Trick-taking games existed before Tarot
Trick-taking card games have origins dating back to just before the emergence of Tarot, with Karnoffel in Germany being a notable example. These games are played in rounds, known as tricks, where each player plays a single card from their hand. One player starts by leading with a card, and the others follow in turn. In most cases, players are required to follow the suit of the lead card if they can. The winner of each trick—usually decided by the highest card, trump suits, or specific game rules—collects all the cards from that round and leads the next trick.
Tarot is a trick-taking card game, and mastering it requires players to grasp the card hierarchy. For numbered cards (pips), the ranking is Ace through 10, while court cards follow the order: Page, Knight, Queen, King. In most trick-taking games, one suit is designated as the “Trump” suit before or during gameplay. This suit takes precedence over all others, allowing its cards to win over those from different suits. Unlike many traditional trick-taking games that use a standard deck, Tarot introduced a permanent, more powerful suit which would always be trump suit in every round.
The original order of the Tarot trumps is uncertain
The original order of Tarot cards remains a mystery, as the earliest decks lacked both numbers and titles. In his seminal work on Tarot history, The Game of Tarot, Michael Dummett identified three distinct ordering systems that emerged in various regions. While these weren’t the only arrangements, they gained the most widespread popularity. The Fool was unique, often regarded as existing “outside” the hierarchy of the other Trumps. However, much like a few other cards, it held special significance when played strategically.
Early Tarot historians sought a unifying theme to decipher the card sequence, and a clear progression began to emerge. Remembering that each card had to triumph of the previous, the sequence suggests figures of the lowest social rank, ascending through powerful rulers, embodying virtues, evoking allegorical symbols, and culminating in celestial and heavenly forces. This narrative flow reflects a structured depiction of human experience, morality, and the divine, offering a glimpse into the societal and philosophical ideals of the time.
Could you play the game without knowing the trump card order?
Picture this: You’re learning how to play the game of tarot and need to learn the hierarchy of the 22 trump cards so that you know which card conquers over which card, but there are no numbers or titles! For this to work there needs to be a recognisable, iconographic order that makes sense to a new player, or at the very least… is easy to learn!
Michael Dummet’s
Regional Tarot Order Variations
Tarot Historian Michael Dummet recognised that, although there were additional patterns, most of our documented history of how the game was played focused on three main sequences.
| ORDER A: The Southern Tradition (prototype: Tarocco Bolognese) | ORDER B: The Eastern Tradition (prototype: Steele Sermon) | ORDER C: The Western Tradition (prototype: Tarot de Marseille) |
| the Bagatto | the Bagatto | the Bagatto |
| the Papess | the Empress | the Papess |
| the Empress | the Emperor | the Empress |
| the Emperor | the Papess | the Emperor |
| the Pope | the Pope | the Pope |
| Love | Temperance | Love |
| the Chariot | Love | the Chariot |
| Temperance | the Chariot | |
| Justice | Justice | |
| Fortitude | Fortitude | the Old Man |
| the Wheel | the Wheel | the Wheel |
| the Old Man | the Old Man | Fortitude |
| the Traitor | the Traitor | the Traitor |
| Death | Death | Death |
| Temperance | ||
| the Devil | the Devil | the Devil |
| Fire | Fire | Fire |
| the Star | the Star | the Star |
| the Moon | the Moon | the Moon |
| the Sun | the Sun | the Sun |
| the World | the Angel | the Angel |
| Justice | ||
| the Angel | the World | The World |
There have been quite a few theories over the years as to why the card orders changed. It’s easier to understand if one remembers that these cards typically didn’t have numbers or titles on them. I’ve suggested the analogy before of the localised rules for games we may have played when we were growing up. I come from a family that believed that when you went to Jail in Monopoly, instead of paying the bank, you paid your cash into the middle of the board and as others did the same, the pot grew. Eventually, the player that landed on Free Parking would win the cash in the middle of the board. This is not a rule in the actual game, but one that quickly became so common that many of us have grown up believing that it’s an official rule for playing the game!
To understand the game of Tarot, we need to understand the order of the cards to make some logical sense to the players. An obviously likely connection to Taror comes from the early name for the game… “Triumphs”… from which we get the word “Trumps”, but there also was another very possible “Triumph” connected to the order of the cards: the poetry of Francis Petrarch.
Continue on the next page about Petrarch and his probable connection to Tarot cards.