Tarot History in the Making

The most popular book to expound on Tarot in the new century has been Dan Brown's 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code. Taking most of its background ideas from Lincoln, Baigent, and Leigh's 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Brown also includes ideas on Tarot taken directly from the writings of Margaret Starbird. Both writers call the Trumps a flash-card catechism of heretical teachings, and repeat earlier statements about coded secrets, Knights Templar, Freemasonry, heretical doctrines, Albigensians, pagan mysteries, and so on.

Despite the invention of new Tarot legends and perpetuation of some of the old ones, another trend is developing. The Internet has begun to provide popular access to the work of playing-card historians. During the last two decades of the 20th century, a great deal of historical evidence was collected, collated, analyzed, and published. Stuart Kaplan's Encyclopedia of Tarot (volumes I & II) presents a great deal of information. However, it is the series of books authored or co-authored by Michael Dummett (from 1980 through 2004) which has thoroughly tried to debunk the majority of earlier Tarot lore while putting the pieces together to form a coherent history of Tarot, the great many forms taken by the game and deck, secondary historical uses such as appropriati, and perhaps most intriguingly, documenting in great detail the development of occult Tarot from the 1780s till the beginning of the modern era, around 1970. Most of that factual history, both pre-occult and the development of occult Tarot itself, remains unknown to some contemporary Tarot enthusiasts. However, some of it is now being presented on the Internet rather than being limited to a few hard-to-find books. One of the reasons for Tarotpedia's Tarot History section is to expand the online availability of that kind of information.

Detailed Timeline

Tarot History: 2001 - present