Mystical systems

Tarot

Direct answer

Tarot is a deck of illustrated cards used historically for games and later for symbolic, occult, psychological, and reflective reading systems.

Tarot is a card system whose images became a symbolic language for archetypes, choices, and life patterns.

Mystical SystemsThe Great Almanac DictionaryUpdated 2026-09-26

Get my personal reading

$0 today, then $12/month after 7 days. Cancel anytime.

At a glance

Found in: Mystical Systems
Related: Birth Chart, Zodiac, Transit

An old bound manuscript lying open, a quill and a wax seal beside it — Text and tradition · visual guide **Tarot**
Tarot is a card system whose images became a symbolic language for archetypes, choices, and life patterns.
A lineage map for books and systems; it avoids presenting symbolic traditions as literal fact.

From the reference page to your own chart

What does your own chart say about you?

Choose love, work or purpose. Your reading is written from your chart. Your reading uses your own birth details.

Get my personal reading $0 today, then $12/month after 7 days. Cancel anytime.

Walk through Alex’s whole example first

The Road of AgesSee the turning points of your whole life, from your birth date See your road's shape

Prefer to explore first?

Member tools The 2026 book Lectures

The daily letter, free

One short letter at 7 each morning: the day’s theme read for your own chart.

The Road of AgesThe turning points of your whole life, from your own chart Walk my road

Free, by email

Your daily Almanac letter

One short letter at 7 each morning: the day’s theme read for your own chart, and one thing to do with it.

What sets Tarot apart

Tarot began as a card game in northern Italy in the mid fifteenth century, with a fifth suit of triumphs (trionfi) added to the usual four, and the game of tarocchi is still played in parts of Europe. The divinatory use is a later layer: in the 1780s Antoine Court de Gébelin claimed an Egyptian origin and Etteilla produced a deck for fortune-telling, and neither claim has historical support.

Deck: 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana in four suits
Earliest decks: Italy, 1440s, among them the Visconti-Sforza cards, painted for ducal families
Game name: tarocchi in Italian, tarot in French, from the 1500s
Egyptian claim: Court de Gébelin, 1781; no source before the late 1700s connects the cards to Egypt
Rider-Waite-Smith: 1909, A. E. Waite with Pamela Colman Smith; the model for most English-language decks

Often mistaken for something else: Playing cards share ancestry with tarot but the 22 trumps are its own; the cards were a game for three centuries before anyone used them to read a question.

The story behind Tarot

Tarot cards developed in Europe as playing cards before occult writers, especially from the eighteenth century onward, reinterpreted them as esoteric symbols.

The spiritual meaning of Tarot

Spiritually, tarot asks whether images are being used as mirrors for reflection or as masters over conscience.

Tarot in the Bible

Christian readers should not treat tarot as spiritual authority, guaranteed divination, or a replacement for prayer, Scripture, conscience, and wise counsel.

Why Tarot matters

Tarot matters because it carries two histories at once: a European card-game tradition and a later esoteric reading tradition. That difference helps readers avoid treating every image as ancient doctrine or automatic prophecy.

A lecture on this, free to read

The Fool's JourneyHow a card game of fifteenth-century Italy became a book of mysteries, told as the Fool's walk through the twenty-two trumps.12 ideas · about 2 minutes

Sources and editorial method

This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.

Source: The Great Almanac Dictionary
Category: Mystical Systems
Last updated: 2026-09-26

Read symbols without surrendering agency

A definition tells you what it is; your own birth chart tells you what it means for you. The Oracle casts your real chart and answers for your love, your work, and your year ahead, in conversation. It opens with the 7-day Seeker trial.

Speak with the Oracle

Your year, written once from your chart alone: the Cosmic Codex reads the whole of it, month by month. Open the Cosmic Codex

Birth ChartA Birth Chart is a personal astrology map built from birth date, time, and place. ZodiacThe Zodiac is the twelve-sign wheel used as astrology's core sign language. TransitTransit means current planetary movement activating a chart.

More in Mystical Systems