rider waite tarot cards occult tarot symbolism Rider-Waite-Smith

The tarot first known as trionfi and then as tarocchi, tarock, and others is often a pack of playing cards mostly numbering ), used through the mid-th century in several elements of Europe to try out a gaggle of games like Italian tarocchini and French tarot. From the late th century before the present time the tarot has also found use by mystics and occultists in efforts at divination or being a map of mental and spiritual pathways.

The tarot has four suits (which vary by region, being the French suits in Northern Europe, the Latin suits in Southern Europe, and the German suits in Central Europe). Each of these suits has pip cards numbering from ace to ten and four face cards for the total of cards. In addition, the tarot is distinguished by the separate -card trump suit as well as a single card known as the Fool. Depending on the game, the Fool may act as the top trump or might be played to prevent following suit.

Fran�ois Rabelais gives tarau as the name of just one from the games played by Gargantua as section of his Gargantua and Pantagruel; this really is likely the earliest attestation with the French form with the name. Tarot cards are employed throughout most of Europe to experience card games. In English-speaking countries, where these games are largely unplayed, tarot cards are now used primarily for divinatory purposes.Occultists call the trump cards as well as the Fool "the major arcana" as the ten pip and four court cards in each suit are known as minor arcana. The cards are traced by some occult writers to ancient Egypt or the Kabbalah but there is certainly no documented evidence for these origins or in the use of tarot for divination ahead of the th century.



The English and French word tarot derives from your Italian tarocchi, which does not need any known origin or etymology. One theory relates the name "tarot" to the Taro River in northern Italy, near Parma; the action seems to have originated in northern Italy, in Milan or Bologna. Other writers trust it comes in the Arabic word turuq, meaning 'ways'.Alternatively, it could possibly be from the Arabic taraka, 'to leave, abandon, omit, leave behind'. According to a French etymology, the Italian tarocco derived from Arabic ..'rejection; subtraction, deduction, discount'.

There can also be the question of whether the saying tarot is linked to Harut and Marut, have been mentioned in a short account inside the Qur'an. According to this account, a small grouping of Israelites learned magic, for demonstration and also to test them, from two angels called Harut and Marut, and it adds until this knowledge of magic will be passed to others with the devil.9 What may be taken into account here may be the phonetic resemblance of tarot to Harut and Marut .
History

Playing cards first entered Europe inside late th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, with suits very similar towards the tarot suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins (also called disks, and pentacles) and those still found in traditional Italian, Spanish and Portuguese decks.

The first known documented tarot cards are created between and in Milan, Ferrara and Bologna in northern Italy when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the common four-suit pack. These new decks were originally called carte da trionfi, triumph cards, and the additional cards known simply as trionfi, which became "trumps" in English. The first literary evidence of the existence of carte da trionfi is a written statement in the court records in Ferrara, in . The oldest surviving tarot cards come from fifteen fragmented decks painted inside the mid th century for your Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan.
Early decks
Le Bateleur: The Juggler in the Tarot of Marseilles. This card is usually named The Magician in modern English language tarots

Picture-card packs are first mentioned by Martiano da Tortona probably between and , considering that the painter he mentions, Michelino da Besozzo, returned to Milan in , while Martiano himself died in . He describes a deck with picture that guy cards with images from the Greek gods and suits depicting four forms of birds, not the common suits. However the cards were obviously thought to be "trumps" as, about years later, Jacopo Antonio Marcello called them a ludus triumphorum, or "game of trumps".

Special motifs on cards put into regular packs show philosophical, social, poetical, astronomical, and heraldic ideas, Roman/Greek/Babylonian heroes, as within the case with the Sola-Busca-Tarocchi (9) as well as the Boiardo Tarocchi poem, written in an unknown date between and 9.

Two playing card decks from Milan (the Brera-Brambilla and Cary-Yale-Tarocchi)�extant, but fragmentary�were made circa . Three documents dating from January to July , make usage of the term trionfi. The document from January is undoubtedly an unreliable reference; however, exactly the same painter, Sagramoro, was commissioned with the same patron, Leonello d'Este, as inside the February document. The game gave the sense to grow in importance within the year , a Jubilee year in Italy, which saw many festivities and also the movement of several pilgrims.

Three mid-th century sets were made for members in the Visconti family. The first deck, and in all of the probability the prototype, is called the Cary-Yale Tarot (or Visconti-Modrone Tarot) and was made between and by an anonymous painter for Filippo Maria Visconti. The cards (only ) are today within the Cary collection from the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University, in the U.S. state of Connecticut. The most famous was painted within the mid-th century, to celebrate Francesco Sforza and his awesome wife Bianca Maria Visconti, daughter from the duke Filippo Maria. Probably, prepaid cards were painted by Bonifacio Bembo or Francesco Zavattari between and . Of the original cards, have been in The Morgan Library & Museum, are on the Accademia Carrara, are at the Casa Colleoni and four: 'The Devil', 'The Tower', 'Money's Horse (The Chariot)' and ' of Spades', are lost in any other case never made. This "Visconti-Sforza" deck, which has been widely reproduced, reflects conventional iconography of the time to a substantial degree.