Courses & Sources

Everything behind the cards in one place — the courses, the sources (the books and the people), the illustrated history programs, and the views that let you see the whole collection at once. We hold the history to the record and show our working.

“The wrong history has been given in every published work which so far has dealt with the subject… there is in fact no history prior to the fourteenth century. The deception and self-deception regarding their origin in Egypt, India or China put a lying spirit into the mouths of the first expositors.”

— A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part I. Waite designed the Rider-Waite-Smith deck and still built it for divination — not on a false Egyptian pedigree but on the symbolism: “the true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language.” Full text (public domain).

Courses

Read the history, sit with the question, or learn to contribute.

The History of TarotGame to gate — how a card game became a cosmos, with the myths corrected. NewTarot TodayWhy tarot is everywhere now — the data, the artists, and how meaning gets made (an open investigation). Tarot & the CrackThe cards as a symbolic grammar for meaning-making, not fortune-telling. Contribute to the CommonsFive ways to correct and add to the open library — in-app to MCP.

The sources behind the cards

Three reference grammars — the books, the people, and where the deck pictures live — each with our editorial reading. We host nothing in copyright: public-domain works link to a free full text; in-copyright works are cited and linked.

SourcesBooks Behind the TarotThe occult-revival classics, the foundations, and the modern scholarship — with our take on each. SourcesPeople & Institutions of TarotThe hands behind the cards — makers, occultists, scholars — claim vs. the record. NewWhere the Deck Pictures LiveEvery museum, library and site holding pictures of our decks: how sharp they are, and what their rights allow. Research dossiers ↗The sourced notes the grammars are built from — decks, people, cards — on GitHub.

Watch & understand

Short illustrated programs — title cards and cropped clips — with our commentary under each.

The history of tarotMamluk origins to the modern gate, as a card-and-clip program. NewHow does a tarot reading work?Five lenses — blending, the Barnum effect, cold reading, Jung, narrative — on why a reading feels true. With our take. Further watching — documentariesA curated playlist of public YouTube docs, with our agree/disagree notes.