Transcribed from The Library of Esoterica: Tarot by Taschen. Adapted from Tarot Heritage Timeline by Sherryl E. Smith.
1215 · Italy. The first paper mills are established.
1356-74 · Milan. Scholar and poet Petrarch writes the poem "I Trionfi" ("Triumphs") creating the basis of the game of Trionfi.
1370 · Hand-painted Mamluk-style playing cards enter Italian and Spanish ports from Egypt.
1377-1460s · In Italy, France, Germany, and Belgium, numerous written references to illustrated playing cards appear in city ordinances against gambling, account books of aristocrats, and inventories of merchants.
1392 · France. A listing in the account book of King Charles VI refers to three packs of gilt and colored cards ordered from the painter Jacquemin Gringonneur. These regular playing cards were mistakenly associated with a Tarot deck in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris that was actually created in Ferrara, Italy, in the late 1400s. This deck is still erroneously referred to as the Gringonneur or Charles VI deck.
1422 & 1423 · Italy. Account books of the painter Sagramoro of Florence show him being commissioned to repair card decks and create luxury decks decorated with gold, lapis lazuli, and brazilwood dye for the Marchesa Parisina of Ferrara. She was an enthusiastic purchaser of cards, but had to go outside Ferrara for them for at least another decade. Sagramoro was still supplying the court of Ferrara with cards in 1456.
1424 · Marchesa Parisina orders two packs of inexpensive cards for her children. This may be early evidence that inexpensive cards were being printed.
1425 · Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan commissions an allegorical card game based on virtues and temptations. Each suit had four extra trump cards.
1441 · Francesco Sforza, future Duke of Milan, marries Bianca Visconti. This possibly was the occasion for commissioning the Cary-Yale Tarot deck, as the deck has heraldic devices from both families . This deck and the Brera-Brambilla deck have coins minted by Visconti's father Filippo Maria Visconti.
1441 · This is the latest possible year or the invention of Tarot. It may have been as early as 1420.
1450 · Francesco Sforza is crowned the duke The Pierpont Morgan Bergamo deck is commissioned, possibly for this occasion, as it has Sforza and Visconti emblems. Replacement (or additional) cards were made in Ferrara about 1470.
1452 · Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, asks Bianca Sforza to obtain a deck of triumph cards for him from one of the famed artists of Cremona, possible evidence that Sforza's hand-painted deck is being copied by other artists.
1450s · Card playing is very popular in northern Italian courts. A large fresco of Tarocchi players is painted on a wall of the Borromeo Castle in Milan.
1456 & 1457 · Count Borsa commissions the artist Battista da Vicenza to create two very luxurious packs of carte grandi da trionfi with 70 cards. This was either a different Trionfi game than Tarot, or it shows that some Tarot decks had only 14 trump cards, Da Vicenza produced several decks a year for the court of Ferrara through 1463.
1465 · Count Boiardo of Ferrara designs a Tarot deck based on love, with a poem for each card.
1466 · Cards with suits and court cards are in circulation in Italy, as evidenced by an uncut sheet still in existence. This is the oldest example of Italian playing cards.
1470s · In Ferrara the handpainted d'Este deck is created. In addition, the Visconti-Sforza deck is thought to have been made in approximately 1450. These cards are now known as Pierpont Morgan Bergamo and are part of the collection at the Morgan Library and lhe Cary Collection at Yale. Other still existing decks from this era include the hand-painted and block print cards that are now in the Rothschild collection in the Louvre.
1480 · France. The classic French suit symbols appear, and most card games convert to this suit structure of hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades, which are easier to stencil onto mass-produced cards.
1491 · Italy. The copper engraved Sola Busca deck is produced in Ferrara. This hand-painted deck features completely unique designs and illustrated pip cards.
1480s-90s · Prohibitions are enacted against gaming, though certain games favored by aristocrats like Tarot, backgammon, and chess are exempt, possibly because these are considered games of skill rather than chance, and because the Church didn't want to alienate the ruling class.
1490s · Milan and parts of Italy are conquered by France. Most card manufacturing shifts to France.
1500 · Italy. Cards are printed using a wood-block printing technique. The earliest examples of printed wood-block cards were preserved as uncut sheets of cards used in book binding, some found in a well at Sforza Castle in Milan. Some cards have typical Tarot de Marseille imagery.
