The history of Tarot cards is shrouded in the mists of time, there are stories to satisfy everybody.
The general opinion about modern Tarot packs is that they came from Italy circa 1391, when the Italian Duke Filippo Maria Visconti commisioned a pack from Marziano da Tortona and Michelino da Besozzo. These cards were known as the Tarocchi pack.
Nowadays there are packs to suit all tastes, all conform to the standard of 78 cards split into four suits in the minor arcana, which correspond to the four suits of playing cards with the notable exception that they have an extra face card called the page. Wands=Clubs, Cups=Hearts, Pentacles=Diamonds and Swords= Spades.
The so called Major arcana has twenty-two cards representing man's journey through life and are archytypal in form with the Fool acting as an unnumbered joker.
Of the earlier modern cards, the Marseilles deck, which survived the French revolution and which synthesizes alchemical imagery, has become the basis for others designs. The most widely known pack to the layman is probably the Rider Waite deck which although it corresponds to the Marseilles deck was changed to conform to the precepts of the occultists of the Golden Dawn.
There are however many scholars of the Tarot who hold that these cards have their roots much earlier in history and that they correspond to the Kabbalistic philosophy of the twenty two paths to God.
Others hold that the Gypsies brought them from India or Egypt. It is almost certain that the gypsies had a profound influence on the cards throughout their history and have very strong links with them.
In the year 535 anno domini the emperor Justinius decreed that the Egyptian religion was to be exterminated with all its priests, and there are those who think that these doomed priests formulated the cards to encapsulate their belief system to be smuggled out and interpreted by the initiates. This could certainly be the case as studies show a very close correspondance between the Major arcana cards and their gods, and several packs have indeed traced this link, namely the Tarot of the Egyptian Gods by Sebastian Vázquez Jiménez.
Whatever your ideas or beliefs, there are many more informed sources to be found, but the fact remains that they are proving to be a superb focus for Tarot readers and clairvoyants alike.
