The Long, Strange History of Tarot Cards: From the 14th Century to Modern Times

The Long, Strange History of Tarot Cards: From the 14th Century to Modern Times We have any number of reasons for difficulty getting to sleep, not least worries about the future. This is hardly a recent phenomenon, and indeed practices meant to clarify the nature of events to come may be older than civilization itself. In fact, many of us moderns trust the old ways of fortune-telling more than the new. Take the cards of the Tarot, often featured here on Open Culture, whose recognizable European form dates back to at least the fourteenth century. But as explained in the new video above from YouTube channel Bedtime & Historian, their pre-history begins longer ago and farther away, with the invention of the playing card itself in Tang-Dynasty China. For Tarot decks weren’t originally a means of glimpsing the future, but of passing time in the present. In the 400 years or so between the civilizational journey playing cards made along the Silk Road and their first employmen

Added 25 Sept 2026