Despite myth, lore and fabulous exotic claims, the absolute origin of Tarot continues to be a wonderful and intriguing mystery. What we do know though is that the cards of the Tarot represent an allegorical journey, and as such tell us a story through symbol and imagery. 

The earliest versions of the cards that we use today most likely first appeared as a simple deck of playing cards. But even though playing cards originated in Central Asia more than a thousand years ago it wasn't until the late 1400's that a true, 78 card, Tarot as we know it, was created.

This was the beautiful and gilded Visconti-Sforza deck, painted by Bonificio Bembo in Renaissance northern Italy and it, too, was a deck used for gaming. There is also mention from this period that the Tarot was being used for story telling and as the inspiration for creating poetic verse and song, but there is little evidence that they were as of yet thought of or used as a means of divination.It is  also claimed that the key to the secrets of the Tarot could be found within the links among the card images, the Hebrew letters and the cosmic diagram of the Qabalah, also known as The Tree of Life.

Which of course leads one to wonder if the origin of Tarot is indeed Egyptian as some claim, or if it is perhaps the images themselves that awaken us to an origin within. 
 
Then in 1781 a book was published in France by Antoine Court de Gebelin in which he enthusiastically proclaimed his discovery that an ancient Egyptian system of occult wisdom and divination had long been embedded within the images of these cards used for gaming. From this moment on, the appreciation and the use of the Tarot was forever changed!
The serious study of the card images and symbols began then among French occultists, and in 1855 Eliphas Levi published a book called, "The Doctrine of Transcendental Magic", in which he announced that the Tarot had been created 35,000 years before by Hermes or Thoth, the Egyptian god of magic.