What is the Tarot

The Tarot is a deck of cards commonly used to divine the futures of people and events. Divination using cards is called cartomancy. The deck consists of four numbered suits like a regular deck of playing cards, and twenty two picture cards numbered one through twenty-two (in some decks, zero through twenty-one). The twenty-two picture cards, are called the Major Arcana (the suited cards are the Minor Arcana),
The Tarot was initially designed to play a game but by the 18th century mystics were describing its symbols with meaning and significance that went far beyond its use as a card game. Divination by Tarot is an art, it is a focus on human nature and destiny; a life guide allowing us to view the options and chose better paths. From the Tarot we can get advice, encouragement and warning of dangers; it can also connect us with higher orders of life.
The oldest known Tarot decks come from Italy, dated circa 1420. The oldest surviving Tarot cards are from fifteen fragmented decks hand painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan. It should be understood that Tarot is not exclusively a divination system. It is also a family of card games which are enjoyed today mainly in Europe. It was only after the invention of the printing press that mass production of cards became possible. Decks survive from this era from various cities in France (the best known being a deck from the southern city of Marseilles and thus named the Tarot de Marseilles).
Tarot was not widely adopted by mystics, occultists and secret societies until the 18th and 19th centuries. The tradition began in 1781, when Antoine Court de Gébelin, who asserted that the symbolism of the Tarot de Marseille represented the mysteries of Isis and Thoth. Gébelin claimed that the name "tarot" came from the Egyptian words tar, meaning "royal", and ro, meaning "road", and that the Tarot therefore represented a "royal road" to wisdom. De Gébelin also asserted that the Gypsies, who were among the first to use cards for divination, were descendants of the Ancient Egyptians.
The idea of the cards as a mystical key was further developed by Eliphas Lévi and passed to the English-speaking world by The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Tarot divination became increasingly popular in the New World from 1910, with the publication of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck which still remains extremely popular in the English-speaking world today.
Uses for Tarot cards are varied. They can of course be used in a traditional fortune telling layout. But they can also be used as inspiration cards, affirmation tools, or for self-discovery and intuition building.
Hundreds of different Tarot decks now exist. Decks that downplay or remove the Christian symbolism are increasingly popular, and some feminist decks significantly downplay the male dominant roles found in traditional decks. Some decks have discarded the suit system altogether and are structured around different themes - animals in a Native American inspired deck, for example.