Tarot Is Just a Game (And That’s Why It Works)
Here’s a plot twist that might piss off the serious robe-wearing, crystal-polishing crowd: tarot started as a game. Yep. A good old-fashioned deck of cards, shuffled and slapped down for amusement. Not some secret priestess initiation. Not a “divine download” in picture form. Just a game.
And honestly? That makes me love it even more.
Because play is sacred. We forget this. We grow up, start paying bills, get stuck in relationships that feel like wet cardboard, and suddenly our “playtime” is just scrolling TikTok while trying not to hate humanity. But the brain needs play. The spirit needs play. Without it, we calcify into salty barnacles.
Tarot, when you strip away the incense and hashtags, is a way to trick yourself back into play. You shuffle, you lay cards, you squint at the art and start making up stories. That’s what your kid-self used to do with toys, remember? Make stories. See connections. Pretend. Imagine.
A (Very) Brief History of Tarot
Tarot wasn’t born under a pyramid or handed down by some mystical priestess. Sorry, Instagram. The truth is cooler in its own messy way:
1400s Italy: Rich families commissioned carte da trionfi decks for playing a trick-taking game. Think less “mystical ceremony,” more “Game Night: Nobility Edition.”
1600s France: The Tarot de Marseille locks in the classic suits (cups, swords, wands, coins) and 22 trumps we still recognize today.
1700s: Enlightenment occultists get bored and decide tarot is actually a book of ancient Egyptian wisdom. Spoiler: it wasn’t. Total fan fiction.
1800s–1900s: Enter the magicians, Freemasons, and mystics. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn stirs it all together. By 1909, the Rider–Waite deck makes tarot less about games, more about guidance.
So, the deck in your hand? It’s got dual citizenship: part party game, part spiritual mirror.
Here’s the kicker: your subconscious actually loves that. Because the shadow doesn’t talk in words. It’s not sitting around drafting emails—it’s sending you symbols, dreams, images, moods. That’s its whole language. And tarot? Tarot just happens to be a ready-made deck of symbols and archetypes—a whole 78-card cast of characters walking through a story about being human, screwing up, getting back up, and trying again.
Even Carl Jung, the guy who gave us the “collective unconscious,” looked at tarot and said, yep, this fits. He called it a “picture gallery of archetypes”—basically a mirror for the psyche. Jung didn’t whip out the Celtic Cross in therapy sessions, but he did use images, mandalas, and symbols to get past the logical brain and into the real juice of the subconscious. Tarot slides right into that same lane, and plenty of Jungian therapists after him have actually used the cards in their work.
So when you pull a card, you’re not getting some cosmic DM from the Universe. You’re giving your subconscious a microphone and a stage prop. Your conscious brain sees The Tower and groans, “Oh god, chaos.” Meanwhile, your subconscious is waving from the back row like, “Hi, yes, that thing you’ve been clinging to? Shut that shit down already.”
That’s the secret sauce. Tarot isn’t just a game—it’s a translator. It lets your conscious and subconscious sit down at the same table, swap stories, and finally get on the same page. I like to refer to them as my spiritual flash cards.
So next time you pull a card, don’t clutch your pearls about “getting it wrong.” Shuffle like you’re about to clean out the neighborhood poker game. Laugh when Death shows up. Roast yourself when The Fool falls face-first. Tarot doesn’t work because it’s deadly serious—it works because it’s a game that reminds you to keep playing until the final credits roll.
xo,
Jade