Quote

You know, it was just another presentation of my work, and a funny one, because the cards are quite different from the normal Tarot deck, no?

The tarot is sacred.

My mother reads tarot cards, actually, but I won't let her read mine.

Tarots tell different sides of the various personalities that exist in all of us. I find it fascinating how they combine names, images, and numbers. You don't need to be able to read them, or know their real meaning, to be charmed.

I've had something sort of like angel cards where you pull out an angel card that turns out, like, grandmother was watching over me. And I believe, in some way, I haven't been brave enough to engage with tarot cards mostly because they always end on a bad note. I'm sure if I understood tarot cards more I wouldn't be as fearful.

Tarot cards likely originated in northern Italy during the late 14th or early 15th century. The oldest surviving set, known as the Visconti-Sforza deck, was created for the Duke of Milan's family around 1440. The cards were used to play a bridge-like game known as tarocchi, popular at the time among nobles and other leisure lovers.

We have now seen that there is no particle of evidence for the Egyptian origin of Tarot cards.

According to tarot historian Gertrude Moakley, the cards' fanciful images - from the Fool to Death - were inspired by the costumed figures who participated in carnival parades.

Mystical groups such as the Theosophical Society and the Rosicrucians turned tarot into an American fad during the early 1900s. Many American tarot practitioners use a set of cards known as the Waite-Smith deck, created in 1909 by A.E. Waite, a British member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the artist Pamela Colman Smith.