Early 1500s · The Minchiate deck is invented in Florence. The expanded Tarot deck has additional trumps depicting the four elements and 12 zodiac signs. The Knights become Centaurs.
1500 · The word Tarocchi is recorded in written documents in Ferrara and Avignon. The name trionfi shifts to another game played with a regular pack of cards.
1500s · Tarocchi appropriati is a popular parlor game where humorous poems based on Tarot are invented on the spot to describe the person holding the card.
1515 · Tarot images appear in a German Nativity calendar, showing that these images are part of popular culture and integrated into Christian iconography.
1527 · Italy. In Venice, poet Teofilo Folengo (pen name Merlin Cocai) writes four sonnets based on Tarot that describe him being led into a room where four people have drawn cards related to their fate.
1534 · France. Rabelais's Five Books of Gargantua and Pantagruel lists more than 200 games including "Tarau." He also lists numerous divinatory methods, but Tarot is not included.
1557 · The Catelin Geoffroy deck is created in Lyon. It is the first block-printed deck still in existence.
1589 · Italy. Records of the Inquisition in Venice show the Devil card being used as a focus of veneration and prayer. It's notable that Tarot itself is not considered evil by association.
1610 · France. The Parisian deck is released, the first complete block-printed deck to survive. It shows several regional influences.
1637 · The first surviving printed rules of the game of Tarot are published in a French pamphlet.
1660 · Jean Noblet publishes the first deck known to conform to the Tarot de Marseille pattern in Paris.
1663 · Italy. Tarocchi and Minchiate are introduced. Sicilian decks are very different, with Portuguese suits, fewer cards, and some unique trump imagery.
1664 · Italy. The MitelIi Tarot deck, a special commission, is done in copper engraving.
1714 · France. The Dodal deck is published in Lyon, a predecessor of the standard Tarot de Marseille.
1730-1830 · The Tarot game reaches the height of its popularity, its rules and decks standardized.
1736 · Italy. First Tarocco Piemontese deck is printed by Giuseppe Ottone. It's now in the Museo Fournier de Naipes.
1736 · France. François Chosson of Marseille prints a deck that becomes the template for the Tarot de Marseille decks.
1740s · The 78-card Lombardy style emerges in Milan. It is eventually superseded by Piemontese card-patterns.
1753 · The first rules for Tarocchi Bolognese are published in a card game book in Bologna.
1756 . Austria. In Vienna, the rules for the Tarocchi game are published in German. It's the style of game played in Lombardy, which was ruled by Austria at the time.
1750s · France. Jean-Baptiste Alliette, more popularly known by his pen name Etteilla, is taught card reading by a man from Piedmont. Etteilla would become the first known professional Tarot reader.
1760 · In Marseille, the Conver deck, a close copy of Chosson's 1736 deck, becomes the standard Tarot de Marseille (TdM) and the basis for contemporary decks by the publishers Fournier, Grimaud, and others.
1770 · France. Etteilla writes the first book of cartomoncy, Etteilla, ou manière de se récréer avec un jeu de cartes ("Etteilia, or a Way to Entertain Yourself with a Deck of Cards"), in Paris. He mentions the use of Tarot for fortune-telling. This is the first manual of card reading and the first explicit written reference to divination with Tarot. Etteilla's series on Tarot would inspire generations of decks to come.
1770s · Belgium. Flemish-style decks with Spanish Captain and Bacchus instead of Papesse and Pope are printed.
1781 · France Antoine Court de Gébelin publishes Volume VIII of Monde primitif. It contains essays that mark the first time in print that Tarot is linked with the Hebrew alphabet and ancient Egypt.
1783 · Etteilla publishes Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots ("How to Entertain Oneself with the Deck of Cards Called Tarot"), the first how-to-read-Tarot manual. It contains an elaborate story of Tarot's ancient Egyptian origins.
1789 · Etteilla produces the first occult deck illustrating Hermetic teachings. It's currently in print as Le Grand Etteilla by the French publisher Grimaud.
Late 1700s · The Grand prêtre deck is engraved in a copper plate and hand-colored. In it, the Pope and Papesse are called the High Priestess and High Priest for the first time in a deck. The Hanged Man is upright and called Prudence, as in de Gébelin.
