The tarot first known as esoteric Occult tarot decks

The tarot first called trionfi and then as tarocchi, tarock, and others is often a pack of playing cards most commonly numbering ), used in the mid-th century in a variety of elements of Europe to try out a gaggle of cards including Italian tarocchini and French tarot. From the late th century until the present time the tarot has also found use by mystics and occultists in efforts at divination or as 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, as well as the German suits in Central Europe). Each of the 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 plus a single card known since the Fool. Depending around the game, the Fool may act because top trump or may be played in order to avoid following suit.

Fran�ois Rabelais gives tarau since the name of 1 with the games played by Gargantua in the Gargantua and Pantagruel; that is likely the earliest attestation with the French form from the name. Tarot cards are used throughout a lot of Europe to play card games. In English-speaking countries, where these games are largely unplayed, tarot cards have become used primarily for divinatory purposes.Occultists call the trump cards as well as the Fool "the major arcana" while the ten pip and four court cards in each suit are classified as minor arcana. The cards are traced by some occult writers to ancient Egypt or perhaps the Kabbalah but there is certainly no documented evidence of these origins or of the using tarot for divination before the th century.



The English and French word tarot derives from the Italian tarocchi, which has no known origin or etymology. One theory relates the name "tarot" on the Taro River in northern Italy, near Parma; the action seems to possess originated in northern Italy, in Milan or Bologna. Other writers accept can be as true comes in the Arabic word turuq, which means 'ways'.Alternatively, it may be from the Arabic taraka, 'to leave, abandon, omit, leave behind'. According to some French etymology, the Italian tarocco produced from Arabic ..'rejection; subtraction, deduction, discount'.

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

Playing cards first entered Europe inside the late th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, with suits very similar on the tarot suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins (also referred to as disks, and pentacles) and the ones still used in traditional Italian, Spanish and Portuguese decks.

The first known documented tarot cards were 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 from the existence of carte da trionfi is really a written statement inside the court records in Ferrara, in . The oldest surviving tarot cards are from fifteen fragmented decks painted within the mid th century for your Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan.
Early decks
Le Bateleur: The Juggler from your 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 , because the painter he mentions, Michelino da Besozzo, returned to Milan in , while Martiano himself died in . He describes a deck with picture cards with images from the Greek gods and suits depicting four types of birds, not the common suits. However the cards were obviously regarded as "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 inside case of the Sola-Busca-Tarocchi (9) and also the Boiardo Tarocchi poem, written with 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 utilization of the term trionfi. The document from January is regarded as an unreliable reference; however, the identical painter, Sagramoro, was commissioned from the same patron, Leonello d'Este, as inside the February document. The game did actually gain in importance inside year , a Jubilee year in Italy, which saw many festivities along with the movement of countless pilgrims.

Three mid-th century sets were made for members with the Visconti family. The first deck, and probably the prototype, is referred to as Cary-Yale Tarot (or Visconti-Modrone Tarot) and was developed between and by an anonymous painter for Filippo Maria Visconti. The cards (only ) are today inside Cary collection with the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University, inside U.S. state of Connecticut. The most famous was painted in the mid-th century, to celebrate Francesco Sforza and his awesome wife Bianca Maria Visconti, daughter in the duke Filippo Maria. Probably, these cards were painted by Bonifacio Bembo or Francesco hop over to this site Zavattari between and . Of the initial cards, have been in The Morgan Library & Museum, are with the Accademia Carrara, are at the Casa Colleoni and four: 'The Devil', 'The Tower', 'Money's Horse (The Chariot)' and ' of Spades', are lost otherwise never made. This "Visconti-Sforza" deck, which has been widely reproduced, reflects conventional iconography in the time to an important degree.