “carte da trionfi,” which means “cards of triumph.” Think of a 15th-century game night, where instead of Netflix you try to one-up your rivals by playing allegorical trump cards featuring Justice, Death, Temperance, and The Pope.

The word “tarot” itself did not appear until much later, after the game spread throughout France and the name evolved from Italian “tarocchi.” Early rules and surviving decks show a clear, everyday pastime, not an occult rite, not a forbidden text.

Trump Cards and the Parade of Virtues

Why all those dramatic cards like The Fool, The Devil, and The Tower? They were practical (and sometimes pointed) moral lessons. The 22 Major Arcana (the trump cards) mirrored morality plays and pageants popular in medieval and Renaissance Europe. The point: to win, you had to understand and outplay representations of virtue, folly, power, and fate. These cards captured the anxieties of the age: wars, disease, religious upheaval, with just enough hope tossed in to keep things interesting.

The trumps featured allegorical representations drawn from classical humanism and Christian theology. The Emperor and Empress represented temporal power. The Pope and Popess (later the High Priestess) symbolized spiritual authority. Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence represented the cardinal virtues. Death, The Tower, and The Devil embodied existential fears and moral warnings. Each card was a visual sermon, designed to educate as much as entertain.

From Renaissance Tabletop to Occult Bestseller

Now comes the part where pop culture really loses its marbles. Fast-forward to the late 1700s. In Paris, Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Protestant pastor, Freemason, and amateur historian, sees a tarot deck for the first time and, with zero evidence, announces it as a surviving relic of ancient Egyptian magic: the legendary “Book of Thoth”. While wildly engaging to contemplate, there was a serious problem here. It was all lies. No hieroglyphics had been translated yet. That would not happen until the 1820s with the Rosetta Stone. The only evidence was his obsession with all things Egypt, which was very in vogue among Enlightenment thinkers.

Let’s be direct: there is no actual ancient Book of Thoth. Never was. What exists instead is a powerful myth that has captivated human imagination for thousands of years. In ancient Egyptian mythology, Thoth (called Djehuty) was the ibis-headed god of wisdom, writing, magic, and the moon, considered the divine scribe who recorded the deeds of gods and humans. According to legend, Thoth wrote a book containing all the secrets of the universe: spells that would allow the reader to understand the speech of animals and perceive the gods themselves. This mythical book appears in a Ptolemaic-era story (around 200-100 BCE) about a character named Prince Neferkaptah who dares to retrieve it from the Nile, locked inside nested boxes and guarded by serpents. As punishment for stealing divine knowledge, the gods kill his family. When another character later steals the book from his tomb, supernatural retribution follows. The story is cautionary fiction, not historical record. Various Egyptian religious texts and priestly manuals have been called “Books of Thoth” by scholars, and Greco-Roman philosophical texts were attributed to “Hermes Trismegistus” (a syncretic fusion of the Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth), but none of these were the legendary unified text of divine knowledge. Here is the real problem: when Antoine Court de Gébelin saw a tarot deck in 1781, he claimed with absolutely zero evidence that it was the Book of Thoth, that Egyptian priests had encoded divine wisdom into card images, and that this secret knowledge had been passed down through popes to France. The entire theory was fabricated. Hieroglyphics had not even been deciphered yet remember? Yet his myth was so seductive, so elegant, that it spread like wildfire, and even today, more than two centuries later, people still insist that tarot is the Book of Thoth. The irony? The only “Book of Thoth” that ever truly existed was the one Gébelin invented on the spot.​

Gébelin published his theory in 1781 in “Le Monde Primitif,” claiming that the word “tarot” came from the Egyptian words “tar” (road) and “ro” (royal), making it literally “the royal road” to wisdom. It was nonsense, but it was compelling nonsense, and it spread like wildfire.

Gébelin’s claims caught the imagination of a professional card reader named Etteilla (real name, Jean-Baptiste Alliette), who had the marketing sense of today’s meme creators. Etteilla created the first tarot deck designed not for games, but for fortune telling. He invented upright and reversed meanings, card spreads, and deck-specific guidebooks. Divination with tarot was born in the streets and salons of Paris, not in forgotten temples or mystical Eastern camps. Thus the system and framework for reading tarot for centuries to come, was born.

