“From the Classroom” is a series that features some of the great work and research from students who visit Special Collections and Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries. Below is a blog by Andrew Newell from Dr. Jennifer Burek Pierce’s class “Reading Culture History & Research in Media” (SLIS:5600:0EXW).

Newell explores the history, use, and art of tarot cards by looking at the examples found in Special Collection and Archives.

In a 78-card tarot deck, there are more unique deck permutations than there are atoms in the known universe. The number of unique permutations is 78 factorials (notated as 78! and representing the equation 78 x 77 x 76 x 75… etc. x 2 x 1), yielding a number that is 116 digits long, whereas the universe can only muster a measly 79- or 83-digit-long number of atoms by some estimates. Even in the face of this absurd variety, there are still more ways in which one can read a spread of tarot cards depending on the deck you use. The Pam Spitzmueller Collection’s (MsC1230) in Special Collections and Archives offers a selection of tarot cards that offers insight into this world of vast possibilities.

Tarot as a game predates tarot as an oracle method by several centuries. Italians have been playing a 78-card trick-taking game called “tarrochi” since the early Renaissance with 56 cards in four suits and 22 trump cards numbered 0–21, ascending in power that can win hands over normal suit cards. Tarrochi-style decks would spread across Central and Western Europe in the following centuries under German names like “Tarock” and French names like “tarot,” but their use as an oracle would not become widespread until the late 18th century in France as French fortune tellers, such as Jean-Baptiste Alliette, moved from smaller 32-card piquet decks to the much larger 78-card decks. Decks such as the Parlour Sybil (figure 1) serve as a sign of the diversity of methods, images, and deck builds across that history.

Historically, oracles are tools that play important roles in religious and spiritual traditions across the planet as forms of fortune telling and contemplation. Famous examples of oracles include casting straw or sticks to read the Chinese divination text I Ching, swinging pendulums for guidance to questions, and casting bones or chips inscribed with runes to read their symbols and positions on a table or altar. Perhaps the most famous tarot pack used as an oracle is the Rider deck, sometimes called the Rider-Waite or Rider-WaiteSmith deck (figure 2). Popularized by occultist figures in the late 19th century, such as famed Aleister Crowley, this deck condenses the symbolism of a long history of Western esoteric traditions and contains many Orientalist and often ahistorical connections to Jewish Kabbalah, Egyptian cartomancy, and Romani cultures. The deck itself continues to be important in new age spiritual movements and referenced in pop culture as a site of intrigue and magic in movies such as 2024’s Tarot and in popular games such as Balatro and The Binding of Isaac.

Tarot readings are performed by drawing a set number of cards from a shuffled deck and forming a narrative or answer to a query based on the images and position (upright or upside-down/reversed). Upright cards often represent the image or emotion assigned to a card as it is, and reversed cards can be taken as either opposites or delays. Manuals are often included in newer printings of oracle decks with instructions on specific kinds of readings. The Rider deck is meant to portray both mundane events and emotions through the suit cards or “Minor Arcana” and more abstract, spiritual themes through the trump cards or “Major Arcana.” Some decks such as the I Gatti (figure 3) are meant to be novelty products that aren’t made for readings, but other decks have innovated and commented on tarot through changes in form and imagery.

The three remaining decks in Pam Spitzmueller’s collection illustrate these changes in interesting ways. Two decks, the Motherpeace Round Deck printed in 1981 (figure 4) and the Daughters of the Moon Tarot from 1990 (figure 5), are printed as circular cards. Both decks center feminist and Indigenous imagery to combat the often racist and Orientalist themes and images of historical tarot decks. The Motherpeace Round offers a manual, showing how to read cards based on where they are in their clockwise rotation. Finally, the Fantod Pack printed in 1995 by Edward Gorey (figure 6) leans into parody, sparse imagery, and stark black/white contrast in a much smaller deck to create a whimsical and darkly comedic experience.

Further Reading

Bogdan, Henrik, and Martin P. Starr, ed., Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Dummett, Michael A.E., and John MacLeod. A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004.

Dummett, Michael A.E., and Ronald Decker. A History of the Occult Tarot: 1870-1970. London: Duckworth Overlook, 2002.

Hanegraaff, Wooter J., Western Esotericism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.

Magee, Glenn Alexander, ed., The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Pollack, Rachel, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot. London: HarperCollins, 1997.