History Hangout: 10 historical facts about tarot cards

Tarot cards are first mentioned historically in the 1440s in northern Italy.
Originally tarot cards were used for games, but generally more complicated card games than we know today. Tarot cards often lacked numbers and sometimes even proper suites, so players had to depend upon the images upon the cards and remember which cards were more "powerful" or ranked higher than other cards.
Playing cards arrived in Europe in the late 1300s from China, though China has a tradition that playing cards originally came from India perhaps more than a thousand years ago. Tarot cards grew out of those first gaming cards that reached Europe.
The occult history of tarot cards is entirely fabricated, having been created by French occultist Jean-Baptiste Alliette who in 1785 first publicly used such cards for divination purposes before an audience.
Alliette popularized the use of tarot cards for divining the future and for other occult purposes. Before him, tarot cards had never been used themselves directly for magic, though they had been known to be used as placemarkers in books that were used to divine the future.
Though it was Alliette who lead the charge on using tarot with magic, Swiss clergyman Antoine Court deGebelin had published a book titled Le Monde Primitif in 1781 that studied the symbolism of tarot cards and concluded they were related to occult history and magic, specifically the history and mythology of ancient Egypt.
Tarot decks usually have 78 cards and five suits. Regular playing cards usually number 52 and have only four suits.
One of the suits in a tarot deck is a trump suit made up of allegorical images. Regular playing cards do not have a trump suit usually, though in some games one of the regular suits can be used for a trump suit. Also, trump cards are not unknown in games with regular playing cards.
A tarot deck traditionally has one Fool card. Regular playing cards often have instead a Joker, or commonly two Jokers.
The history behind the meaning of the word "tarot" is unknown. Some scholars believe it is related to the Italian word "tarocchi," which is a card game played with tarot cards.