A Note on Language: The Term “Gypsy” and Respecting the Romani People

Before we go further, let’s address something important. You will often see the word “gypsy” in historical texts and vintage tarot references. This term is a racial slur and is deeply offensive to the Romani people. The word originated from the mistaken belief that the Romani came from Egypt (hence “Egyptian” becoming “gypsy”), and it has been used for centuries to stereotype, marginalize, and dehumanize an entire ethnic group.

The correct terms are Roma, Romani, or Romani people. Many Romani activists and scholars have compared the harm of the word “gypsy” to other well-known racial slurs. When discussing tarot history, it is essential to use respectful language and acknowledge the real discrimination and violence the Romani people have faced throughout history, including slavery, genocide, and ongoing systemic racism.

The Romani and Playing Card Lore: Fact Check Time

Let’s clear the fog on the Romani connection. The Roma did not invent tarot. They did, however, travel across Europe at the same time tarot was gaining popularity. The Roma became famed for sophisticated divination practices, mostly using ordinary playing cards for cartomancy. Their reputation, paired with widespread persecution and employment discrimination, got intertwined with fortune telling, creating an aura of exoticism, mystery, and sometimes outright discrimination.

The truth? The Roma innovated and popularized forms of cartomancy as one of the few trades available to them in societies that systematically excluded them from other employment. Fortune telling became a survival skill in the face of severe marginalization. But tarot belonged to all classes and cultures across Europe by the 18th century. The association between tarot and Romani people is partly historical fact and partly the result of Orientalist fantasies and romanticization by European society.

Cartomancy, the practice of divination using playing cards, became deeply embedded in Romani culture as a survival trade. When the Roma arrived in Europe during the late 14th and early 15th centuries, playing cards were just becoming popular, and the Roma quickly became known for their skill in reading them. Unlike tarot, which had 78 cards, Romani fortune tellers typically used standard playing cards, often the 52-card deck or the French 32-card piquet deck. In Romani tradition, fortune telling was always performed by women, known as “drabardi,” and they practiced two distinct forms: “Dukkering” (a modification of a Slavic word meaning something spiritual or otherworldly) and “Bocht” (derived from a Persian word connected to the Sanskrit “bhagya,” meaning fate). Critically, the Roma only read cards for non-Romani people (the Gadje) as a source of income, never for their own community. Fortune telling became essential because it could be practiced anywhere with little to no materials, making it an ideal trade for a community facing severe employment discrimination, persecution, and forced nomadism. Romani women were simultaneously demonized for their “magic” and sought out by Europeans desperate for advice, charms, and predictions. This complex relationship between survival, cultural practice, and exploitation by the dominant culture is what gave the Roma their lasting (and often stereotyped) association with divination.

The Occult Explosion: Alchemy, Kabbalah, and a Lot of Ego

The 1800s saw the birth of the true “occult tarot.” French magician Eliphas Levi (born Alphonse Louis Constant in 1810) decided the 22 Major Arcana corresponded to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the mysterious structure of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Born to a poor shoemaker, Levi studied at a Catholic seminary and nearly became a priest before being expelled for his outspoken views. He then immersed himself in radical politics, was imprisoned several times, endured a failed marriage, and eventually devoted his life to studying the occult.

Kabbalah is an ancient Jewish mystical tradition whose earliest roots trace back to Merkavah mysticism in the 1st century CE, which focused on ecstatic contemplation of the divine throne described in Ezekiel’s vision. The tradition developed over centuries with foundational texts like the “Sefer Yetzirah” (Book of Creation), which appeared between the 3rd and 6th centuries, describing creation through the 10 divine emanations called sefirot and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. By the 12th and 13th centuries, Kabbalah flourished in southern France and Spain with the appearance of the “Sefer ha-Bahir” (Book of Brightness) and later the “Zohar” (Book of Splendor), which became the fundamental text of Jewish mysticism. At the heart of Kabbalah is the Tree of Life, a diagram of 10 sefirot arranged in three pillars, representing the structure through which the infinite divine (Ein Sof) reveals itself and creates both spiritual and physical reality. Each sefirah represents a different aspect or attribute of the divine, and the 22 pathways connecting them correspond to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Here is the critical point: there was no historical connection whatsoever between tarot and Kabbalah until 19th-century French occultists invented one. Eliphas Levi was the first to systematically link the 22 Major Arcana to the 22 Hebrew letters and the paths of the Tree of Life in the 1850s, with later occultists like the Golden Dawn formalizing these correspondences. This was cultural appropriation dressed up as ancient wisdom, taking a rich Jewish mystical tradition and retrofitting it onto European playing cards. Yet despite its fabricated origins, this connection has become so deeply embedded in Western occult tarot that it now forms the foundation of most modern esoteric tarot systems.

