The earlier suits are still preserved in the tarot and in Italian and Spanish playing cards. Some time before 1480, the French introduced cards with the now-familiar suits of hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds. The tarot adds the Fool, the trumps, and a set of queens to this system. These early cards had suits of cups, swords, coins, and polo sticks (seen by Europeans as staves), and courts consisting of a king and two male underlings. European playing cards were an adaptation of the Islamic Mamluk cards. They appeared quite suddenly in many different European cities between 13. Inaccurate: The 52-card deck evolved from the tarot, leaving the Joker as the only remnant of the major arcana.Ĭurrent Historical Understanding: Playing cards came to Europe from Islam, probably via Muslim Spain, about 50 years before the development of tarot. Relationship between tarot and ordinary playing cards Permission is granted to photocopy for educational, nonprofit uses. The information on this sheet may be freely used, although direct quotations must be credited and an acknowledgement to would be appreciated if you found this sheet especially useful. Although written records are our most reliable contact with centuries past, they do not preserve everything that people thought or did, especially pertaining to an aspect of popular culture, such as the tarot. Readers should also be aware of the limitations of relying on documentary evidence alone. Readers interested in examining the evidence for themselves and drawing their own conclusions are directed to the references listed at the end of this sheet for useful starting places. Other interpretations might be drawn from the same body of evidence. The information given here consists mostly of conclusions that recent tarot historians have drawn from studying the evidence of written documents and cards that have come down to us. However, both history and myth may suffer when the two become confused.

They speak an inner truth that is, at times, more personally true than external facts. These myths tell us much about the significance tarot has on an inspirational growth level. Myths and lore express the human soul and creativity. This is not to say that there is no room for speculative or non-factual stories about the tarot. This page addresses some oft-repeated statements about the tarot that may seem like historical fact, but are actually without basis in the evidence presently available. Many things (true, false, and speculative) have been written about the history of the tarot.

Euchre forever key