Five Things You Didn't Know About Tarot Cards

Key Takeaways

• Tarot is far younger than most people think. It began about six centuries ago as a Renaissance card game, not an ancient art of prophecy.
• You don't have to wait for someone to gift you a deck. Choosing your own, one that calls to you, is a beautiful way to begin.
• You have your own tarot card, determined by your birth date, and you can find it with a little bit of simple math.
• The tarot is a mirror, not a crystal ball. It reflects your past, present, and path so you can choose your next step with open eyes.

Tarot Began as a Renaissance Card Game

Here's the first surprise. For most of its life, the tarot had nothing to do with fortune telling at all. It was a game.

The tarot we know was born in northern Italy in the 1440s, during the Renaissance. Wealthy families in cities like Milan commissioned gorgeous, hand-painted decks, gilded in gold leaf, to play a trick-taking card game a little like bridge. The oldest surviving cards, the Visconti-Sforza decks, date to the middle of that century, and you can read about them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So when you hear that tarot is thousands of years old, that's a lovely story, but the truth is closer to six centuries.

For nearly three hundred years, the cards stayed a game. It wasn't until the late 1700s that people in France began reading them for insight and divination. The deck most of us know today, with its vivid, storytelling pictures, came later still, painted in 1909 by Arthur Waite and the artist Pamela Colman Smith. And yet, even in the very first decks from the 1440s, the pictures carried something deeper. The Fool, the Lovers, the Wheel of Fortune, the great forces of a human life were there from the very beginning. The meaning was always waiting inside the art. People simply needed time to see it.

You Can Buy Your Own First Deck

There's a myth that trips up so many people who feel called to the cards. It says your first deck must be given to you as a gift, and that buying one for yourself somehow breaks a rule. I want to put that to rest. It simply isn't true.

You are absolutely allowed to choose your own first deck, and there's something powerful in doing exactly that. When you go looking, don't overthink it. Let a deck call to you. Notice which artworks make your heart lift and which images you can't stop looking at. That pull is your own intuition speaking.

I tell people to choose a deck the way I teach them to choose a crystal, and I do love my crystals. You don't pick with your head. You pick with your energy, letting yourself lean toward the one that feels like yours. Trust that feeling. The right deck for you is the one that already feels a little like home.

Shuffling Carries Your Energy, So Watch for the Jumpers

Shuffling might look like the ordinary part of a reading, but it's really where the magic begins. As you shuffle, you're pouring your own energy and your question into the cards, connecting yourself to the deck. That's why, when someone reads for you, it's lovely for both of you to handle the cards, so your energies can meet.

As an empath, I feel that energy first, before I ever turn a card. The shuffle is the moment we tune to the same frequency.

And keep an eye out for jumpers. Sometimes, in the middle of shuffling, a card will leap or slide right out of the deck on its own. That's not something to brush aside. Many readers, myself included, believe a jumping card is a message eager to be heard, so we set it apart and pay close attention to what it has come to say.

You Were Born With a Tarot Card

Here's one that delights almost everyone I share it with. You have a tarot card of your very own, decided by the day you were born.

The 22 cards of the Major Arcana — the Fool, the High Priestess, the Lovers, the Wheel of Fortune, and the rest — each hold a great life theme. With a little simple math using your birth date, you can find which one is yours. Think of it as your guiding card, a companion and a mirror for the whole of your life.

Here's how to find yours.

Once you know your card, read a little about its meaning. You may be surprised how much of its story feels like your own. Mine has walked beside me my whole life, and I've come to treasure it like an old friend.

The Tarot Is a Mirror, Not a Crystal Ball

This may be the most important thing I can tell you. The tarot is not a machine for predicting your doom, and it never was. It's a mirror.

Somewhere along the way, people began treating the cards as a means of seeing a fixed, unchangeable future. But your future isn't a stone already carved. It grows out of your past and your present, out of the choices you make and the energy you carry. The tarot gently holds all of that up to the light. It shows you where you've been, what you're feeling now, and where your current path may be leading, so you can walk it with open eyes.

That's why I read the way I do. I'm not here to frighten you with fate. I'm here to help you see yourself clearly, so you can choose love, choose gratitude, and forgive whatever needs forgiving. When you're ready, the cards can even open a window to your soul's longer journey, including the lives that came before this one. The tarot doesn't tell you who you must be. It reminds you who you already are.

A Final Word

So the tarot is far more than the spooky reputation it carries. It's a six-hundred-year-old language of symbols, a mirror for the heart, and a doorway back to the truth my grandmother taught me in her garden: that we are all connected, all part of one living, breathing world.

You don't need to be afraid of the cards, and you don't need to be anyone special to feel their wisdom. You only need an open heart and a little curiosity. Choose love, choose gratitude, and watch as life gently begins to open up.

Frequently Asked Questions