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Sabio Tarot · History and curiosities

By Sabio Tarot

When did people start reading tarot for divination?

A fifteenth-century tarot card and a nineteenth-century cartomancy instruction leaflet may each come from a 78-card deck, but they belong to different practices. The earliest known evidence presents tarot as a game; explicit divination methods came later. The chronology is easier to follow if we separate four things: play, documented use, manuals and popularisation.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art places the earliest tarot references in the 1440s and 1450s in northern Italy and describes a trick-taking game with trumps. The Victoria and Albert Museum places tarot's entry into divination in the late eighteenth century and its occultist popularisation in the nineteenth. These dates are not absolute dividing lines for every individual.

First stage: cards for play

In a game, suits and trumps have a function agreed by the players. Trump images may have caught their attention, but an evocative scene alone does not prove it was used to foretell personal events. Evidence for an early divinatory reading would need to describe that practice clearly enough.

“We have no early evidence of tarot cartomancy” is therefore more precise than “nobody ever interpreted a card outside the game”. The first statement concerns the reach of our documents; the second claims knowledge of every conversation over centuries.

Second stage: cartomancy and new origin stories

The V&A explains that Etteilla, the professional name of Jean-Baptiste Alliette, first worked with ordinary playing-card cartomancy and created a deck specifically for divination in the 1770s. In the 1780s, esoteric writers spread the unproven idea of an Egyptian origin for tarot. Etteilla later brought tarot into his work.

This sequence rules out a simple claim that he “invented all card divination”. Cartomancy already existed. What changed was the development of methods, decks and interpretations linked to tarot. The British Museum holds a later object from the Grand Etteilla tradition: 78 cartomancy cards with an instruction booklet. The object shows a method taking material form, not that this particular copy was printed during Etteilla's lifetime.

Third stage: esoteric popularisation in the nineteenth century

The V&A says occultist interest grew during the nineteenth century and connects Éliphas Lévi with new links between tarot, numerology and other esoteric currents. It also places the spread of “Major Arcana” and “Minor Arcana” in this setting. The practice changed: from cards whose order mattered in a game to cards whose order and images were read through interpretive systems.

When the Met says the modern association with divination gained ground in the nineteenth century and the V&A mentions uses in the late eighteenth, they need not be disagreeing. One source discusses when a use appeared; the other, when it became widespread. “Beginning” and “becoming popular” are different events.

A timeline without magical leaps

Period Evidence we can describe Limit
Fifteenth century Tarot records and cards from games in Italy They do not document a personal-reading manual
Late eighteenth century Cartomancy, decks and texts linked to new methods They do not prove an Egyptian origin
Nineteenth century Expansion of occult readings and cartomancy editions They do not represent one universal method
Twentieth century Decks such as Rider–Waite–Smith with new visual tools They are not the original visual form of every Minor Arcana card

This table is not a story of inevitable progress. People continued to play tarot while divinatory uses developed. Two uses can coexist without one erasing the other.

If you have a deck today, check whether it includes a leaflet and what purpose it names: game, symbolic study, cartomancy or something else. Then separate the deck's rules from the history of its images. For more, read Etteilla and the early manuals or tarot before divination.

What counts as evidence that tarot “was used for divination”?

A card bearing an image of Death is not enough. Someone might play with that card, collect it or simply look at its artwork without treating it as an omen. Printed instructions for laying out cards and interpreting their relationship are far more direct evidence of cartomancy. Contemporary accounts describing a consultation may also count, provided we know which deck they mean.

This distinction helps you test viral claims. If someone says “the Visconti family already consulted the future with tarot”, ask for the document recording that practice, not just a photograph of their deck. The Milanese cards show that the cards and their imagery existed. The British Museum's Etteilla deck with its leaflet shows a different use in another period. A historical transformation lies between the two kinds of evidence; an origin slogan cannot remove it.

Nor should we treat cartomancy and occultism as identical. Someone may read cards without accepting a Kabbalistic system; another person may study esoteric correspondences without offering readings. The V&A recounts how different writers and movements added interpretations to tarot. Naming the specific practice prevents “divination” from swallowing every kind of symbolic interest.

What changes for a reading today?

The date tarot entered cartomancy neither validates nor invalidates the experience of someone using cards for conversation or reflection now. It does stop us assigning a fifteenth-century workshop a method known from an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century print. When a modern book promises “traditional meaning”, ask which tradition it means: a rule of play, an Etteilla interpretation, an occult correspondence or a recent editorial proposal?

Try analysing a passage in your manual. Mark what describes the image in one colour, what it proposes as interpretation in another and historical claims in a third. A sentence may contain two layers, but it should show how they are connected. If the book says a card has “always” foretold an event, look for a dated reference. Without one, use it as that author's possible reading, not a proven description of early players.

History becomes clearer when dates take different verbs: “is documented”, “is published”, “spreads” and “is reinterpreted”. The order matters. An idea circulating in the nineteenth century does not erase tarot's earlier life as a game; the existence of the game does not prevent later reading practices from developing.

Sources consulted