The Tarot de Marseille: The Pattern Behind the Legend

Before the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, the standard tarot in France was a woodcut-style pattern that card players used for games, and that occultists later read as a secret book.

A standard pattern

The Tarot of Marseilles is a standard pattern of Italian-suited tarot pack with 78 cards. It was very popular in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for playing tarot card games, and it is still produced. It was probably created in Milan before spreading to much of France, Switzerland and northern Italy.

About the name

A "pattern" in playing cards means a recognisable design many makers produced, not a single printer's deck. The International Playing-Card Society recommends the name Tarot de Marseille, and accepts Tarot of Marseille and Tarot of Marseilles in English.

The Egyptian myth

In 1781 the Protestant pastor Antoine Court de Gébelin presented the tarot as a repository of timeless esoteric wisdom with imagined origins in ancient Egypt. There is no evidence for that origin, yet the belief that tarot is linked to an Egyptian "Book of Thoth" continues today. Soon afterwards, occultists such as Etteilla popularised tarot packs made for cartomancy.

The deck that started occult tarot

The Marseille pattern is the pack that led to the occult use of tarot cards. Dedicated decks are now produced for that purpose, while players of tarot games continue to use packs made for play.

Looking at a Marseille deck

• Italian suits: swords, batons, cups and coins.
• Pip cards that show arranged suit symbols rather than scenes, unlike the later Rider–Waite–Smith minor cards.
• Trumps that correspond to the 22 named cards later called the Major Arcana.

Revised 2026-10-22