Tarot

The tarot (/ˈtæroʊ/, first known as trionfi and later as tarocchi or tarock) is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play games such as Italian tarocchini, French tarot and Austrian Königrufen, many of which are still played today. In the late 18th century, some tarot decks began to be used for divination via tarot card reading and cartomancy leading to custom decks developed for such occult purposes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot

• Tarot is most commonly found in many countries, especially in English and Spanish speaking countries where tarot games are not as widely played, in the form of specially designed cartomantic decks used primarily for tarot card reading, in which each card corresponds to an assigned archetype or interpretation for divination, fortune-telling or for other non-gaming uses.
• Thus, there are two distinct types of tarot packs in circulation: those used for card games and those used for divination. However, some older patterns, such as the Tarot de Marseille and the Swiss 1JJ Tarot, originally intended for playing card games, are also used for cartomancy.
• Tarot cards, then known as tarocchi, first appeared in Ferrara and Milan in northern Italy, with the Fool and 21 trumps (then called trionfi) being added to the standard Italian pack of four suits: batons, coins, cups and swords. Scholarship has established that early European playing cards were probably based on the Egyptian Mamluk deck invented in or before the 14th century, which followed the introduction of paper from Asia into Western Europe.
• The oldest surviving tarot cards are the 15 or so decks of the Visconti-Sforza Tarot painted in the mid-15th century for the rulers of the Duchy of Milan
• Cartomancy Main article: Tarot card reading
• The early French occultists claimed that tarot cards had esoteric links to ancient Egypt, Kabbalah, the Indic Tantra, or I Ching, claims that have been frequently repeated by authors on card divination. However, scholarly research demonstrated that tarot cards were invented in northern Italy in the mid-15th century and confirmed that there is no historical evidence of any significant use of tarot cards for divination until the late 18th century. Historians such as Michael Dummett have described the Tarot pack as "the subject of the most successful propaganda campaign ever launched
• The earliest evidence of a tarot deck used for cartomancy comes from an anonymous manuscript from around 1750 which documents rudimentary divinatory meanings for the cards of the Tarocco Bolognese.
• The popularization of esoteric tarot started with Antoine Court and Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla) in Paris during the 1780s, using the Tarot of Marseilles.
• In the occult tradition, tarot cards are referred to as "arcana", with the Fool and 21 trumps being termed the Major Arcana and the suit cards the Minor Arcana, terms not used by players of tarot card games.
• The 78-card tarot deck used by esotericists has two distinct parts:
• The Major Arcana (greater secrets) consists of 22 cards without suits. Their names and numbers vary, but in a typical scheme, the names are: The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, and The World.
• The Fool is the only unnumbered card,
• The Minor Arcana (lesser secrets) consists of 56 cards, divided into four suits of 14 cards each;
• The traditional Italian tarot suits are swords, batons, coins and cups; however, in modern occult tarot decks, the suit of batons is often called wands, rods or staves; the suit of coins is often called pentacles or disks and the suit of cups is often referred to as goblets.
• The three most common decks used in esoteric tarot are the Tarot of Marseilles (a playing card pack), the Rider–Waite Tarot, and the Thoth Tarot.
• Aleister Crowley, who devised the Thoth deck along with Lady Frieda Harris, stated of the tarot: "The origin of this pack of cards is very obscure.
• [but] The only theory of ultimate interest about the tarot is that it is an admirable symbolic picture of the Universe, based on the data of the Holy Qabalah."

cf Card Deck

Suzanne Treister's Hexen Tarot deck has cards using Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, and other cybernetics-related things.

Buster Benson has pages of notes.

A Twin Peaks deck