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Sabio Tarot · History and curiosities

By Sabio Tarot

Five verifiable facts about tarot history

“Tarot contains a thousand-year-old secret” is striking but hard to verify. A surviving card, a museum record and an approximate date tell less spectacular, more interesting stories. These five facts start from identifiable objects or catalogues and stop where the evidence stops.

1. An early tarot deck had more court cards than expected

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Visconti deck preserved at Yale's Beinecke Library contains as many as six court cards per suit, including male and female versions at several ranks. It also has three theological virtues among its trumps. Someone familiar only with the 56 Minor and 22 Major Arcana of a present-day deck may find this surprising.

What this shows: one early structure does not exactly match the usual count. What it does not show: that every fifteenth-century deck looked like this. The Met leaves open whether this was a unique edition or an earlier stage before other patterns settled. One set cannot settle that choice on its own.

2. A museum box can belong to a different deck

The British Museum catalogues a tarot reproduced from Nicolas Conver's design. Its record warns that the box came from another deck, Grand Etteilla, and that some information copied from it needs correction. The cards and case travelled together at some point, but they need not have begun together.

What this shows: a physical label can mislead if it is not checked against the cards and catalogue. What it does not show: that the museum knows precisely who mixed the pieces or when. This small story teaches a method: before attributing an object, examine the cards, technique, inscription, box and curator's notes.

3. “Design from 1760” does not mean “copy from 1760”

The same British Museum record identifies Nicolas Conver's 1760 design but dates its reproduction to the late nineteenth century and describes its technique as chromolithography. A collector or tarot reader can work with the design without holding an object made in Conver's lifetime.

What this shows: the history of a design and the age of one copy are different. What it does not show: that a reproduction is automatically useless or misleading. It can serve for studying composition; to discuss original pigments or eighteenth-century circulation, find an object from that period.

4. A cartomancy deck could come with instructions

Another British Museum tarot deck, linked to the Grand Etteilla tradition and dated to the late nineteenth century, is preserved with an instruction leaflet. The leaflet reminds us that reading systems are taught and published. They do not float outside publishing history.

What this shows: the edition proposed a documented cartomancy use. What it does not show: that fifteenth-century Italian tarot came with the same manual or that everyone in the nineteenth century followed identical rules. The V&A's history places tarot's explicit connection to divination centuries after its first documentation as a game.

5. “Rider–Waite–Smith” names three different jobs

The V&A identifies Pamela Colman Smith as the image designer, Arthur Edward Waite with the project's direction and publication, and Rider and Company with printing. The British Museum also credits Smith as the artist. The deck's full name helps us remember who drew the illustrated Minor Arcana.

What this shows: accurate credit distinguishes illustration, writing and publishing. What it does not show: that every modern deck with Minor Arcana scenes is a literal copy of Colman Smith. Some reinterpret her visual language; others pursue an independent design.

How to check another historical claim yourself

Turn a striking statement into a question that could fail a test: “Which object's record supports this?”, “Which date belongs to the design and which to the physical copy?”, “Does the museum state this as fact or possibility?” Write down the answer with a link. If you cannot find the documentary bridge, you need not throw the idea away. You can describe it accurately as a tradition, hypothesis or contemporary interpretation.

This discipline can improve symbolic reading too. An image may suggest several ideas without making us invent its date or artist. For more context, visit the earliest tarot decks, what Tarot de Marseille means and Pamela Colman Smith.

What these five objects have in common

All five cases challenge a tempting equivalence. “Same family name” does not mean “same deck”, as the Visconti sets show. “Box present” does not mean “original box”, as the British Museum warns. “1760 design” does not mean “copy made in 1760”. “Etteilla's name” does not mean “printed in Etteilla's lifetime”. The commercial name “Rider” does not exhaust Pamela Colman Smith's authorship. Each error comes from collapsing two layers into one.

The answer is not collecting dates without context. A useful record ties each fact to the right unit. You may write “deck X preserves N cards” if the museum inventory confirms N, but not “the original deck had N” without investigating what is missing. You may say “a design was created in this year” and “this copy was printed later” in one sentence. Precision often takes only a few words when you know which distinction matters.

Turn a curiosity into a critical reading exercise

Try a picture of a tarot card shared on social media. Search for the object in a museum catalogue. If you find it, record the title, inventory number, attributed date, technique and curator's note. Then ask whether the circulated image shows the original, a reproduction or a contemporary edition. Finally compare the post's text with the record. Mark what agrees as “documented” and what the poster adds as “interpretation”.

A symbolic interpretation need not be dismissed because it is not a historical date. It may be creative, moving or useful for studying a card. It should simply be labelled as such. If a post claims that gold on a card must mean future wealth, a museum record can establish that the support contains gold, not that prediction. Those are different questions and need different answers.

Research can also uncover new questions. Why did one box end up with another deck? Who decided to reproduce the worn lines of an engraving? What changed between print runs? Catalogues do not always close these questions; they make them possible to ask. A good historical fact can end with an explicit limit and remain interesting.

Sources consulted