Oswald Wirth

Oswald Wirth (1860–1943) was a Swiss-born occultist, Freemason and artist who worked in France. Encouraged by the occultist Stanislas de Guaita, he drew a set of 22 Major Arcana in 1889, based on the Tarot de Marseille but redrawn to carry the symbolism that Éliphas Lévi had read into the cards, including Hebrew letters. It was one of the first decks made for occult study rather than play, and Papus reproduced the cards in his Tarot of the Bohemians the same year. Wirth later set out his ideas in a book on the tarot published in 1927. His deck has only the trumps; it is often confused with full 78-card decks published later in his style. See Papus and Oswald Wirth.