The Tarot, which was first known as tarocchi, is a pack of cards (most commonly numbering seventy-eight) used from the late 18 century until the present time by mystics and occultists in efforts at divination or as a map of mental and spiritual pathways. Prior to this period, its earliest known use is the mid fifteenth century in parts of Europe to play various card games as Italian Tarocchini and French Tarot.

Some metaphysical writers have attempted to align the cards to ancient Egypt or the Kabbalah but there is no documented evidence of such origins or of the usage of the Tarot for divination before the eighteenth century. This metaphysical assertion began in 1781, when Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Swiss clergyman and Freemason, published Le Monde Primitif, a speculative study which included religious symbolism and its survivals in the modern world. De Gébelin first asserted that symbolism of the Tarot de Marseille represented the mysteries of Isis and Thoth.

The rest is history and was possible only because many of the meanings attributed to the Tarot cards derive from Numerology and Astrology.