The Tarot of Marseilles is a standard pattern of Italian-suited tarot pack with 78 cards that was very popular in France in the 17th and 18th centuries for playing tarot card games and is still produced today. It was probably created in Milan before spreading to much of France, Switzerland and Northern Italy. The name is sometimes spelled Tarot of Marseille, but the name recommended by the International Playing-Card Society is Tarot de Marseille, although it accepts the two English names as alternatives.Pattern Sheet 002. Retrieved 20 August 2021. It was the pack which led to the occult use of tarot cards, although today dedicated decks are produced for this purpose.
Origins
Research by Michael Dummett and others demonstrates that the Tarot pack was invented in northern Italy in the early 15th century and introduced into southern France when the French conquered Milan and the Piedmont in 1499. The antecedents of the Tarot de Marseille would then have been introduced into southern France at around that time. All Italian-suited tarot decks outside of Italy are descended from the Milan–Marseilles type with the exception of some early French and Belgian packs which show mixed influence from Tarocco Bolognese (see below). The earliest surviving cards of the Marseilles pattern were produced by Philippe Vachier of Marseilles in 1639 and went up for sale in 2023, having recently been discovered by Thierry Depaulis.Tarot de Marseille (type 1) at cdn.drouot.com. Retrieved 17 March 2023.Depaulis (2023), pp. 194–200.
Etymology and English translation The name Tarot de Marseille is not of particularly ancient vintage; it was coined as late as 1856 by the French card historian Romain Merlin, and was popularized by French cartomancers Eliphas Levi, Gérard Encausse, and Paul Marteau who used this collective name to refer to a variety of closely related designs that were being made in the city of Marseille in the south of France, a city that was a centre of playing card manufacture, and were (in earlier, contemporaneous, and later times) also made in other cities in France. The Tarot de Marseille is one of the standards from which many tarot decks of the 19th century and later are derived.
Others have also tended to use the initials TdM, allowing for ambiguity as to whether the M stands for Marseille or Milan, a region claimed for the origins of the image design.
In deference to the common appellation Marseille for the style and in recognition that the deck appears in other places, the term "Marseille-style" is at times also used.
Structure Like other tarot decks, the Tarot de Marseille contains fifty-six cards in the four standard suits and twenty-two tarot cards.
Suits
In the French language, the four suits are identified by their French names of (Batons), (Swords), (Cups), and (Coins). These count from Ace to 10. There was also an archaic practice of ranking the cards 10 to Ace for the suit of cups and coins in line with all other tarot games outside of France and Sicily.
+Suits of the Tarot de MarseillesSuitSwordsCupsCoinsBatons
As well, there are four face cards in each suit: a (Knave or Page), or (Horse-rider or Knight), (Queen) and (King). The court cards are sometimes called (the honours) or (the minor picture cards) in French. For the (French > "Page of Batons"), the title of that card generally appears on the side of the card, while in some old versions of the Tarot de Marseille that card, along with either some or all others, is left unnamed.
In the Tarot de Marseille, as is standard among Italian suited playing cards, the pip cards in the suit of swords are drawn as abstract symbols in curved lines, forming a shape reminiscent of a mandorla. On the even numbered cards, the abstract curved lines are all that is present. On the odd numbered cards, a single fully rendered sword is rendered inside the abstract designs. The suit of batons is drawn as straight objects that cross to form a lattice in the higher numbers; on odd numbered baton cards, a single vertical baton runs through the middle of the lattice. On the tens of both swords and batons, two fully rendered objects appear imposed on the abstract designs. plates 1–4. The straight lined batons and the curved swords continue the tradition of Mamluk playing cards, in which the swords represented scimitars and the batons polo mallets.
+ Tarot of Marseilles card deck (1890) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Jack Knight Queen King Coins Cups Swords Clubs
In this abstraction, the Tarot, and the Italian playing cards tradition, diverges from that of Spanish playing cards, in which swords and batons are drawn as distinct objects. Cups and coins are drawn as distinct objects. Most decks fill up blank areas of the cards with floral decorations. The two of cups typically contains a floral caduceus-like symbol terminating in two heraldic dolphin heads. The two of coins usually joins the two coins by a ribbon motif; the ribbon is a conventional place for the manufacturer to include their name and the date.Sedillot, op. cit., plates 1–2.
Trumps There is also a suit of twenty-two (trump cards). The Fool, which is unnumbered in the Tarot de Marseille, is viewed as separate and additional to the other twenty-one numbered trumps because it usually cannot win a trick.
The labelling of cards is a practice of French origin, Italians remembered their names by heart. The Sola Busca deck is an exception: all trumps are named and have roman numerals, the suited cards are numbered in Hindo-Arabic, and the face suits beyond the page are named as well, with Alexander the Great being the king of swords. The XIII card is generally left unlabelled in the various old and modern versions of the Tarot de Marseille, but it is worth noting that in Noblet's deck (circa 1650), the card was named (Death). In at least some printings of the French/English bilingual version of Grimaud's pack, the XIII card is named "" in French and named "Death" in English. In many modern cartomantic tarot decks (e.g., Rider–Waite), the XIII card is named Death.
