Tarot Card Predictions & Tarot Card Readings
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Tarot cards first originated as a game in 15th century Italy. Some early
Italian tarot decks still remain and date back to the early and mid 15th
century. These early tarot cards were called “carte da trionfi” or "cards
of the triumphs". Soon afterwards, the cards came to be known as
Tarocchi.
It is unknown when the tarot was first used for divination, however as
early as 1540 a book entitled “The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da
Forli” shows a simple method of divining from the coin suit of a regular
playing card deck. In 1765 Giacomo Casanova wrote in his diary that his
Russian mistress frequently used a deck of playing cards for divination.
In 1781 Antoine Court de Gébelin wrote a speculative history and a
detailed system for using the tarot to for-tell the future. From Gébelin's
time and onwards, various explanations have been given for the origins
of tarot, most of them of doubtful veracity. There is no evidence for any
tarot cards prior to the hand-painted ones that were used by Italian
nobles, but some esoteric schools believe its origins could be in ancient
Egypt, India or even in the lost continent Atlantida.
The typical Tarot Deck
The typical 78-card tarot deck is structured into two very distinct parts.
The first is called the “Trump cards”. This category consists of 21 cards
without suits plus a 22nd card “The Fool”, which is sometimes given the
value of zero (0). The second category consists of 56 cards divided into
four suits of 14 cards each. The traditional Italian suits are Swords,
Batons, Coins and Cups. In modern tarot decks the Batons suit is
commonly called Wands, Rods or Staves, while the Coins suit is often
called Pentacles or Disks.
Among those who use the Tarot cards for divination purposes the
trumps are usually called Major Arcana, while the other cards are known
as the Minor Arcana. (“Arcana” is the plural form of the Latin word
arcanum, meaning "closed" or "secret".)
The 14 cards in each suit consist of an Ace, nine cards numbered 2
through to 10 and four court cards. The Tarot cards are in fact not that
dissimilar from that of a 52-card bridge/poker playing card decks. Except
that bridge/poker playing card decks have three court cards rather than
four.
The four court cards (or face cards) of the tarot deck traditionally
consist of the King, the Queen, the Knight and the Page (or Knave). In
bridge/poker decks the court cards typically consist of the King, the
Queen and the Jack. The Jack corresponds to the tarot deck's Page.
In the present-day Anglo-American world, the Tarot is usually seen either
as a means of divination (the practice of ascertaining information from
supernatural or other sources), or by some as a psychological tool for
accessing the unconscious. However, in some European countries such
as France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Germany tarot cards are still
widely used for game-playing and gambling.
