What Are Tarot Cards?

 Lots of people misunderstand what tarot cards are, i want to help make people not be so ignorant about this topic. Some like to claim they are evil, some like to claim they do this or that, and some claim they are for this or that. But what are they really for? What do they really mean? Are they evil? How can a deck of cards be evil? (Spoiler: they aren't evil)

The tarot is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play card games such as Tarocchini.

Tarocchini are point trick-taking tarot card games popular in Bologna, capital city of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and has been confined mostly to this area.

The original purpose of tarot cards was to play games. A very cursory explanation of rules for a tarot-like deck is given in a manuscript by Martiano da Tortona before 1425. Vague descriptions of game play or game terminology follow for the next two centuries until the earliest known complete description of rules for a French variant in 1637. The game of tarot has many regional variations. Tarocchini has survived in Bologna and there are still others played in Piedmont and Sicily, but in Italy the game is generally less popular than elsewhere.

The 18th century saw tarot's greatest revival, during which it became one of the most popular card games in Europe, played everywhere except Ireland and Britain, the Iberian peninsula, and the Ottoman Balkans.[27] French tarot experienced another revival beginning in the 1970s and France has the strongest tarot gaming community. Regional tarot games—often known as tarock, tarok, or tarokk—are widely played in central Europe within the borders of the former Austro-Hungarian empire.

In occult usage
Etteilla was the first to produce a bespoke tarot deck specifically designed for occult purposes around 1789. In keeping with the unsubstantiated belief that such cards were derived from the Book of Thoth, Etteilla's tarot contained themes related to ancient Egypt.

The 78-card tarot deck used by esotericists has two distinct parts:

The Major Arcana (greater secrets) consists of 22 cards without suits. Their names and numbers vary, but in a typical scheme, the names are:
The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World, and The Fool. Cards from The Magician to The World are numbered in Roman numerals from I to XXI, while The Fool is the only unnumbered card, sometimes placed at the beginning of the deck as 0, or at the end as XXII.
The Minor Arcana (lesser secrets) consists of 56 cards, divided into four suits of 14 cards each;
Ten numbered cards and four court cards. The court cards are the King, Queen, Knight and Page/Jack, in each of the four tarot suits. The traditional Italian tarot suits are swords, batons, coins and cups; however, in modern occult tarot decks, the suit of batons is often called wands, rods or staves; the suit of coins is often called pentacles or disks and the suit of cups is often referred to as goblets.
The terms "Major Arcana" and "Minor Arcana" were first used by Jean-Baptiste Pitois (also known as Paul Christian) and are never used in relation to tarot card games, which operate by a distinct set of rules. Some decks exist primarily as artwork, and such art decks sometimes contain only the 22 Major Arcana.

The three most common decks used in esoteric tarot are the Tarot of Marseilles, the Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck, and the Thoth tarot deck.

Aleister Crowley, who devised the Thoth deck along with Lady Frieda Harris, stated of the tarot: "The origin of this pack of cards is very obscure. Some authorities seek to put it back as far as the ancient Egyptian Mysteries; others try to bring it forward as late as the fifteenth or even the sixteenth century ... [but] The only theory of ultimate interest about the tarot is that it is an admirable symbolic picture of the Universe, based on the data of the Holy Qabalah." However, the origin of the Tarot pack is now well documented, showing that it was invented in Italy in the early 15th century (see history section above).

Some people today use Tarot cards as a tool for self-exploration and development and some psychologists use Tarot cards as a complementary care therapy. Through Tarot cards, it is claimed that the exploration of the inner self leads to greater freedom within the individual.

You can learn more here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot