TarotCards24
ENDERUUK

Tarot history · Sources and evidence

A Marseille Tarot from 1639: What the Philippe Vachier Deck Changes

Published October 11, 2026 · TarotCards24

In December 2025, the Bibliothèque nationale de France added a complete 78-card tarot made in Marseille in 1639 to its national collections. That single surviving deck changes a small but important point in the history of the Tarot of Marseille: the oldest known example made in Marseille is now older than the Parisian Noblet deck that had previously held that distinction.

The deck is associated with Philippe Vachier, a Marseille cardmaker. The date appears on its Two of Coins, while the Two of Cups carries the workshop mark “À l’enseigne des deux rois.” The cards were printed from woodblocks and colored with stencils. The BnF describes the set as complete and identifies it as a “Type I” Tarot of Marseille deck.

Why one 17th-century deck matters

Tarot history is often told through famous names and familiar designs. The surviving objects make the story less tidy. A deck can be known by its maker, dated by an inscription, and still leave gaps about who commissioned it, who played with it, and how widely its pattern circulated.

Before the Vachier deck entered the BnF, the institution described the Noblet tarot—made in Paris around 1650—as the only known 17th-century example of the Marseille pattern. Noblet remains an important early deck. The new evidence does not make it unimportant; it changes the comparison. We now have a Marseille-made example from 1639, more than a decade earlier, and a named local maker whose activity can be documented in the city between 1632 and 1668.

That is a useful historical correction, not proof that every later Marseille-style deck descends directly from this one. The BnF says Vachier’s printing blocks appear to have been reused later by Jean-Pierre Payen, who printed another tarot in 1743. “Appear to have been reused” is the careful wording: the relationship is an informed attribution, not a surviving workshop ledger that explains every step.

A game deck before a divination icon

The deck also helps keep two histories separate. Tarot cards were used for a card game long before tarot became widely associated with fortune-telling. The BnF notes that Marseille tarot’s earlier function was recreational; its later image as a divinatory object was shaped by much newer traditions.

That distinction matters when looking at the Vachier cards. Their 78-card structure and familiar suits are evidence of a printed game deck and a design lineage. They do not, by themselves, prove that 17th-century players read the cards as modern tarot readers do. Claims about symbolic readings need their own dated sources.

What the find changes—and what it does not

The Vachier tarot pushes the documented Marseille production line back to 1639 and gives researchers a rare complete object with a maker’s mark and a date. It also shows that the label “Tarot of Marseille” describes a pattern and a later historical category, not necessarily a deck first invented in the city that gave it its name. The BnF notes that Lyon may have been an important birthplace of the model, while production later flourished in several French cities.

The find does not settle the origin of tarot, establish a single original design, or turn modern interpretations into 17th-century facts. It does something more precise: it gives historians another well-preserved object to compare with Noblet, Viéville, and other early decks—and changes the earliest known date for a Marseille-made example.

That is how a good correction in history works. It does not replace one legend with another. It updates the record, identifies the evidence, and leaves the remaining questions visible.

Sources

More on tarot history