tarot cards- 1- an introduction

as I have said in my previous post, tarot cards are essentially normal card decks with attitude- with the addition of 22 cards, 21 numbered and a fool/excuse/matto
but before that, you must know of the two types of suits- french & latin

the top row shows the familar "french suits" whilst the bottom row shows the latin suits
they are ,correspondingly: (l-r in the pic)
clubs = batons
spades = swords
diamonds = coins
hearts = cups

(note- there are various systems as to how the suits equate, but at least for this blog, we'll stick to this)

now, then there the trump cards



they are listed here in decresing order in (most)  tarot games: there is the 21, or mond, mund,
. the following 2 are corruptions by the germans  of the italian/ french mond/mondo, meaning world- the title of this card.
also note that the cards of the french deck ( top row) go untitled.
then , below that, is the 1, or pagat, the latter (again) a corruption of the italian bagatto - the trivial performer.
note, if you look at the cards in the last row, the trivial performer.... has the tools of a shoemaker

oh, the third card is the fool/excuse/matto- the origin of the name "excuse " is complicated, and will be explained at a later date



tarot, and other such games

it may come as a surprise to some people, that tarot cards were used for games rather than divination. the divinatory usage comes from the year 1781, when a french mystic, antonie court de gerbin published a book about their use ( aldough people have been using such cards for divination on and off several centuries prior, antoine really got it started)
another misconception is that normal 52 card decks stem from the tarot. false. more like the reverse . tarot decks were added by extending a 56 card deck (more about that later) with a suit of 21 numbered cards, and a unnumbered one called the fool ( or matto, or excuse, or skus, or 'gesteiss, depending on where you live)
speaking of the fool, the joker did NOT evolve from that. rather, the joker came from the game of euchre, (pron. juker) when the players felt that a top trump was needed.