A Snapshot of Tarot History

Here's a snapshot of tarot times gone by – a style and beauty cover from a 1940 copy of McCall's magazine, by photographer Nickolas Muray.

As a photographer, he was acclaimed for his portraits of celebrities, as well as the images he created for high-end advertisements and magazine spreads. Muray was also an Olympic fencer, bringing home a bronze medal in 1932. He was romantically involved with Mexican artist Frida Kahlo for many years.

The cards on the table are from a Marseille Tarot, which is still readily available. The plaid design on the back of each card is called a tarotee design. The Wands, or Batons, look almost like the Swords — except for the fact that the Swords have curved blades.

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 wands is drawn as straight objects that cross to form a lattice in the higher numbers; on odd numbered wands cards, a single vertical wand 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. The straight lined wands and the curved swords continue the tradition of Mamluk playing cards, in which the swords represented scimitars and the wands polo mallets.

Image source: The George Eastman House Collection on Flickr.