The History of Tarot Cards: From 1450 Italy to the Modern Rider-Waite Deck

The First Tarot Cards: Where Ancient Mystery Began

When you shuffle your tarot deck today, feeling the familiar weight of 78 cards in your hands, you're participating in a tradition that stretches back nearly 600 years. But the story of where these mystical cards truly began might surprise you. The earliest tarot cards weren't created by Egyptian priests, ancient mystics, or wandering fortune-tellers. They emerged from the glittering courts of Renaissance Italy, commissioned by dukes, painted by master artists, and used not for divination, but for a card game that captivated the nobility of Milan.

Today, we invite you to journey back through the mists of time to discover the remarkable origins of the very first tarot cards ever created, and trace their evolution through the centuries to the iconic decks we know and love today.

Milan, 1450: The Birth of Tarot

The year is approximately 1450. In the grand palaces of Milan, the powerful Visconti and Sforza families ruled over one of the wealthiest city-states in Europe. Duke Francesco Sforza, a legendary military commander who had married into the illustrious Visconti dynasty, commissioned something extraordinary: a set of playing cards so magnificent they would become eternal treasures.

These weren't ordinary cards. They were hand-painted masterpieces, created in the workshop of court painter Bonifacio Bembo, using precious materials that only royalty could afford. Real gold leaf gleamed on the backgrounds. Paint made from crushed malachite and lapis lazuli created colours so vivid they still take the breath away more than five centuries later.

The Visconti-Sforza deck, as historians now call it, represents the oldest surviving tarot cards in existence. Originally consisting of 78 cards, 74 still survive today, scattered across the world's greatest museums. You can find 35 cards at the Morgan Library in New York, 26 at the Accademia Carrara in Italy, and 13 remain in private collections. Four cards, including The Devil and The Tower, have been lost to history, leaving us to wonder what secrets they might have held.

Some historians believe this deck may have been created as a wedding gift, celebrating the union of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. Whether given in celebration of love or simply commissioned as a display of wealth and taste, these cards represent the pinnacle of Renaissance craftsmanship.

Not Fortune-Telling, But Triumphs

Here's what might surprise modern tarot enthusiasts: these first cards weren't designed for divination at all. They were created for a card game called tarocchi or trionfi, meaning triumphs or trumps. It was a trick-taking game similar to modern bridge, and the wealthy nobility of Renaissance Italy would gather in candlelit halls, playing for entertainment and prestige.

The game itself reflected the hierarchical world of medieval Europe. The deck contained the four suits we still recognise today: Cups, Swords, Coins, and Batons (now often called Wands). Added to these were 21 special trump cards and The Fool. These trumps depicted allegorical figures that would have been instantly recognisable to 15th-century players: The Emperor and Empress, The Pope, The Wheel of Fortune, Death, The Sun, and The World.

The imagery wasn't mystical encoding. It was a visual language of medieval Christian morality and courtly life. The Wheel of Fortune reminded players that luck could change in an instant. Death was a familiar figure in an age of plague and war. The hierarchical progression from common figures up through religious and cosmic imagery reflected the medieval understanding of the universe itself, from earthly concerns to divine mysteries.

These were status symbols, conversation pieces, and entertainment for the elite. To hold such a deck was to hold a small fortune. Because each card was individually hand-painted, the number of decks produced was necessarily small. Only after the invention of the printing press would tarot cards become accessible to ordinary people.

The Visconti-Sforza Masterpiece: A Window into Renaissance Life

The Visconti-Sforza deck deserves special attention, for it remains the most complete and magnificent example of early tarot. Look closely at any surviving card and you'll see extraordinary detail that transports us directly into 15th-century Milan.

The figures wear the actual fashions of Milanese nobility. Elaborate brocades, fur-trimmed robes, and jewelled crowns reflect what the Visconti and Sforza families themselves would have worn. The armour on the knights reflects real military equipment of the era, the kind that Francesco Sforza himself would have recognised from his years as a condottiero, a mercenary commander. The architectural details visible in backgrounds show buildings that would have stood in Milan during that golden age.

These weren't generic medieval fantasy images. They were contemporary portraits of status and aspiration. Some scholars believe that certain cards may even depict actual members of the Visconti and Sforza families, their faces immortalised in gold leaf and precious pigment.

The cards were painted on thick paper using tempera paint, then embellished with gold leaf that was carefully tooled and burnished to catch the light. The gold backgrounds weren't merely decorative. They echoed the gold backgrounds of religious icons and illuminated manuscripts, lending the cards an air of sacred importance even as they served as gaming pieces.

