Tarot, tarock, tarocchi, etc., are a group of card games played with the tarot deck. The first basic rules appear in the manuscript of Martiano da Tortona written before 1425.[1] The game of Tarot is known in many variations, mostly cultural and regional.
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The pack with which English-speakers call by the French name Tarot is called Tarocco in Italian, Tarock in German and various similar words in other languages. Tarot games spread to most parts of Europe, notable exceptions being the British Isles, the Iberian peninsula, and the Balkans.[2] Contrary to popular belief, Tarot cards did not precede ordinary playing cards,[3] and they were invented not for occult but for purely gaming purposes.[4] Only later were they used for cartomancy and divination, and also as a field for artists to display specific iconographies, often connected to some ideological system. Concrete forms appear at least since the article of Court de Gebelin in the year 1781.
Tarocchi (Italian, plural form of Tarocco), and similar names in other languages, is a specific form of playing card deck used for different trick-taking games. This earlier name of the game is first documented in February 1442, Ferrara.
The first basic rules for the game of Tarocco appear in the manuscript of Martiano da Tortona, the next are known from the year 1637. In Italy the game has become less popular, although one version named Ottocento, Tarocco Bolognese, has still survived. There are still other tarot games like Scarto played in Piedmont, especially Pinerolo and Turin,[2] but the number of tarot games played outside Italy is much higher.
There seems to be a connection between the words Tarot (French) and Tarock (Germanic-Slavic) for the final name Tarocchi developed from French influence. Italian speakers of today claim that French words with an ending "-ot" had been commonly transformed in endings with "-occo" and "-occhi". The poet Francesco Berni still mocked on this word in his Capitolo del Gioco della Primiera written in 1526.[5]
Tarocchini (or Partita) can also be played with a Tarot deck with the numbers 2-5 removed.
The French game of Tarot, also Jeu de Tarot, is one which uses the full 78-card Tarot deck. A typical type of Tarot playing card deck is that of the standard French design, the so-called "Tarot Nouveau", which is French-suited and has face and number layouts similar to the common 52-card deck. The "Tarot Nouveau" deck has trumps which depict scenes of traditional French social activities, in increasing levels of wealth; this differs from the character and ideological cards of the standard Italian-suited Tarot decks such as the Tarocco Piedmontese, the Tarocco Bolognese, the Rider-Waite or even the Tarot de Marseille well-known in cartomancy.
A Tarot deck corresponds in every particular with those called Tarocchi by writers of the 16th century. It consists of 56 numeral cards of four suits and 22 emblematic cards called atouts (trumps). Each suit consists of fourteen cards, ten of which are low cards, and the other four court cards, namely the King, Queen, Chevalier, and Valet. Of the atouts, 21 are numbered from 1 to 21, and a non-numbered card called "Fou" ("Fool", also called "Mat" or "L'Excuse" in play) has various meanings depending on the particular Tarot variant being played (in the French game it "excuses" the player from following suit and affects scoring, while in the Italian variant it augments the value of cards captured in tricks).
According to the current state of research, the game of Tarot became known in the year 1505, in parallel in France as Taraux and in Italy as Tarocchi. An earlier form of the game had the name Trionfi or triumphs, developed later as a general term for trick-taking games (Trumpfen in German and Trump in English), although it has almost completely disappeared in its original function as deck name.
Tarock, recorded as one of the oldest types of card games known, is extensively played in Austria and makes a good introduction to the general principles of Tarot play, serving as a springboard to more advanced 54-card, French-suited card games such as Point Tarock and Königsrufen.[2] The game is widely played in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, and especially in the countries on the area of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, for which even the name Tarockanien has been coined: the Austrian variation of the game is thus still widely popular among all classes and generations in Slovenia and Croatia, while in Hungary different rules are applied.
The tarock decks, popular in Germany and Switzerland, use either the Latin suits of cups, coins, batons and swords, or the German suits of hearts, bells, acorns and leaves. The character representations of the trump cards in non-gaming divinatory tarot is based on representations similar to those found in the Italian tarot decks; Germanic Tarot playing card decks are less likely to feature these characterizations.[6]
A complete Tarot deck such as one for French Tarot contains the full 78-card complement and can be used to play any game in the family. Austrian-Hungarian Tarock and Italian Tarocco decks, however, are a smaller subset (of 56, 54, 40, or even 36 cards) suitable only for games of a particular region. Regional tarot decks commonly feature culture-specific suits; the German suits of Hearts, Bells, Acorns and Leaves are used through most of Germanic Europe (Switzerland substitutes Hearts for Roses and Shields for Leaves), the Latin suits of Cups, Coins, Staves and Swords are common in Italy and Spain, and the French suits familiar to most English speakers are seen in France, Quebec, West Germany and most of the English-speaking world. This trend continues even to non-Tarot decks such as for the German game of Skat (played with a deck of similar-value cards as in the French piquet deck used for Belote, but in German suits).
The 78-card tarot deck contains:
The cards are usually counted in groups of two or three depending on the game. After the hand has been played, a score is taken based on the point values of the cards in the tricks each player has managed to capture.
For the purpose of the rules, the numbering of the trumps are the only thing that matters. The symbolic tarot images customary in non-gaming divinatory tarots have no effect in the game itself. The design traditions of these decks subsequently evolved independently and they often bear only numbers and whimsical scenes arbitrarily chosen by the engraver. However there are still traditional sequences of images in which the common lineage is visible; e.g. a moon is visible at the bottom left corner of the XXI stems from confusion of German Mond, meaning Moon, with Italian mondo and French monde, meaning "world", the usual symbol associated with the card 21 on Italian suited tarots and in non-gaming divinatory tarot.
In tarot decks made for playing the game, as opposed to those made for divination or other esoteric uses, the four Latin suits are replaced in many regions with the French suits of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades. Some variations of the game are played with a 54-card deck (5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of hearts and diamonds and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 of spades and clubs are discarded).
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