The oldest surviving tarot deck is the Visconti-Sforza deck, which was made in Italy during the 15th century. It’s generally believed that tarot originated around that time, though it was initially created as a deck for card games, not for divination. It wasn’t until later that people started using tarot for spiritual or fortune-telling purposes.
As for the Rider-Waite deck, the Major Arcana definitely draws from earlier decks, but it also introduced a lot of new symbolism and reimagined some of the card imagery. For example, if you compare the Lovers card from the Marseilles deck with the Rider-Waite version, you’ll notice some big differences in how the card is depicted and interpreted.
When it comes to the Minor Arcana, they’re considered original to the Rider-Waite deck. There’s a bit of an interesting backstory here too: Arthur Waite, who guided the creation of the deck, worked closely with artist Pamela Colman-Smith. Waite told her what he wanted on the cards, but there’s also been some discussion in recent years about how much influence Colman-Smith, a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, had in shaping the deck’s final design. It’s likely that her own ideas played a bigger role than we first thought!
