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I started this website a quarter of a century ago as a side project to a site about tarot cards. Tarot and dances of death share a good deal in common. Both emerged in the late Middle Ages or early Renaissance, and both serve as a mirror of the entire world: Men and women, young and old, rich and poor — from the mighty pope and emperor to the fool with his torn trousers.
In both genres, one can see the Pope and the fool dancing arm in arm with Death and the maiden. In fact, this can also be seen in one other place, which we will return to later.
The imagery on the cards is cryptic and fascinating, and tarot readers are ready to attribute their origins to Ancient Egypt, the Jewish Kabbalah or the Celtic druids. However, it is not quite that mysterious.
On this page, I will draw upon a book by Gertrude Moakley: The Tarot Cards painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza Family An Iconographic and Historical Study.
As the title suggests, Moakley focuses in particular on tarot cards that once belonged to the Visconti-Sforza noble family — the same cards that adorn this page. One of Moakley's contributions was precisely the identification of these cards and their creator.
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Moakley's first point is that tarot cards are simply playing cards. The idea of using them for divination only emerged several centuries later.
So the short answer is that playing cards came to Europe the same way as the paper they are printed on: Namely from China via the Silk Road and through Arabia. From here they came to Northern Italy in the Renaissance
The pip cards are divided into suits: Swords, Wands, Pentacles, and Cups, instead of Spades, Clubs, Diamonds, and Hearts, as we know them here in Western Europe and the Americas. In addition to the Jack, Queen, and King, tarot cards also feature a Page in each suit, making for a total of 56 cards.
Tarot readers refer to these 56 cards as the "Minor Arcana" — the little secret, but there is actually no more mystery to them than there is to ordinary playing cards. For example, the Ten of Swords simply depicted ten swords.
In the popular Rider-Waite deck from 1909, however, a scene rich in symbolism was added to each card to assist tarot readers with their interpretations (image on the right).
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What distinguishes tarot cards from other playing cards is, in particular, that they include an additional 22 trump cards, which tarot readers call the "Major Arcana". These feature enigmatic imagery such as The Devil, The Hermit, The Tower, and Judgment, and they effectively constitute a fifth suit. Many tarot decks released as collector's items in the 20th century contain only these 22 cards.
Moakley's second discovery was that it was these trumps that had given the game (and the cards) its original name, trionfi. Later, the idea emerged of calling a trump using ordinary cards, and so many other "trump games" subsequently appeared that a new name had to be found. It was only then that the game (and the cards) came to be called "tarocchi".
This basic fact — that the 22 cards are trump cards — has generally been ignored by writers on tarot before and after Moakley, but it is central to understanding their design. The cards don't come in a random sequence, but are ordered strictly by strength with each card "trumping" all the previous ones. This observation makes sense of some of the cards right away: Since the four suits contain queens and kings, the trump cards represent "something greater than kings".
We do not know what a "Popess" is supposed to represent (the image on the left), but it is clearly a figure more powerful than a king. Today, this card is most often called "The High Priestess", and it is followed by The Empress, The Emperor, and The Pope, in accordance with their social rank.
The following cards depict allegories of virtues and spiritual concepts (e.g., Love) that are greater than any human being. Then there are various celestial concepts: Sun, Star, and Moon — and religious concepts such as Satan, Death, and Resurrection, which naturally trump everything else.
Incidentally, the Fool is not a true trump card. It has no number and cannot take tricks, but neither can it be taken by other trump cards.
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Moakley pointed out that Italians celebrated three types of triumphal processions: the ancient Roman processions following a victory in battle, Catholic pageants, and knightly jousting tournaments.
One of the most famous poems of the time about triumphal processions was in fact called "I Trionfi", i.e. the name that would later be given to the card game. Petrarch (1304-1374) fell in love with a lady named Laura. Unfortunately, she was already married and rejected his advances, but that just made her even more lovely in his eyes. When she died shortly after of the plague, Petrarch wrote a famous poem, I Trionfi - The Triumphs.
It took Petrarch 23 years to write "I Trionfi", from 1351 until a few months before his death in 1374. The poem describes six Triumphs, each riding in its own chariot, and each triumphing over the preceding one:
The first is the Triumph of Love: Love in the form of Cupid defeats gods and men (including Petrarch) who are tied to his chariot. In the picture on the left, Cupid has wings and is blindfolded - just like in the Love card.