In 1854, Levi published “Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie” (Transcendental Magic), which connected tarot to Kabbalah, astrology, numerology, and alchemy. His writings presented a hyper-complex symbolic system that had no historical basis whatsoever. There was no link between tarot and Kabbalah before Levi, but by then, nobody cared. He had created a framework that resonated deeply with seekers of esoteric wisdom, and his influence spread throughout Europe and eventually to England and America.

Shortly after, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn formed in England in 1888. This secretive magical order contained poets, artists, intellectuals, and more than a few megalomaniacs. They systematized tarot into their magical practice, demanding every initiate design their own deck as part of their training. Members included William Butler Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, and Arthur Edward Waite.

Arthur Edward Waite was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1857 to an American sea captain and an English mother. After his father died at sea, Waite was raised in England and became deeply involved in esoteric studies, Freemasonry, and the Golden Dawn. A poet, scholar, and mystic, Waite wrote extensively on the occult, Kabbalah, and ceremonial magic. He eventually grew weary of the Golden Dawn’s internal conflicts and formed his own mystical order in 1915.

In 1909, Waite teamed up with artist Pamela Colman Smith to create what we now call the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot. Smith, born in London in 1878 but raised partly in Jamaica and New York, was a talented illustrator, theatrical designer, feminist, and suffragette. She studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn under Arthur Wesley Dow, where she developed her distinctive visionary style.

Smith moved to London in her twenties and quickly became part of the bohemian elite, working with Ellen Terry, Bram Stoker, and W.B. Yeats at the Lyceum Theatre. Yeats introduced her to the Golden Dawn, where she met Waite. He commissioned her to illustrate a new tarot deck based on Golden Dawn teachings but accessible to the general public.

Smith’s illustrations brought the deck to life. Unlike previous decks, which only illustrated the Major Arcana, Smith added human scenes to every single card, including all 56 Minor Arcana. This revolutionary choice made the cards intuitive, narrative, and deeply symbolic. She completed all 78 drawings in just six months, working quickly with watercolors in her small Chelsea studio.

Tragically, Smith was paid a flat fee for her work and received no royalties, while Waite and the publisher reaped the financial rewards. As tastes changed in the art world, Smith’s work fell out of favor. She converted to Catholicism in 1911, moved to Cornwall, and attempted to run a holiday home for Catholic priests. The venture failed, and she spent her final years in poverty. She died in 1951 in severe debt, buried in an unmarked grave that has never been found. She is almost never credited for her incredible work that changed not only the “face” of tarot as we know it, but also the accessibility and approach to its use by all, not just scholars or the elite. The use of imagery to communicate meaning and symbolism is a unifying factor that allows people from anywhere to engage with communication and spiritual contexts.

Today, the Rider-Waite-Smith deck remains the blueprint for almost every tarot deck created in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is the deck most beginners start with, the deck most readers reference, and the deck that brought tarot out of secret occult societies and into the hands of everyday people.

Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley in 1875 to a wealthy English family, became one of the most notorious figures in occult history, earning the tabloid nickname “the wickedest man in the world”. His controversy stemmed from multiple sources: he was openly bisexual at a time when homosexuality was criminalized in Britain (Oscar Wilde had been imprisoned for it just years earlier), he was a vocal advocate for drug use (particularly heroin, to which he was addicted for decades), and he practiced what he called “sex magick,” which involved ritualized sexual acts as a form of spiritual practice. Crowley founded the religion of Thelema, centered on the phrase “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” which scandalized a deeply Christian Victorian and Edwardian society that saw him as promoting moral chaos. He established the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily in 1920, where followers engaged in sex rituals, drug experiments, and bizarre ceremonies, one of which allegedly involved drinking the blood of a sacrificed cat. When a young follower named Raoul Loveday died of a liver infection in 1923 (likely from drinking polluted water, though the press blamed Crowley’s rituals), the scandal led to Crowley being deported from Mussolini’s Italy, and British tabloids labeled him a devil worshipper and accused him of human sacrifice. Beyond his sexual and drug-related notoriety, Crowley was also accused of being a coward (allegedly ignoring dying climbers during a disastrous Himalayan expedition), a spy (rumors persisted he worked for both British and German intelligence), a misogynist, and a racist with fascist sympathies. He burned through multiple “Scarlet Women” (his term for female magical partners), left a trail of broken relationships, financial ruin, and at least one confirmed child death (his daughter Lilith died of typhoid, which he blamed on his wife’s alcoholism). He died impoverished in a boarding house in 1947, his body ravaged by decades of heroin use, and his funeral featured a Thelemic ritual that caused one final public scandal. Love him or hate him, Crowley’s influence on Western occultism is undeniable, and his Thoth Tarot, painted by the patient and talented Lady Frieda Harris between 1938 and 1943, remains one of the most visually stunning and esoterically complex decks ever created.

When it came to the mystical power of the emerging Tarot, Aleister Crowley did not want to be left out. Between 1938 and 1943, Crowley created the Thoth Tarot, illustrated by Lady Frieda Harris. This deck was a blend of eroticism, Egyptian symbolism, Thelema religion, numerology, and a sprinkle of Crowley’s trademark drama. It remains one of the most visually stunning and controversial decks ever created.

Tarot Today: Psychology, Witchcraft, and Everyday Magic

Today, tarot is everywhere: therapy offices, yoga studios, group Zoom calls, hospital breakrooms where skeptical nurses debate whether astrology belongs next to the vital signs chart. The deck’s journey from game night to psychological marvel fascinates Jungian analysts and artists alike. Carl Jung never publicly wrote extensively about tarot, but his work on archetypes, the collective unconscious, and individuation gave modern readers new language for self-reflection, transformation, and the dance between fate and free will.

Modern tarot reaches witches, pagans, spiritual seekers, nonbelievers, and scientists. Decks now come in LGBTQ, bilingual, and every cultural flavor imaginable. The Major Arcana are no longer just relics of medieval drama; they are tools for shadow work, self-care, and narrative healing.

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A Quick Guide to the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana

If you have ever wanted to know what those iconic tarot cards actually mean, here is your tiny crash course before you find yourself nodding along in a room full of occult nerds.

The Major Arcana

These are the “headline acts” of the tarot, each card representing a major life lesson, phase, or spiritual milestone. There are 22 cards, beginning with The Fool (the start of a journey), moving through archetypes like The Lovers, The Hermit, Death, and The Star, and ending with The World, which represents integration and fulfillment. When these cards show up, pay attention: something big is at play in your story.

The 22 Major Arcana Cards:

