From Play to Cartomancy: What Evidence Marks the Change in Tarot

Tarot was born in a playing environment, and today many people use it for readings. Between the two uses there is no switch that was flipped one day for all decks. There are documents from different periods and with different purposes: rules for playing, books about reading cards, decks designed for divinatory practices, and old copies annotated later. Comparing them allows us to describe a change without claiming that every early card hid from the beginning the same esoteric system we have today.

The Bibliothèque nationale de France catalogs Règles du jeu des Tarots, a print attributed to Michel de Marolles and dated around 1637. Its subject is play. The same library catalogs Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots, by Etteilla, published in 1783. The title already mentions tarots, and it belongs to the body of works by the cartomancer Jean-Baptiste Alliette. The comparison does not prove that no one interpreted cards in 1637, nor that cartomancy began exactly in 1783. It does document two different written uses in identifiable sources.

What the Rules Pamphlet Proves

The record for the Marolles document reports eight pages, a proposed place of publication, and a handwritten addition. Since we have not used a complete transcription of the pamphlet for this article, we do not attribute specific rules to a particular page. Its existence and classification as “Tarot (jeu)” are enough to show that tarot was part of documented play practices. The article early tarot game manuals explains how to read their limits.

A game manual does not invalidate the later existence of other practices. Nor does it prove that the images lacked cultural resonance for players. It states what the document was written for. The distinction between a text’s purpose and all possible uses of a deck is fundamental. History can show coexistences, appropriations, and regional changes that a “before/after” narrative oversimplifies.

What Etteilla’s Books Prove

The BnF holds a book by Alliette published in 1770 with the title Etteilla, ou Manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes. That title is about cards, but we should not automatically turn it into a tarot manual: the record distinguishes it from the 1783 work that explicitly names the tarots. The 1783 work has 182 pages and one plate according to the catalog. There are also later installments of the project. The documentary sequence allows us to identify an author, a practice, and an explicit expansion toward tarots without compressing everything into a single date.

It is not necessary to adopt Etteilla’s historical or symbolic claims as facts about the 15th century in order to recognize his importance as an 18th-century source of cartomancy. His book is primary evidence of what was published and proposed in his time. It is not a direct window into the intentions of the Visconti-Sforza painters. When a later author attributes remote antiquity to a method, the researcher distinguishes the date of the testimony from the era that the testimony claims to describe.

A Game Copy with Added Notes

The BnF catalogs a Camoin deck based on the Conver model, dated between 1890 and 1900, which has handwritten inscriptions on the divinatory meaning of the trumps. The record also registers an old mention of Conver and an 1890 revenue stamp. It is an object with layers: an earlier model, a later printed copy, and a written intervention related to reading. The annotation shows us that someone treated those cards as a medium for cartomancy. It does not prove that the first engraver of the model designed them with those handwritten words, nor that the annotation was made on the same day of printing.

This type of evidence is especially powerful because the change in use becomes physically visible. Even so, it needs dating. If the record does not date each handwritten line precisely, we say “later annotation described by the BnF”; we do not date the notes by the Conver model or the revenue stamp. In how to read a catalog of playing cards, a method is offered for separating those dates.

Three Clocks in the Transition

The first clock is the creation and production of decks for playing. The second is the publication of methods for reading with cards. The third is the concrete transformation of existing copies through annotations or new editions. They do not advance at the same pace in all cities. An old-style deck can continue to be played when books on cartomancy are already being published; another can receive divinatory notes long after its manufacture. The question “when did tarot become divinatory?” needs to specify whether it speaks of the first preserved text, commercial diffusion, use of a deck, or modern public image.

The BnF points out that the primary function of the Tarot de Marseille it studies was playful and that its status as a divinatory archetype was consolidated later. That formulation leaves room for historical processes. The Met offers another synthesis on the late association between tarot, occultism, and divination. When synthesis sources place the rise in different centuries or with different nuances, do not force a single date; refer to the specific documents that you can indeed date.

How to Avoid the Myth of the Hidden Secret

A Renaissance image can represent Death, Justice, or Fortune because those themes circulated in visual culture. The Morgan explains that background for its trump cards. It does not automatically follow that each figure was a secret key to divination. To assert a specific cartomantic use, one must present a source for that use: a text, an annotation, a deck designed for it, or a verifiable testimony. A similarity between symbols is not enough.

The method also does not oblige one to discredit current practice. You can find personal meaning in the cards without saying that your method was written by a 15th-century workshop. A responsible reading recognizes its contemporary framework. That honesty makes it possible to teach history and practice on the same website without confusing documentary evidence with an interpretive proposal.

An Exercise with Documents, Not Legends

Make three brief record cards: Marolles 1637, Alliette/Etteilla 1783, and annotated Camoin copy 1890–1900. For each one, write the type of object, the purpose that the title or record documents, the date of the copy, and what it does not prove. In the first, do not invent spreads. In the second, do not attribute its doctrine to the first tarot painters. In the third, do not date the handwritten notes by the model’s inscription. Then draw a timeline with points, without drawing a single inevitable arrow.

That line will not be a complete history of European cartomancy. It will be a verifiable comparison of three pieces of evidence. When new sources appear, you can add them without erasing the previous ones. That is the advantage of answering with documents: history remains open to revision, and the reader knows where to verify each claim.

Sources Consulted

• BnF, Règles du jeu des Tarots (1637). Game rules document.
• BnF, Etteilla, book on cards from 1770 and work that names tarots from 1783. Bibliographic distinction between publications.
• BnF, Camoin deck with divinatory annotations. Copy with later written intervention.
• BnF, “Un tarot qui rebat les cartes”. Institutional synthesis on play and later reinterpretation.