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Love is vanquished by Chastity, just as the married Laura rejected Petrarch. The chariot of Chastity is drawn by unicorns. As is well known, unicorns can only be captured by virgins. Cupid sits bound at the front of the chariot.
Chastity falls victim to the Triumph of Death, just as the chaste Laura fell victim to the Black Death. Death's Chariot is being pulled by oxen, slow but unstoppable.
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Fame triumphs over Death as Laura's memory lives on, but even Laura's fame will eventually succumb to the triumph of Time.
The sixth and final one is the "Triumph of Eternity", in which Petrarch and Laura are resurrected — united in eternal life.
"I Trionfi" was known throughout Europe for many centuries, and one can see that Petrarch almost succeeded in mentioning every single concept that would appear in the trump cards a little century later.(1)
The first third consists of people: the Popess., Empress, the Emperor and the Pope. There are cards for both Love and Time (in the shape of an old man). To top it off, The Chariot appears six times. There's no card named "Chastity", but we have three of the four cardinal virtues: Strength, Justice, and Temperance.(2) Next comes Death, and we do not need Petrarch to tell us that the unfortunate end up with the Devil. All this is surpassed by the celestial — namely The Sun, The Moon, The Star, and The Universe. Finally comes the resurrection at Judgement.
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There is, in fact, yet another genre where Death and the Pope can be seen dancing hand in hand with the Fool and the Maiden: namely the carnivals leading up to Lent. Gertrude Moakley pointed out that the carnival processions of that era were inspired by Petrarch's "I Trionfi" (The Triumphs).
Anyone who has seen the carnivals in South America, the USA, Düsseldorf, or Italy will recall the decorated wagons (known as "floats"). Moakley describes an "undocumented" (i.e. fictional) carnival featuring six floats, each representing one of Petrarch's triumphs.
The Fool is dressed in white rags and symbolizes the approaching season of Lent (image on the left). He is not part of the procession itself but runs about entertaining the audience with his witty banter, insulting the participants while reminding them that the festivities will soon give way to the forty days of fasting — much like Death, who leaps about in the dance of death, mocking the dying. Similarly, in the Tarot deck, the Fool is not part of the numbered trump cards but stands outside the sequence.
The Magician (or juggler) is the King of the Carnival, leading the triumphal procession with his magic tricks and jokes. In the image on the right, he is (according to Moakley) preparing for his final meal before his execution — though the execution is merely symbolic, unlike in the Roman triumphal processions.
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At this point it must be said that Moakley is loosing the plot. Her iconographic analysis may be correct for this particular deck, the Visconti-Sforza, but all other decks clearly show the fool as a ragged tramp, and "Il Bagatto" as a conman with the cups and dice on the table with which he swindles his marks.
Another farfetched suggestion concerns the card known as The Tower (picture to the left). Moakley claims that one of the wagons carried a "Hell-mouth". But a "Hell-mouth" looks nothing like a tower (examples here and here), and where is the proof that such a "Hell-mouth" was ever a part of a carnival?
A third obvious mistake is her claim that the four suits represent the four Cristian virtues, and were associated with the processions that accompanied the jousting tournaments. The fact is that the playing cards — as mentioned at the top of this page — came from Arabia with their four suits (the staves originally being polo sticks) 80-100 years before the invention of the 22 trump cards, and Arabians are not known for being particularly keen on Christian virtues or knights.
For all the faults, the book is still groundbreaking, and nothing has really ben added since her book was published in 1966. Moakley prepared a number of revisions and additions for a second edition, and before her death, she handed over the updated manuscript to the publisher U.S. Games. However, due to squabbling within tarot circles (!), the book has unfortunately never been reissued.
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Footnotes: (1) (2)
For the record, it is the tarot cards that were inspired by "I Trionfi," and not the other way around.
The first written reference to playing cards is a document from Bern dating to the late 14th century, which records that a ban on "kartenspil" was introduced in 1367. This refers to ordinary playing cards and it would be another 80 to 100 years before tarot, with its 22 trump cards, was developed.
Petrarch himself was ignorant about card games. He wrote a treatise on games of chance without mentioning cards, and more than 1,000 of the letters still survive that he wrote during his travels in Germany, France, and Italy – letters in which he likewise never mentions encountering playing cards.
Tarot enthusiasts ranging from Gébelin to Kaplan have argued that "the Hanged Man" card is the fourth cardinal virtue — Prudentia (Wisdom) — that has been accidentally turned upside down.
However, this is much disputed.