Each card took considerable time to create, making the full deck an investment equivalent to a small fortune. The workshop of Bonifacio Bembo would have employed multiple skilled artists and apprentices to complete such a commission. Only the wealthiest families could afford such luxury.

The Sola Busca: The Oldest Complete Deck

While the Visconti-Sforza cards are the oldest surviving tarot, they are incomplete. For the oldest complete 78-card deck, we must look to another Italian treasure: the Sola Busca tarot, created in 1491.

This remarkable deck, now housed at the Brera Museum in Milan after the Italian government purchased it for 800,000 euros in 2009, takes a completely different approach to imagery. Instead of the standard allegorical figures, the Sola Busca depicts ancient Greek and Roman heroes. Characters like Nebuchadnezzar, and figures from the Roman Republic appear throughout the trumps. The deck loosely follows the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, featuring members of the Roman Pantheon such as Bacchus.

The Latin motto "Trahor Fatis" (I am drawn by Fate) appears on several cards, hinting at deeper meanings that scholars still debate today. Some researchers believe the deck contains hidden alchemical symbolism, serving as a kind of visual guide to esoteric initiation. Others see it as an educational tool, helping Renaissance nobles remember the stories and moral lessons of classical history.

Most significantly, the Sola Busca was the first tarot deck to illustrate every single card, including all the pip cards (the numbered cards of each suit). Previous decks showed the pip cards simply as arrangements of the suit symbols, much like modern playing cards show the Three of Hearts as simply three heart symbols. The Sola Busca gave each pip card its own scene, its own characters, its own story.

This innovation would prove enormously influential four centuries later. When Pamela Colman Smith created the artwork for the famous Rider-Waite deck in 1909, she drew direct inspiration from the Sola Busca. Black and white photographs of this ancient deck had been exhibited at the British Museum just a year earlier, and Smith borrowed imagery from nearly a dozen of the cards. The haunting image on the Ten of Swords, showing a figure pierced by ten blades, comes directly from the Sola Busca original.

The Tarot de Marseille: Tarot Spreads Across Europe

As tarot spread from Italy into France and Switzerland during the 16th century, the designs became more standardised. The Tarot de Marseille emerged as the dominant pattern, with its distinctive style of bold outlines, primary colours, and consistent imagery that would remain largely unchanged for centuries.

Unlike the unique, hand-painted luxury decks of the Italian nobility, the Tarot de Marseille was mass-produced using woodblock printing techniques. This made tarot accessible to ordinary people for the first time. The cards spread throughout France, becoming popular not just among aristocrats but among merchants, soldiers, and common folk who enjoyed the game.

The Tarot de Marseille established the visual vocabulary that most modern decks still follow. The Magician stands at his table with the tools of the four suits before him. The High Priestess sits between two pillars. The Lovers face a choice. The Tower is struck by lightning. These images, refined through centuries of reproduction, became the archetypal tarot that later occultists would invest with mystical significance.

In France, tarot remained primarily a card game until well into the 18th century. The game was so popular that it experienced a major revival, and today France has the strongest tarot gaming community in the world, with the French Tarot Federation organising tournaments and championships. For many French players, tarot remains what it was originally: an entertaining and strategic card game with no mystical associations whatsoever.

From Game to Oracle: The 18th Century Transformation

For over 300 years, tarot remained primarily a card game. But in 1781, everything changed. A French clergyman named Antoine Court de Gebelin published a work claiming that tarot cards contained secret wisdom from ancient Egypt. According to his theory, the images on the cards were fragments of the legendary Book of Thoth, preserved by Egyptian priests and carried to Europe by wandering Gypsies.

There was no evidence for any of this. Later Egyptologists found nothing to support the connection. The word "tarot" has no Egyptian roots. Gypsies actually came from India, not Egypt, and arrived in Europe after tarot cards already existed. But Court de Gebelin's romantic theory captured the imagination of an era fascinated by ancient mysteries. Europe in the late 18th century was gripped by Egyptomania, and the idea that tarot held secrets from the land of the pyramids proved irresistible.

A few years later, a French occultist named Jean-Baptiste Alliette, writing under the mystical pseudonym Etteilla (his surname spelled backwards), published the first guide to reading tarot cards for divination. He created his own deck specifically designed for fortune-telling and established many of the practices still used by readers today, including the concept of card spreads and reversed card meanings.

The transformation was complete. What began as a nobleman's card game had become a tool for peering into the mysteries of fate. Throughout the 19th century, French occultists continued to develop tarot's mystical associations, connecting it to Kabbalah, astrology, and ceremonial magic.

The Rider-Waite Revolution: The Deck That Changed Everything

No discussion of tarot history would be complete without the deck that transformed tarot for the English-speaking world: the Rider-Waite deck, first published in 1909.

