which brought the game into the public eye on a broad scale. In addition in the 1460’s the introduction of Gutenberg’s printing press to Italy made mass manufacturing books and cards possible. From this innocuous game of Tarrochi (called Tarrock in German/Austrian, or Tarot in France) it was not long before these cards aided by the wide spread use of the printing press became a medium for fortune telling and parlor tricks.
From Italy tarot cards migrated into Southern France and the “Tarot de Marseilles” is one of the most famous decks from that country originating around 1499 when France conquered northern Italy. The English Tarot deck is often called the Rider-Waite deck and is the one we are most familiar with in the modern day English speaking countries. It consists of 78 cards 56 minor arcana and 22 major arcana or what would have been the trump cards in the game of Tarrochi. It was created in 1909 by artist Pamela Colman Smith and Arthur Edward Waite. It was published by the Rider company and now is copyrighted by U.S. Games.
In addition it is no surprise that Tarot cards were under condemnation from their very conception by the religious authorities of the time. They were frowned upon by the Roman Catholic Church especially as a form of idolatry.
Interestingly enough science was much kinder to the Tarot deck than religion. For example, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud subscribed to tarot beliefs. Carl Jung attached symbolic importance to The Tarot cards attributing the cards with inkblot type properties. These enabled the psychologist to form evaluative inferences about an individual’s archetypal characteristics. The cards helped identify characteristics that represent the subconscious