This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Michael Dummett's history of the tarot game establishes, from surviving fifteenth century Italian records, that tarot began as an ordinary trick taking card game played across Italian courts, with no documented divinatory or esoteric use for roughly three centuries after its invention, a plainer origin than many later decks' own framing suggests.
That documented sequence matters for a tarot deck entry because it means a deck's claimed lineage back to ancient Egypt or a lost esoteric tradition is, on the surviving historical record, a much later invention layered onto a genuinely older card game, and an entry records both the deck's real documented history and its own stated mythology honestly, as two separate facts.
A tarot deck entry therefore records a deck's actual documented place in this history, whether it continues the older game tradition, the eighteenth century occult reinterpretation, or a distinct modern reworking of either, since Dummett's own research shows tarot's history and its later occult reputation are genuinely separable, checkable facts rather than one continuous story. Recording that separation is itself part of describing any tarot deck honestly.
An entry also notes, where it can be documented, roughly how long a given deck's design has been in continuous print, since a deck's longevity in the market is itself a checkable fact distinct from how old its stated symbolism claims to be.