1804-1807 · D'Odoucet, a follower of Etteilla, publishes a book on card meanings based on Etteilla's teachings. This is the basis for about half the meanings of the Minor Arcana cards in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.
1835 · Italy. Etching artist Carlo Della Rocca engraves the Milanese-style Tarocchi Sopraffini. It's in print today by Lo Scarabeo and II Meneghello.
1856 · France. In Paris, Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse Louis Constant) publishes Dogme et rituel de la haute magie ("Dogma and Ritual of Transcendental Magic"), a grand synthesis of the Western magical tradition that gives Tarot an important place.
1861 · English occultist Kenneth Mackenzie visits Lévi in Paris and is inspired to create the basis for the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the bedrock of Anglo-American Tarot.
1888 · England. William Westcott and Samuel Liddell Mathers launch the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in London.
1888 · Golden Dawn co-founder Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers publishes The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune-Telling, and Method af Play.
1889 · France. Oswald Wirth publishes his deck in Paris. It is designed with the help of Stanislas de Guaita using Lévi's descriptions.
1889 · As Papus, Gérard Encausse publishes Le Tarot des Bohémiens ("The Tarot of Bohemians"), which codifies Lévi's teachings on Tarot. It's illustrated with the TdM and Wirth decks.
1896 · The Falconnier-Wegener cards are published. They are the first truly Egyptian deck based on Lévi follower Paul Christian's 1870 descriptions.
1910 · Papus's Le Tarot des Bohémiens, one of the most important books on French esoteric Tarot, is translated into English.
1911 · A. E. Waite publishes the Rider-Waite-Smith deck with illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith and the accompanying book The Pictorial Key to Tarot. These become the bedrock of Anglo-American Tarot.
1912 · Aleister Crowley publishes the Hermetic Order of the Golden Down's Book of T, which contains their Tarot teachings.
1917 · United States. The first American Tarot book, The Key to the Universe or a Spiritual Interpretation of Numbers and Symbols by Harriette A. Curtiss and F. Homer Curtiss, is published.
1918 · C. C. Zain publishes instructional courses for his Brotherhood of Light containing the first English translations of Paul Christian's teachings. He uses the Falconnier-Wegener Egyptian card designs.
1920 · Paul Foster Case founds the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) in Los Angeles. Their teachings draw heavily on the Golden Dawn.
1926 · France. Oswald Wirth's Le Tarot des lmagiers du Moyen Âge ("Tarot Imagery of the Middle Ages") is republished in Paris.
1929 · United States. J. Augustus Knapp and Manly P. Hall create what came to be known as the "Knapp-Hall Tarot," which combines Wirth and Egyptian imagery.
1930 · France. Paul Marteau, of Grimaud publishing house in Paris, produces a recolored Conver Tarot de Marseille that is currently the standard divination deck in France.
1930s · United States. The Church of Light produces its Egyptian deck based on the Falconnier-Wegener.
1938-1942 · England. Frieda Harris creates the original oil paintings for Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck in London.
1942 · Harris's original paintings for Crowley's Thoth deck are placed on exhibit in London.
1947 · United States. Paul Foster Case publishes a synthesis of his teachings in The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, with line drawings of his deck by Jessie Burns Parke.
1951 · England. The Witchcraft Act of 1542 is repealed, allowing Tarot decks to be printed and sold freely.
1960 · United States. Eden Gray publishes her first book on how to read Tarot, The Tarot Revealed. Tarot becomes user-friendly and accessible lo the general public, laying the groundwork for Tarot's popularity in the late 20th century.
1968 · The first "New Age" postmodern deck, The New Tarot for the Aquarian Age by John Starr Cooke and Rosalind Sharpe, is channeled via a Ouija board.
1968 · Stuart Kaplan, founder of U.S. Games Systems, Inc., buys the Swiss 1JJ (Jupiter & Juno) deck at a trade fair, launching his company into Tarot-deck publishing.
1969 · France. Grimaud begins publishing Tarot de Marseille with an accompanying book in English.
1969 · The Thoth deck, created in the early 1940s by Aleister Crowley and Lady Harris, is finally published.
