A Journey Through The Tarot: Background
I'm thinking of going through the Tarot trumps and giving my own personal viewpoint & impressions on each Trump.
First a quick list of the Decks I own:
Etruscan Tarot
1JJ Swiss Tarot
Oswald Wirth Tarot
Rider-Waite Tarot
Royal Tarot
Arcus Arcanum Tarot
Buddha Tarot
Halloween Tarot
Mythic Tarot
Samurai Tarot
Animals Divine Tarot
Non-Tarot Decks:
Wolf Song Cards
Psycards
Stargate Deck
Of all these my favorites are The Etruscan Tarot and The 1JJ Swiss Tarot. I tend to prefer the Marseilles Order as I feel and agree with Robert Place that Waite kind of messed up the narrative in the cards in his 'rectified order' to make it fit better with Kabbalah and Golden Dawn Rituals (as an aside I highly recommend Place's The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination as a guide to the history and use of the Tarot).
First a short bit of history. The Tarot Originated in Renaissance Italy as a card game often played by the elite who were extremely pedantic and enamored with Neo-Platonic thought. The Tarot trumps are based on Triumph parades performed in the era which were so pedantic in their symbolism that the noble organizers often published guides after the fact since most onlookers had no clue what any of the obscure symbolism meant (Jean Seznec's The Survival of the Pagan Gods provides a good tour of the culture of this era). The tarot at first had no structure - the Mantegna Tarot for instance contains fifty trumps (10 Cards in Five sets: The Conditions of Man, Apollo and the Nine Muses, The Ten Sciences, 3 Cosmic Principles & 7 Virtues, and the Ten Firmaments (Seven Planets, Heaven of the Fixed Stars, Primum Mobile, and Prima Causa)) - as a quick note this deck was devised by a coucil in Mantua which included Cardinals Bessarion, Nicholas of Cusa, and Pope Pius II (The Survival of the Pagan Gods P. 139). The Sola Busca Tarot is made up of Ancient Roman and Biblical Figures. Other contained more cards such as the inclusion of the Three Christian Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Eventually over time the Tarot developed into the deck we know today.
The Tarot was designed first and foremost for instruction and game-play (I've heard that Slovenian Rules are the most fun). Cardomacy does not seem to exist with the Tarot until later on towards the eighteenth century in France. The game of Tarot itself seems to have developed into the Game of Bridge with the conventional 52 card deck.
The Tarot is not the lost Book of Thoth nor (as I've seem some people call it) 'The lost Fifth Veda') nor any other hidden book. I'm wondering how long it will be until someone says that the Tarot is one of the Jade Books in Heaven, Tibetan Terma, or a secret set of Mormon-style Plates. Most of these fantastical ideas came about when the Tarot left its cultural and temporal context of Renaissance Italy and few people understood what the symbols could mean but detected what seemed to be a Platonic philosophy behind the cards and began to connect it with Platonic influenced systems like Hermeticism and the Kabbalah. It was from the link with Hermeticism that the Tarot was linked to the Egyptians and the Gypsies (the Romani people were believed to have originated in Egypt - hence the name Gypsies - they actually migrated from India).
Anyways the Tarot wasn't an ancient pagan 'book' used by those rebelling against the Church ether - as mentioned above Pope Pius II helped design a deck - the Church seems to have encouraged the use of game as a method to teach virtues, morality, and philosophy and only proscribed them when they were used (along with other card games) in gambling.
So that is how I understand the history of the Tarot in short. Tomorrow on to the unnumbered wild trump - The Fool.
Addendum:
Just a thought I should add - while the Tarot has its origin in Renaissance Italy and cannot be the actual book of Thoth there is no reason it could not have esoterically have become the Book of Thoth and have a shared essence.