Tarot

Tarot is a deck of 78 cards: 22 trumps, now called the Major Arcana, and 56 suit cards in four suits, the Minor Arcana. It began in northern Italy in the first half of the 15th century as a pack for a trick-taking game, and the oldest surviving cards were painted for the court of Milan. The game spread to France, Switzerland and Central Europe and is still played. From the 1780s French writers, among them Antoine Court de Gébelin and Etteilla, recast tarot as an ancient book of wisdom and a tool for divination, a story historians have shown to be false. Today most people use tarot for reflection and fortune-telling. See what is tarot and the history of tarot.