The Long, Strange History of Tarot Cards: From the 14th Century to Modern Times

We have any num­ber of rea­sons for dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting to sleep, not least wor­ries about the future. This is hard­ly a recent phe­nom­e­non, and indeed prac­tices meant to clar­i­fy the nature of events to come may be old­er than civ­i­liza­tion itself. In fact, many of us mod­erns trust the old ways of for­tune-telling more than the new.

Take the cards of the Tarot, often fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, whose rec­og­niz­able Euro­pean form dates back to at least the four­teenth cen­tu­ry. But as explained in the new video above from YouTube chan­nel Bed­time & His­to­ri­an, their pre-his­to­ry begins longer ago and far­ther away, with the inven­tion of the play­ing card itself in Tang-Dynasty Chi­na. For Tarot decks weren’t orig­i­nal­ly a means of glimps­ing the future, but of pass­ing time in the present.

In the 400 years or so between the civ­i­liza­tion­al jour­ney play­ing cards made along the Silk Road and their first employ­ment as a div­ina­tion tool by French occultists, many a game of Tarot — or taroc­chi, Tarock, and so on — took place in Europe. Mon­e­tary stakes, and some­times con­sid­er­able ones, were not unknown, which drew the ire of both state and Church author­i­ties. Yet not only did the cards sur­vive these attempts at repres­sion, they evolved along numer­ous long and wind­ing cul­tur­al paths, tak­ing artis­ti­cal­ly elab­o­rate and evoca­tive forms that still cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion today.

At the same time, the struc­ture of the Tarot deck used by eso­teri­cists has remained remark­ably sta­ble, with its 78 cards con­sist­ing of 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana, the lat­ter divid­ed into four suits (like the stan­dard deck used for pok­er or black­jack). If you aren’t sure what some of those terms mean, know that all is clar­i­fied over the course of the video’s near­ly three-hour run­time, the final third of which is ded­i­cat­ed to explain­ing the iden­ti­ties, char­ac­ter­is­tics, and mean­ings of the cards them­selves. It’s worth a lis­ten as a kind of advance prepa­ra­tion if you’ve con­sid­ered going in to get a Tarot read­ing done by one of the pro­fes­sion­als who still ply their trade all around the world. (In Korea, where I live, they even work out of booths set up on the side­walk, a true con­ve­nience for com­muters in need of spir­i­tu­al guid­ance on the way home.) True to Bed­time & His­to­ri­an’s con­cept, the nar­ra­tor speaks as slow­ly and calm­ly as pos­si­ble, with a fire crack­ling in the back­ground.

You’ll learn a lot about Tarot, cer­tain­ly, but you may also find that your sleep trou­bles have been solved before you’ve drawn your first card. Behold the Sola-Bus­ca Tarot Deck, the Ear­li­est Com­plete Set of Tarot Cards (1490) The Artis­tic & Mys­ti­cal World of Tarot: See Decks by Sal­vador Dalí, Aleis­ter Crow­ley, H.R. Giger & More Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion Carl Jung on the Pow­er of Tarot Cards: They Pro­vide Door­ways to the Uncon­scious & Per­haps a Way to Pre­dict the Future Divine Decks: A Visu­al His­to­ry of Tarot: The First Com­pre­hen­sive Sur­vey of Tarot Gets Pub­lished by Taschen Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture.

He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall. by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (0) | We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion.