September, 2009:

Author: Rhyanna Regan

Tarot cards, in the images we are most familiar with today, evolved from a kind of table game played in 15th century Italy, becaming popular throughout Europe over the next four centuries.

To fully explore the history of Tarot, you can read the expansive book by Michael Dummet, The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City (Duckworth, 1980). Dummet, a British philosopher of high regard, is the author of many books on the Tarot. His scholarship on Tarot is extensive, and provides much of the research available on the origins of the Tarot deck and its variations.

Tarot originally would have been a pastime of the leisure class, those with the time and money to spend on games. Certainly at that time the cards were handmade and illustrated by artists, and each set would vary with the individual artist’s representation of the card’s images. (more…)