The Tarot de Marseille

The original purpose of tarot cards was for playing games, the first basic rules appearing in the manuscript of Martiano da Tortona before 1425, and the next from the year 1637. The game of tarot has many cultural variations. Divination using playing cards is in evidence as early as 1540 in a book entitled The Oracles of Francesco Marcolino da Forlì which allows a simple method of divination, though the cards are used only to select a random oracle and have no meaning in themselves. Manuscripts from 1735 (The Square of Sevens) and 1750 (Pratesi Cartomancer) document rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards of the tarot as well as a system for laying out the cards. Giacomo Casanova wrote in his diary that in 1765 his Russian mistress frequently used a deck of playing cards for divination.

The name "tarot" may come from the River Taro in northern Italy, near Parma. The Val di Taro was of strategic importance during the Middle Ages, as it was traversed by the Via Francigena, the pilgrim route and main connection between Rome and France in that era. As far as we know, tarot originates in northern Italy, perhaps the region of the Taro. Playing cards first entered Europe in the late 14th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, but the additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations weren't added until the 15th century, which the first documented tarot cards were created in northern Italy. The oldest surviving tarot cards are from fifteen fragmented decks painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan. Hand-painted tarot cards were a privilege of the upper classes. It was only after the invention of the printing press that mass production of cards became possible. Decks survive from this era from various cities in France, and the most popular pattern of these early printed decks was the Tarot de Marseille.

The Tarot de Marseille is one of the standard designs from which many tarot decks of the 19th century and later are derived. The name Tarot de Marseille is not of particularly ancient vintage; it was coined at least as early as 1889 by the French occultist Gérard Encausse in his book Le Tarot des Bohémiens, and was popularised in the 1930s by the French cartomancer Paul Marteau, who used this collective name to refer to a variety of closely related designs that were being made in the city of Marseilles in the south of France. Each card was originally printed from a woodcut; the cards were later coloured either by hand or by the use of stencils. One well-known artisan producing tarot cards in the Tarot de Marseille style was Nicolas Conver, who produced one early attested deck in 1760. Other early attested decks in the Tarot de Marseille family of decks include Noblet's (circa 1650) and Dodal's (circa 1701). The particular deck I own was published by Piatnik in Vienna, Austria.