From past to now, there have been lots of the funny and exciting discussions of Tarot cards and their secretive history. Why? The following are some simple answers to this question:
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– Tarot cards have been closely associated with “the occult” and “fortune-telling”. Generally speaking, many serious historians seem to have many desires for the subjects.
– To be described as a product of the unknown and mystery, these magical cards have given everyone some useful advice and guidance.
A brief history of Tarot cards
At the beginning

Tarot cards are believed to be the early form of today’s playing cards. It is so amazing, isn’t it? Actually, they were largely known in the 14th century in Italia and France. Interestingly, the 15th century Visconti – Sforza Tarocchi deck – one of the beautiful facsimile of these early packs – is still available today.
Initially, Tarot cards (tarock cards or tarocchi cards) were used for playing a card game with the name of Tarocchi. A pack of 78 Tarot cards have been split into 2 groups including 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards. Actually, the Major Arcana cards did hold many secretive symbolic meanings for the influence of Sufism on the early Kabbalah. That can be one of the reasons why sometimes correlations are drawn between Tarot cards and the Kabbalah.
More importantly, in the card games, 22 cards of the Major Arcana were considered to be trump cards while 56 cards in four suits of the Minor Arcana were described to be similar to today’s standard of the deck of 52 cards in four suits. However, the little difference here is that the Tarot pack has 14 cards in each suit.
And nowadays
Today, most of the modern Tarot cards are likely to be applied for divination or even as the fanciful symbol-system for personal development. In some cases, these mysterious cards will be often used as the tools for some artistic expression. Dozens of the artists (involving Salvador Dali) have taken advantage of Tarot cards’ symbolism as an incredible mean of creative expression.
Some of us can wonder how these cards can get closely associated with Fortune-Telling, right? In fact, most of the playing cards may be utilized for divinatory purposes. As a result, Tarot cards have caught special attention from anyone because of their more complicated designs, the older pedigree than other packs and mysterious symbols on cards. Nevertheless, bear in mind that Tarot cards’ predictions will depend much on the Tarot layouts and readers’ gifted intuition.
Other Common Myths
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– Tarot cards are supposed not to come from ancient Egypt. Actually, they were an exciting invention of an 18th century writer.
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– They did not arrive in Europe with the Gypsies. Why did this rumor start? One of the convincing answers here is that Gypsies were thought to have originated in Egypt, and Gypsies tend to be connected with Fortune telling. However, this myth can be easily dispelled as soon as ones stop to think that Tarot cards existed in Europe before the fresh arrival of Gypsies.
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– Tarot cards have not specially been considered as “the cards of the devil”. The truth is that this phrase was given to all of the playing cards by the early churchmen; thus, they had no any connection with divination. These protectors of this belief were extremely condemning all kinds of the playing cards since they just applied for gambling. Believe it or not, there are also some unconfirmed rumors which this practice can still exist these days in some remote areas in the world.
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