Tarot - Presentation

The Magician - First strides

What?

Tarot-deck consists of four suits and the Major Arcana trump cards, plus the Fool. There are several varieties, but I'll be generally explaining the Tarot de Marseilles, which is the most common. The suits there are Wands, Swords, Cups and Coins, with ten minor cards from Ace to ten and four trump cards each, the Page, the Knight, the Queen and the King. The Major Arcana are:

1. The Magician
2. The Priestess ('Popess')
3. The Empress
4. The Emperor
5. The Hierophant
6. The Lovers
7. The Chariot
8. Justice
9. The Hermit
10. Fortune
11. Strength
12. The Hanged Man
13. Death
14. Temperance
15. The Devil
16. The Tower
17. The Star
18. The Moon
19. The Sun
20. Judgement
21. The World

In addition, there's the card zero - the Fool. Many of these names are often translated differently, but these meanings should be clear enough.

When?

The Tarot cards, which have evolved into modern playing cards only later on, entered Europe probably from the Turks in the mid-fourteenth century. They arrived in Italy, and spread over the Mediterranean first, after which they quickly travelled inlands into other European nations. They were used to play a variety of card games, and spawned several slighly different variants in different countries.

Why?

At first, the Tarot cards were simply playing cards, like the ones commonly in use nowadays. Their use in divination, which is what most people think of when hearing of Tarot, only began in the beginning of the 18th century.

Tarocchi

The original use was for a number of card games generally titled Tarocchi. The rules of the modern French Tarocchi are somewhat complex, but not as bad as many other games. The game revolves around one player 'offering' to attempt to win a certain number of points by taking several 'tricks' or rounds of gameplay and gathering the best cards. The 'ends', or the Fool, the Magician and the World, make his job easier. The other players are trying to stop him from succeeding.

Divination

As for the more well-known use, the divination of the future using Tarot cards began in the eighteenth century. Generally they've been used by travelling 'magicians' offering to read people's futures for a few coins. People who claim they work usually rely on using the archetypes represented by the Major Arcana to help clarify their own inner thoughts to themselves, and self-study is indeed the only real usage for this type of card-reading. The sometimes surprisingly accurate divinations certain 'seers' can make for others arise from both a good skill with reading a person and a way with words - to be able to state tautologies as truth.