Tarot: Our New Ways to Have Fun

19Oct08

Recently, we had this “new addiction” to play at our kostan (most of the group live in the same place). We spend the day by reading Tarot to each other, and try to predict the future. Yea we did not actually do this for serious, we just playing around but sometimes there is a certain card that true representing our feelings or condition.

The tarot (also known as tarocchi, tarock or similar names) is typically a set of seventy-eight cards, comprised of twenty-one trump cards, one Fool, and four suits of fourteen cards each—ten pip and four face cards (one more face card per suit than in Anglo-American playing cards).Tarot cards are used throughout much of Europe to play Tarot card games such as Italian Tarocchini and French Tarot.^] In English-speaking countries, where the games are largely unknown, Tarot cards are utilized primarily for divinatory purposes, with the trump cards plus the Fool card making up the twenty-two major arcana cards and the pip and four face cards the fifty-six. (Wikipedia.com)

Here is sample of Tarot cards that we used:

Playing cards firstly entered Europe in the late 14th century with the Mamelukes of Egypt, with suits very similar to the basic Latin suits of swords, staves, cups and coins (which also knows as disks or pentacles), that are still widely used in traditional Italian and Spanish decks.

Although there are quite a number of alternative theories on the origin of Tarot, current evidence seems to indicate that the first decks were created between 1410 and 1430 in either Milan, Ferrara, or Bologna, in northern Italy, when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the more common four suit decks that already existed. These new decks were originally called carte da trionfi, triumph cards, and the additional cards known simply as trionfi, which evolved into the word “trumps” in common English. The first literary evidence of the existence of carte da trionfi is a written statement in the court records in Ferrara, in 1442. The oldest surviving Tarot cards are from fifteen fragmented decks painted in the mid 15th century for the Visconti-Sforza family, the rulers of Milan.

Tarot reading itself have several ways or techniques to perform. We could choose which one is appropriate and suit our needs best. It is basically a free choosing!

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