While October has ended, the talk of witches in popular culture has all but faded. However, many people still turn to witchcraft and divination to guide them all year. One means of reaching fate and fortune of the curious is through the 78-card tarot deck.
Despite their current uses, tarot cards started as a traditional card game, like a pack of playing cards with 10 numbered cards and four face cards in a deck of 56, full of deeply Christian symbols. Today, these games can still be found in Hungary, Austria, and tarot’s country of origin, Italy, where records show the first deck appeared in 1425.
In the following 200 years, tarot took on another meaning as it drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian mythology and the work of Egyptian priests, combining it with more popular Christian imagery. In the mid 1700s, tarot was adopted by those who participated in divination and the occult. An in-depth analysis of the now 78 card deck (56 suited cards and 22 of a trump category called major arcana cards) was published by Antoine Court de Gebelin, documenting tarot’s rise into the world of magic and reading fate.
Rather than the original Christian imagery used on tarot playing cards, most decks revolve around the Rider-Waite deck’s symbolism and art style. This deck follows the 78 card format and was designed and published by Arthur Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909. Now, over 100 years later, similar symbolism is still used, and the meanings derived in this deck are still the ones that are put in today’s instructional books on tarot. Despite this consistency in the meaning of each card, the aesthetic differences increase with every new deck. Tarot decks can be purchased online from independent sellers and artists, major hubs like Amazon, and in person stores, like Urban Outfitters, who are now falling into the new “trend” of casual witchcraft.
New decks also have massive ties to pop culture, such as decks and spreads pulling from the characters, storylines of “Game of Thrones,” “Lord of the Rings” and other expansive worlds. Illustrations range from intricate and detail-oriented (Illuminated Tarot and Tattooed Tarot) to the bare minimum to read (The Okay Tarot).
Divination is accessible and customizable to anyone willing to take the time to learn the significance of each card. In a modern tarot deck, the general format remains the same as the original explication by de Gebelin with 22 trump cards, number 0 (The Fool) to 21 (The World) called major arcana or greater secrets, and 56 suited cards in the suits wands, pentacles, swords and cups called minor arcana or lesser secrets. When pulled in a tarot reading, major arcana are typically used to signify a larger theme or life event, whereas minor arcana are meant to signify smaller moments and lessons. However, each reader is different, and every spread can take the meaning the reader infuses. Tarot reading has been shaped by its roots, history, artists, readers and the experience of reading tarot or having a fortune telling is a personal opportunity. The whole field offers millions of intricacies to dive into.