The names given to the Marseilles pattern trumps differ from those in early Italian sources. The French (Strength) is in Italian (Fortitude) for the cardinal virtue of Courage. (the Lover) is in Italy (Love). (the Judgement) is (the Angel) or (the Trumpets). (the Hermit) is given either as (the Hunchback), (the Old Man), or as (Time). (the Hanged Man) is (the Traitor). (the Tower/the House of God) is given either as (the arrow), (Lightning), la Casa del Diavolo (the House of the Devil), la Casa del Dannato (the House of the Damned), il Fouco (the Fire), or as (Hell). The ranking of the trumps vary according to region or time period.
The following trump images are from Jean Dodal's deck printed in Lyon in the early 18th century. Like most other tarot decks, it uses additive Roman numerals, hence "IIII" instead of "IV". The English names are based on IPCS terminology.Tarot de Marseille, Type I at i-p-c-s.org. Retrieved 12 October 2022. Dummett calls Tarot I "The Mountebank",Dummett (1980), p. 108l. a word which, like the name on the card, , means 'street entertainer'.
LequartParis1890 DodalLyon1715 Number.Label. LequartParis1890 DodalLyon1715 Number.Label. (unnumbered)The Fool I.The Juggler Reminiscent of a pair of jacks. (Junon) II.The Womb(The Popess) III.(The) Empress Reminiscent of a pair of queens. IIII.The Emperor (Jupiter) V.The Pope Reminiscent of a pair of kings. VI.The Lover(s) VII.TheChariot(eer) Reminiscent of an archer, likethose found in the William Tell pack. Reminiscent of a knight. VIII.(The) Justice VIIII.The Hermit Reminiscent of a queen of swords. Reminiscent of Diogenes. X.The Wheelof Fortune XI.(The) Strength Fate, consisting of rise or ascent,climax or apogee, and downfall or descent. See lions in heraldry, Nemean lion,Samson's riddle, and 1 Samuel 17. XII.TheHanged Man XIII.The Death(unlabelled) Reminiscent of Judas, who hunghimself, after betraying Jesus. Depicted as the grim reaper andoccupying the same position in all tarots. XIIII.Temperance XV.The Devil Reminiscent of a maid of cups, like thosefound in Visconti-Sforza, the Minchiate,and Portuguese-suited playing cards. The underworld or netherworld,envisioned as a subterranean realm. XVI.The Houseof God XVII.The Star A tower, rising towards the sky, and alightning strike, descending from heaven. Shares similar imagery with Temperance(XIV), itself reminiscent of a maid of cups. XVIII.The Moon XVIIII.The Sun Night and day. The main luminaries of the celestial sphere. XX.TheJudgement XXI.The World The angelic heaven,above the firmament. The world to come afterthe last judgement (XX).
Variants Besançon and Swiss patterns
The use of obviously Christian traditional images (such as the Pope, the Devil, the Grim Reaper and the Last Judgement) and indeed controversial images such as La Papesse have spawned controversies from the Renaissance to the present because of its portrayal of a female pope.
One variant of the Tarot de Marseille, now called the Tarot of Besançon, replaces the controversial Popess and Pope and, in their stead, puts Juno with her peacock, and Jupiter with his eagle.Tarot de Besançon at the International Playing-Card Society. Retrieved 3 March 2017. Developed in Alsace at the beginning of the 18th century, this deck was popular among Catholics living in regions that bordered Protestant communities. Protestants, and Catholics living outside contentious zones, preferred using the Marseilles pattern.Dummett (2004), pp. 89–91. During the French Revolution, the Emperor and Empress cards became the subject of similar controversies and were displaced by Grandfather and Grandmother. It arrived in Besançon only at the beginning of the 19th century where mass-production caused the current association of this deck to that city. An updated variant of the Besançon pattern is the Swiss Tarot which is still in use by Troccas and Troggu players.Swiss Tarot at the International Playing-Card Society. Retrieved 3 March 2017.
Piedmontese and Lombard patterns
In the early 18th century, the Marseilles Tarot was introduced in Northern Italy starting from the Kingdom of Sardinia, which also included the Savoy (now in France) and Piedmont, where the card manufacturing industry collapsed following a severe economic depression. The Piedmontese players did not have difficulties to accept the Marseilles Tarot, because the images were similar and even the French language captioning was widespread in many areas of Piedmont.
Around 1820 some manufacturers active in Turin, capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, began to produce tarot decks in Marseille's pattern, but after few years they introduced captions in Italian and small variations in certain figures. For example, the Fool was not chased by a wild animal but had a butterfly in front of him. In a few decades, variation after variation, was consolidated the iconography of the Piedmontese Tarot, which therefore must be considered as a derivation of the Tarot of Marseilles.See. Giordano Berti, Old Italian Tarot. 78 cards engraved by Stefano Vergnano, Turin, 1830 ca. Booklet attached to "Vergnano Tarot 1830", Araba Fenice, Boves 2014. It is currently the most widely used tarot deck in Italy.
In the Austrian-ruled Duchy of Milan (modern-day Lombardy), the Marseilles pattern also took root with Italian captioning starting around 1810. The "Death" card was given several names by different manufacturers such as il Tredici (Thirteen), lo Specchio (the Mirror), and Uguaglianza (Equality). Production of this pattern stopped before the First World War.