Arthur Edward Waite was a scholar and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society devoted to the study of occultism, metaphysics, and ceremonial magic. The Golden Dawn attracted some of the most brilliant and eccentric minds of the era, including the poet W.B. Yeats and the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley. Waite wanted to create a tarot deck that would serve as a complete system of esoteric symbolism, accessible to serious students of the mysteries.

To illustrate his vision, Waite commissioned a young artist named Pamela Colman Smith. Smith was a remarkable figure in her own right: a woman of mixed heritage who had grown up between Jamaica, New York, and London, a theatrical designer, a storyteller, and a member of the Golden Dawn. She had synaesthesia, experiencing music as colours and shapes, and this unusual perception influenced her artistic style.

Working from Waite's instructions, Smith created 78 fully illustrated cards in just six months. This was revolutionary. Following the example of the Sola Busca deck she had seen at the British Museum, Smith gave every card, including all the pip cards, its own distinct scene. The Three of Swords showed a heart pierced by three blades against a stormy sky. The Four of Cups depicted a young man contemplating three cups while a fourth was offered by a mysterious hand. The Ten of Pentacles portrayed a wealthy family scene with dogs at their feet and an old man wrapped in a decorated robe.

These illustrated pip cards made tarot reading accessible to beginners in a way that previous decks never had. Instead of trying to remember abstract meanings for the Seven of Wands, a reader could simply look at the card and see a figure defending a hilltop against challengers below. The images told stories that spoke directly to human experience.

The deck was published by the Rider Company in London, giving it the name by which it's still widely known: the Rider-Waite deck. In recent years, many in the tarot community have advocated calling it the Rider-Waite-Smith or simply the Waite-Smith deck, to properly credit Pamela Colman Smith for her artistic contribution. For decades, her name was largely forgotten, while Waite received the recognition. Smith died in poverty in 1951, never having received royalties for the deck that would become the most influential tarot ever created.

Today, the Rider-Waite-Smith deck remains the bestselling tarot deck in the world. Its imagery has become so iconic that when most people picture a tarot card, they picture Smith's artwork. Thousands of modern decks draw inspiration from her compositions, her colour choices, and her symbolic vocabulary. Every tarot deck that illustrates its pip cards with scenes owes a debt to Pamela Colman Smith and her extraordinary achievement.

The Legacy: Six Centuries of Symbolism

From the gold-leafed courts of Renaissance Milan to the mass-produced decks available today, tarot has travelled an extraordinary journey. The Visconti-Sforza deck was created for dukes and duchesses, each card a small fortune in precious materials. Today, tarot is accessible to anyone who feels called to explore its imagery.

The symbols have proved remarkably durable. The Fool still steps toward the edge of the cliff, trusting in the journey ahead. The Wheel of Fortune still turns, reminding us that circumstances change. The Star still pours water onto the land and into the pool, offering hope after difficulty. These images resonated with 15th-century Italian nobles, with 18th-century French occultists, with early 20th-century British mystics, and they continue to resonate with seekers today.

The journey of tarot from Renaissance game to modern tool of reflection demonstrates something profound about symbols and human consciousness. The images on those early cards, though created for entertainment, contained archetypal resonance that transcended their original purpose. The cards evolved because they were meant to. They found their deeper purpose through centuries of human hands shuffling, dealing, and eventually seeking wisdom.

Connecting with the Ancient Tradition

The next time you draw a card, take a moment to consider the journey it represents. Your Empress connects you to that first Empress, painted in gold by Bonifacio Bembo's workshop for the Sforza family nearly six centuries ago. Your Wheel of Fortune spins on the same axis as the wheel that turned for Renaissance gamblers and medieval philosophers. The imagery on your cards, whether Rider-Waite-Smith or one of the thousands of modern decks inspired by it, descends from those first painted treasures of Milan.

The first tarot cards weren't created to tell fortunes, but they became tools for reflection and insight because the symbols they carried were too resonant to remain mere game pieces. The allegorical figures of 15th-century Italy spoke truths that echo through the ages.

From stone comes fire. From earth comes power. And from a Renaissance card game came one of the most enduring traditions of symbolic exploration the world has ever known.

Your journey with tarot is part of this ancient story, still unfolding, still revealing its meanings, one card at a time.

About Divine Warrior

At Divine Warrior, we honour the ancient traditions while supporting modern spiritual practice. Our curated collection of tarot decks connects you to this remarkable 600-year history. Whether you're a seasoned reader or just beginning your journey, we're here to support your path with ethically sourced tools, trusted knowledge, and a community of fellow seekers.

Explore our tarot card collection.