• 0. The Fool: New beginnings, spontaneity, taking a leap of faith, innocence, and trusting the journey ahead.
• 1. The Magician: Manifestation, personal power, creativity, skill, and using your resources to make things happen.
• 2. The High Priestess: Intuition, mystery, hidden knowledge, divine wisdom, and inner knowing.
• 3. The Empress: Fertility, nurturing, abundance, creativity, sensuality, and connection to nature.
• 4. The Emperor: Authority, structure, order, stability, and control through discipline.
• 5. The Hierophant: Tradition, spiritual guidance, religious beliefs, institutions, and conformity.
• 6. The Lovers: Romantic love, relationships, choices, harmony, and alignment of values.
• 7. The Chariot: Victory, control, determination, willpower, and moving forward with confidence.
• 8. Strength: Inner strength, courage, resilience, patience, and compassion over brute force.
• 9. The Hermit: Solitude, introspection, spiritual guidance, seeking wisdom, and inner reflection.
• 10. The Wheel of Fortune: Destiny, change, cycles, fate, and the unpredictable nature of life.
• 11. Justice: Balance, fairness, truth, accountability, and karmic consequence.
• 12. The Hanged Man: Surrender, sacrifice, new perspective, waiting, and letting go of control.
• 13. Death: Endings, transformation, rebirth, transition, and necessary change.
• 14. Temperance: Moderation, balance, harmony, patience, and blending opposites.
• 15. The Devil: Materialism, addiction, temptation, bondage, and shadow desires.
• 16. The Tower: Upheaval, chaos, unexpected change, destruction that clears the way for rebuilding.
• 17. The Star: Hope, inspiration, healing, renewed purpose, and faith in the future.
• 18. The Moon: The unconscious mind, intuition, illusion, fear, and navigating uncertainty.
• 19. The Sun: Joy, vitality, success, clarity, optimism, and life-giving energy.
• 20. Judgement: Self-evaluation, rebirth, awakening, reckoning, and transformation through reflection.
• 21. The World: Completion, achievement, fulfillment, integration, and the end of a cycle.

The Minor Arcana

These are the “day-to-day” cards, grouped into four suits. Each suit contains cards numbered Ace through Ten plus four court cards (Page, Knight, Queen, King).

• Wands: The element of Fire; associated with creativity, ambition, energy, and spiritual drive. Think passion projects and sudden inspiration.
• Cups: The element of Water; connected to emotions, intuition, relationships, and creativity. Cups show up when love and feelings are center stage.
• Swords: The element of Air; linked to intellect, communication, decisions, and conflict. Swords tell you when it is time to use your head and not just your heart.
• Pentacles (or Coins): The element of Earth; all things practical, material, health, finances, work, and physical reality. Pull a lot of pentacles? Focus on your bank account or your body.

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Final Thoughts: History is Magic (If You’re Brave Enough to Look at It)

The real story of tarot is no less mysterious for being true. It is a saga of art, status, politics, rebellion, and reinvention. Tarot has been a mirror for changing values and beliefs about fate, self, community, and transformation. It is history painted with gold and shuffled into the hands of anyone willing to ask a real question.

The next time you hear someone recite a tarot origin story involving lost temples or secret sects, smile knowingly. You know the real version is much more interesting and much more human. If this left you with new questions or your favorite myth got the Ritual Nurse treatment, drop a comment, send an email, or share the post with the skeptics and mystics in your life.

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Recommended Books on Tarot: Learn, Laugh, and Leave the Myths at the Door

If you want to get smart (and a little enchanted) about tarot, ignore the crystal ball crowd for a minute and grab one of these actual, researched books:

• The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination by Robert M. Place. For the reference-obsessed who demand receipts and want to cut through the Egyptomania. Deep historical dives with clarity and respect.
• Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack. If you read only one book to understand tarot’s layered symbolism, this is highly recommended one by many readers. Accessible, insightful, and often called the “bible” of tarot.
• Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen. For the “give me everything, right now” folks. Comprehensive, scholarly, and ideal for those who want tarot’s history, philosophy, and juicy meanings in one volume.
• A Cultural History of Tarot by Helen Farley. If you care about tarot’s place in art, intellectual movements, and the culture wars between science, magic, and religion. Academic but still readable.
• The Encyclopedia of Tarot (vol. 1) by Stuart Kaplan. If you are a deck collector or just love flipping through history’s illustrated treasures, this is for you. Details, sources, and deck images galore.
• The Ultimate Guide to Tarot by Liz Dean. If you want to nerd out on the Minor Arcana, this has you covered, with card-by-card breakdowns for newbies and enthusiasts.
• modern tarot: connecting with your higher self through the wisdom of the cards by Michelle Tea. Irreverent, inclusive, funny, and witchy. Perfect for skeptics and new school mystics ready to learn the cards and themselves.
• The Tarot, Major Arcana, Their Meaning without Memorization by Antares Stanislas. For those who want a straight-shooting, practical guide to each Major card’s symbolism and message.

Pro tip: You do not need to read all of them cover to cover. Skim, bookmark, and return to what intrigues you. Let your intuition guide even your research, just like a good card pull.