1970 · David Palladini's hugely successful Aquarian Tarot is published. It is one of the first to rework the Rider-Waite-Smith imagery, with Palladini using his own more modern style.
1971 · The Devil's Picture Book by Paul Huson is one of several books published in the late 1960s and early '70s to put Tarot in a Wiccan or pagan context.
1971 · Richard Roberts's book Tarot and You contains transcripts of readings using a psychological free-association method.
1971 · One of the most influential Tarot books of all time, Tarot of Bohemians by Papus, is republished in English, the first time since 1910.
1971 · U.S. Games, acquires rights to the Rider-Waite-Smith cards.
1971 · Argentina. The Egipcios Kier deck, an important esoteric Tarot in Spanish speaking countries, is published in Buenos Aires.
1974 · United States. The New Tarot by Hurley & Horler is one of the first radically redesigned decks that breaks with Rider-Waite-Smith imagery. They worked on it from 1961-67 while living part-time at Esalen in Big Sur, California.
1975 · The Mountain Dream Tarot by Bea Nettles becomes one of the first decks that uses photography rather than illustration.
1975 · Joseph Maxwell's book Le Tarot becomes one of the few French books translated to English.
1976 · New Zealand. The Mayan-influenced Xultun Tarot by Peter Balin is the first deck based on a non-Western culture.
1976 · Artist Penny Slinger creoles the Secret Dakini Oracle, the first collaged deck.
1976 · Womanspirit Circle in California is the birthplace of several feminist decks, such as A New Woman's Tarot and the Amazon Tarot.
1978 · Stuart Kaplan publishes the first of four Tarot encyclopedias, making thousands of decks available for everyone to study.
1978 . A. G. Muller prints Falconnier and Wegener's Egyptian deck as the Egyptian Tarot.
1980 · England. Michael Dummett publishes The Game of Tarot, the definitive work on the Tarot deck and game.
1980 · Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollock becomes one of the most influential books on card meanings.
1981 · The Motherpeace deck by Vicki Noble and Karen Vogel is the first round deck and the first feminist and goddess-oriented deck to enjoy wide distribution.
1984 · Ffiona Morgan and her collaborators publish the Daughters of the Moon, a feminist Tarot deck conceived in the Santa Cruz Womanspirit Circle of the late 1970s.
1984 · Mary K. Greer publishes the influential book Tarot for Your Self. Now a classic, it is the first book on reading Tarot for personal insight.
1980s-90s · Tracey Hoover's Winged Chariot, Crystal Sage's Tapestry, and Geraldine Amaral's Celebrating the Tarot usher in the golden age of small, individually owned Tarot magazines.
1990s · Llewellyn, founded in the United States in 1901 as an astrological publishing house, becomes a Tarot publisher, and later forms a partnership with Lo Scorabeo, an Italian publisher.
1996 · The book A Wicked Pack of Cards, followed by The History of Occult Tarot - as well as research into Tarot history by Michael Dummett and independent researchers - debunks occultist theories of Tarot's ancient origins.
1996 · The artist David Palladini follows up his best-selling Aquarian Tarot with his New Palladini Tarot.
1997 · The artist Julia Turk creates the Navigators Tarot of the Mystic Sea as a teaching and meditative tool for inner exploration.
1997 · The first World Tarot Congress is organized by Janet Berres in Chicago.
2000s · With the advent of inexpensive digital printing, the self-publishing of magazines and zines, as well as Tarot books, decks, and other books on esoterica, begins to become popular.
2004 · With coauthor Marianne Costa, the filmmaker and Tarot scholar Alejandro Jodorowsky releases the influential book, The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards.
2012 · The artist Kim Krans self-publishes the Wild Unknown Tarot and helps to launch a new era of independently produced artist decks.
2017 · Maria Grazia Chiuri, creative director of the iconic fashion brand Dior, incorporates Tarot and zodiac design into several seasons of designs for the high fashion label. Chiuri collaborates with the creators of the Motherpeace Tarot, integrating key Major Arcana cards into couture gowns, handbags, and scarves.
2016-2020 · Tarot art is embraced by a new generation of artists and seekers, with Tarot imagery integrated into everything from album design to high fashion clothing lines. The visual art of Tarot and oracle traditions inspire countless new decks, fine art, books, biogs, podcasts, and websites.
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