tarot

The decks

Four packs of seventy-eight cards made across five centuries. Names, numbering, suits and pictures all change from deck to deck. Follow one card through each pack to see what remains and what each maker remade.

  1. Rider–Waite–Smith

    A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, 1909

    The deck Waite designed and Pamela Colman Smith drew for Rider in 1909, and the first widely published pack to give every one of the fifty-six suit cards a scene rather than an arrangement of pips.

    Page · Knight · Queen · King Wands · Cups · Swords · Pentacles artwork shipped

    History and differences → Browse its cards → Read with it →

  2. Thoth

    Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris, 1969

    Crowley's redesign of the pack around the Golden Dawn's attributions, painted by Lady Frieda Harris over five years and published a quarter of a century after both of them had finished with it.

    Princess · Prince · Queen · Knight Wands · Cups · Swords · Disks no artwork — in copyright

    History and differences → Browse its cards → Read with it →

  3. Marseille

    Lequart, Paris, 1890

    A Marseille-pattern pack of the Besançon type, printed in Paris by Lequart before 1890 and once owned by Paul Marteau. It is a card game before it is anything else: the trumps carry titles, the suit cards carry only their signs.

    Valet · Cavalier · Reyne · Roy Baton · Coupe · Épée · Denier artwork shipped

    History and differences → Browse its cards → Read with it →

  4. Sola Busca

    Unknown engraver, hand-coloured, 1491

    The oldest complete seventy-eight-card deck that survives, engraved in 1491, and the first in which every suit card carries a scene rather than an arrangement of pips — three and a half centuries before the Rider–Waite pack of 1909 did the same thing.

    Fante · Cavallo · Regina · Re Bastoni · Coppe · Spade · Denari artwork shipped

    History and differences → Browse its cards → Read with it →