The tarot first known as occult tarot Deck-specific

The tarot first called trionfi and later on as tarocchi, tarock, yet others is often a pack of playing cards mostly numbering ), used through the mid-th century in several areas of Europe to experience a small grouping of games including Italian tarocchini and French tarot. From the late th century before present time the tarot has additionally found use by mystics and occultists in efforts at divination or like 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 those suits h like it as pip cards numbering from ace to ten and four face cards for a total of cards. In addition, the tarot is distinguished by the separate -card trump suit along with a single card known because the Fool. Depending on the game, the Fool may act as the top trump or could be played to stop following suit.

Fran�ois Rabelais gives tarau because name of one in the games played by Gargantua as portion of his Gargantua and Pantagruel; that is likely the earliest attestation of the French form from the name. Tarot cards are used throughout much of Europe to try out 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 along with 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 the Kabbalah but there is no documented evidence for these origins or from the use of tarot for divination prior to 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" for the Taro River in northern Italy, near Parma; the game seems to have originated in northern Italy, in Milan or Bologna. Other writers believe it comes through the Arabic word turuq, this means 'ways'.Alternatively, it could possibly be in the Arabic taraka, 'to leave, abandon, omit, leave behind'. According with a French etymology, the Italian tarocco produced from Arabic ..'rejection; subtraction, deduction, discount'.

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

Playing cards first entered Europe in the late th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, with suits virtually identical on the tarot suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins (also known as disks, and pentacles) and people still used in traditional Italian, Spanish and Portuguese decks.

The first known documented tarot cards are created between consultant and in Milan, Ferrara and Bologna in northern Italy when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added towards the common four-suit pack. These new decks were originally called carte da trionfi, triumph cards, along with the additional cards known simply as trionfi, which became "trumps" in English. The first literary evidence of the existence of carte da trionfi can be a written statement within the court records in Ferrara, in . The oldest surviving tarot cards come from fifteen fragmented decks painted in the mid th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan.
Early decks
Le Bateleur: The Juggler in the Tarot of Marseilles. This card is frequently 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 of 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 included with regular packs show philosophical, social, poetical, astronomical, and heraldic ideas, Roman/Greek/Babylonian heroes, as in the case from the Sola-Busca-Tarocchi (9) and 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 , use the term trionfi. The document from January is certainly an unreliable reference; however, exactly the same painter, Sagramoro, was commissioned from the same patron, Leonello d'Este, as within the February document. The game did actually gain in importance in the year , a Jubilee year in Italy, which saw many festivities and the movement of many pilgrims.

Three mid-th century sets were generated for members with the Visconti family. The first deck, and probably the prototype, is called the Cary-Yale Tarot (or Visconti-Modrone Tarot) and was created between and by an anonymous painter for Filippo Maria Visconti. The cards (only ) are today in the Cary collection with the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University, in the U.S. state of Connecticut. The most famous was painted inside mid-th century, to celebrate Francesco Sforza with his fantastic 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 first cards, are in The Morgan Library & Museum, are with the Accademia Carrara, are in 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 continues to be widely reproduced, reflects conventional iconography of the time for you to a significant degree.