“Tarot cards are believed to have originated in Italy about five centuries ago for several purposes: to provide a pictorial presentation of the times, to play a card game involving suit trumps, and to read and fortell the future. . . .

During the fourteenth century in Italy a tarot pack was used to play a game called tarocco. The word tarot is the French adaptation of the word tarocco. The ancient 78-card tarot decks generally comprised fifty-six regular playing cards known as the Lesser Arcana, divided into four suits numbered 10 to 1 (or Ace) with a King, Queen, Cavalier and Page. Suit signs were the forerunners of today’s suits:

Swords or Epees = Spades
Batons, Scepters or Wands = Clubs
Cups or Coupes = Hearts
Coins, Deniers or Pentacles = Diamonds

In addition to the fifty-six cards, the tarot decks contained twenty-two pictorial cards known as Trump, Triumph, Atouts, Greater Arcana, or the Major Arcana cards, numbered from XXI to I plus an unnumbered card known as “The Fool.” Most people today are unaware that the ordinary pack of playing cards is a direct descendant from the fourteenth century tarot deck. As card playing increased in popularity the trump cards were dropped, the Cavalier and Page cards were combined into today’s Jack, and “The Fool” became the Joker, thus giving us the standard deck of fifty-two cards plus joker.”

—S.R. Kaplan, Tarot Cards for Fun and Fortune Telling, 1970. The French cards pictured above are Major Arcana from the Tarot IJJ deck.