tarot de marseille

Welcome! I'm really looking forward to exploring the Tarot de Marseille (TdM) with you. It's a gorgeous, historic system that has a completely unique vibe compared to other tarot decks.

Before we dive into the history and mechanics, I'd love to know a bit about your background to help tailor our conversation. Are you brand new to tarot altogether, or do you have some experience with other decks like the modern Rider-Waite-Smith system?

I have some experience with other decks.

It is fantastic that you already have some experience under your belt! That background is going to be incredibly useful, but to get the most out of the Tarot de Marseille (TdM), we actually want to start by temporarily putting those modern meanings aside.

In Zen philosophy, there is a concept called —the practice of approaching a subject with an open, empty, and receptive attitude, free of preconceived ideas. When we look at a modern Rider-Waite-Smith deck, we are often looking at a highly structured system layered with 19th-century occultism, astrology, and Kabbalah. The TdM, however, operates on a completely different frequency. It is a visual playground of raw shapes, primary colors, and open-ended imagery designed to speak directly to your imagination rather than a rigid textbook of esoteric correspondences.

How do you read cards without astrology or Kabbalah?

It is a great question, and it is the exact crossroads where many readers trained in modern systems get stuck. When you strip away those modern overlays, you are left with something far more direct and open-ended: you read the cards as an active, visual conversation.

Instead of treating a card like an isolated vocabulary word with a fixed definition (like "the Three of Swords always means heartbreak"), a Tarot de Marseille reader treats the cards like characters in a comic strip. You look at where they are pointing, how they are facing each other, and the relationships between their shapes and colors. It is a process of reading and flowing patterns directly from the physical layout.

Before we practice looking at these visual patterns ourselves, it helps to understand why the deck was built this way in the first place. This brings us to a fascinating historical plot twist: the Tarot de Marseille was not actually designed as an occult tool at all. It began its life in the 15th to 17th centuries as a popular European card game.

Show me an example of how characters interact.

It is incredibly fun to see this in action! Let's pull two cards from the deck and place them side-by-side to look at their body language.

Imagine we lay down Le Chariot (The Chariot, Card VII) on the left, and L'Hermite (The Hermit, Card IX) on the right.

In a modern deck, you might just combine their dictionary definitions: "triumph" plus "solitude." But in the Tarot de Marseille, we look at where they are actually pointing and looking. The youthful commander in Le Chariot is riding a bold, forward-facing vehicle, but his face is turned in profile, gazing intently to the right. Meanwhile, L'Hermite stands to his right, holding up a lantern. Crucially, the Hermit is turned to the left, looking directly back toward the chariot.

Because of their , these two characters are locked in an intense, face-to-face visual standoff. It looks like the young, fast-moving driver is being forced to stop and look into the old man's lantern, as if the Hermit is a spiritual traffic cop telling him to slow down and reflect.

A visual showing Le Chariot and L'Hermite tarot cards side-by-side with a bright dashed gaze line connecting their eyes.

This simple shift in perspective turns every reading into a dynamic, living comic strip where cards actively talk to one another. Now that you have a feel for how these cards interact visually, let's step back and look at how this beautiful machine is put together. To understand why the images are structured this way, we have to look at its surprising history. As we touched on briefly, the Tarot de Marseille was not originally created for fortunetelling at all. It actually began its life as a popular 15th-century European used for trick-taking games.

Show me what happens if they look away from each other.

It is just as fascinating when they turn away, because their cold shoulders speak volumes. When characters in a layout look in opposite directions, it immediately signals a dynamic of disconnection, avoidance, or diverging paths.

Let's stick with our previous setup but make one small tweak. Imagine we keep Le Chariot (Card VII) on the left, but this time we place L'Hermite (Card IX) on his left (the far left of our layout), so Le Chariot is now in the middle.

Because the chariot driver is still looking to his right, and the Hermit is still looking to his left, they are now standing back-to-back, gazing out toward opposite edges of the table.

This simple shift in position completely breaks their visual connection. Instead of a face-to-face spiritual confrontation, we now see a clear theme of or mutual ignoring. The young driver is racing off toward his future on the right, completely oblivious to the quiet, introspective wisdom of the Hermit, who is shining his lantern back into the past on the far left. They are operating in two entirely different worlds, illustrating how a physical layout dictates the narrative energy of the cards.

A side-by-side view of L'Hermite and Le Chariot facing away from each other with diverging gaze lines.

The visual energy of the layout tells you exactly how these forces are behaving—whether they are confronting each other, chasing each other, or walking away in opposite directions. Now that you see how easily these characters interact, we can shift our gaze to how the overall machine of the deck is structured. Let's look at how these cards are organized.