What the Tarot Is

The tarot is a deck of seventy-eight cards in two parts: twenty-two trumps, called the Major Arcana, and four suits of fourteen cards each, called the Minor Arcana. The Majors run from the Fool and the Magician through named allegorical figures, the Empress, the Hierophant, Death, the Tower, the World; the Minors, like an ordinary playing pack, run ace to ten with four court cards in each of the suits of wands, cups, swords and pentacles.

Decks of this shape are documented in fifteenth-century northern Italy, where they were made for a trick-taking game called tarocchi. Their use for divination and self-knowledge is a later development.