Tarot cards possibly originated in Europe in the 1100s, and the earliest known specimens of tarot card decks are said to be from North Italy. These could go back to the early-to-mid-15th century. These were called carte da trionfi or "cards of the triumph" and were later used to play a game called "Tarocchi." These could have been derived from playing cards that came into Christian Europe between 1375 and 1380. First discovered in China, these cards probably came through the Arabic route to Islamic Spain and then spread across Europe. These were similar to the 52-card pack in use today.

There are usually 78 cards in a deck of tarot cards. Special motifs were assigned to cards, taken from different ideas in philosophy, poetry, and astronomy. They were also borrowed from Roman, Greek and Babylonian mythology.

The two main types of tarot cards are the major arcana and the minor arcana. The major arcana have 21 trump cards along with a fool card. The minor arcana have 56 cards, going up from the ace to 10. There have four different suits - the wand, cup, sword and the pentacle. There are also four court cards: the page, knight, king and queen.

Tarot cards are connected to the occult and divination. Tarot card readers tried to divine a person?s past, present and future. Some of the earliest known tarot card readers were Etteilla, Marie-Anne Le Normand and Antoine Court de Gebelin.

Etteilla was a French occultist who lived before the French revolution. His actual name was Alliette, but it was with this changed name that he became famous as a seer and card diviner. The first set of cryptic symbols were designed by him. Many of these were a derivation of the Marseille designs.

The Hermetic Revival in the 1840s made tarot readings more popular. Eliphas Levi is attributed with using the cards as a mystical key to see the future. He is also considered the real founder of the true Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie or the Transcendental Magic school of tarot. These interpretations are also linked to the Kabbala. In 1910, the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot came up with symbolic imagery with divine meanings, increasing the popularity of tarot card divination. There are many who consider modern day tarot cards more interesting as these have grown and evolved through centuries of interpretations.

Today there are special symbols for feminists, cat lovers, computer specialists in Silicon Valley, baseball players and many other groups of people in modern life.

Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist and psychologist, used tarot cards to help patients. He was probably interested in the archetypes that the tarot cards represented. It is still used by some psychiatrists who might ask a patient to choose a card representing himself or someone else. It is based on the fact that essentially symbols are archetypes.

Tarot cards have inspired many stories and films. The tarot practiced by witches has been used in the James Bond movie Live and Let Die. T.S Eliot used it extensively in his poem The Waste Land. The video game "March of the Black Queen" has tarot cards woven into the game. In this age of hi-tech science, there is still a place for the magic of tarot!