Question 1

In which country and century did tarot cards first appear in their recognizable form?

Accepted Answer

15th-century Italy. Tarot cards emerged in 15th-century northern Italy, where they were used to play a trick-taking game called tarocchi.

Question 2

How many cards are in a standard modern tarot deck?

Accepted Answer

78. A standard tarot deck contains 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana split across four suits.

Question 3

Which 18th-century French Protestant pastor and Freemason helped seed the idea that tarot held ancient Egyptian wisdom?

Accepted Answer

Antoine Court de Gébelin. In his 1781 work 'Le Monde Primitif', Court de Gébelin proposed (without evidence) that tarot encoded lost Egyptian knowledge — a romantic claim that shaped occult tarot for centuries.

Question 4

Which influential English deck, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith and designed by A. E. Waite, was published in 1909?

Accepted Answer

Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck, published by Rider in 1909, popularized illustrated pip cards and became the template for most modern English-language decks.

Question 5

What is the collective name for the 22 trump cards in a tarot deck?

Accepted Answer

Major Arcana. The 22 trump cards — from The Fool to The World — are called the Major Arcana, meaning 'greater secrets'.

Question 6

Which 19th-century French occultist, born Alphonse Louis Constant, formally linked tarot to the Hebrew Kabbalah?

Accepted Answer

Eliphas Lévi. Eliphas Lévi's mid-1800s writings mapped the 22 Major Arcana to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, a correspondence still used in esoteric tarot.

Question 7

What are the four suits of the Minor Arcana in most traditional decks?

Accepted Answer

Wands, cups, swords, pentacles. The Minor Arcana is divided into Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles (sometimes called Coins or Disks).

Question 8

The earliest surviving hand-painted tarot decks were commissioned for which Italian noble family?

Accepted Answer

The Visconti-Sforza. The Visconti-Sforza decks of mid-15th-century Milan are the oldest substantially surviving tarot decks and were luxury objects rather than divination tools.

Question 9

Which late-19th-century British magical order had an enormous influence on modern occult tarot?

Accepted Answer

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in London in 1888, systematized correspondences between tarot, astrology, and Kabbalah used by both Waite and Crowley.

Question 10

Which tarot card is numbered zero in the Major Arcana?

Accepted Answer

The Fool. The Fool is numbered zero, traditionally placed at the start (or sometimes outside) the sequence — representing potential and beginnings.

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