Field guide
Tarot schools and systems
"Tarot" isn't one system with a few different looks — it's several genuinely different rulebooks that happen to share a 78-card ancestry. This page maps the major ones and, just as importantly, the boundaries between them. For a closer comparison of the three systems this site actually builds readings on, see Tarot Traditions.
Four things people mix up
A system is a rulebook: what the cards mean, how court cards are ranked, whether reversals matter. A deck is a specific artistic execution — of a system, or of no particular system at all. An edition is one publisher's release of that deck: a different size, border, or translation of the same underlying art. A school is a teaching lineage, sometimes tied to one deck, sometimes not. Redesigning a deck's artwork doesn't automatically change its system, and a new printer doesn't create a new school.
Etteilla: divination's actual starting point
Before Jean-Baptiste Alliette — writing as Etteilla — tarot was a game with an Egypt-flavored myth attached to it, not a deck built to be read. In the late 1700s he published the first deck explicitly designed for divination: his own card order, his own imagery, his own printed upright and reversed meanings. Almost every later "reading system," including the Golden Dawn's, inherits the basic idea that a deck can be purpose-built for interpretation rather than adapted from a game.
The Golden Dawn lineage: Waite, Crowley, and BOTA
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn wasn't a deck at all — it was a 19th-century English occult order that built a dense correspondence system linking tarot to astrology, Kabbalah, and the four classical elements. Three separate, still-active lineages trace directly back to it:
- Rider-Waite-Smith — A.E. Waite's 1909 deck, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. This is the system TarotCards24's card meanings are built on.
- Thoth — Aleister Crowley's separate, deliberately different system, developed with artist Lady Frieda Harris and layered with his own Thelemic philosophy on top of Golden Dawn correspondences.
- BOTA (Builders of the Adytum) — a teaching organization founded by Paul Foster Case, weaving tarot into a broader curriculum of Kabbalah and ceremonial color work. It's a school with its own materials, not a repackaging of Waite's deck.
Waite and Crowley trained in the same order and then went separate ways — which is why their decks share some structural DNA (78 cards, four suits) while disagreeing on card names, court ranks, and correspondence tables.
Marseille's own methods, not one fixed reading
Because the historical Marseille pattern shows repeated suit symbols rather than illustrated scenes on its numbered Minor Arcana, reading it well needs its own method rather than borrowed RWS instincts. Two well-documented modern approaches: Tarology, developed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa, reads the whole deck's structure, numbers, and color relationships for self-knowledge; Open Reading, developed by Yoav Ben-Dov around his CBD restoration of the deck, focuses on how the images in a spread visually interact, and explicitly allows reading without reversals at all. Neither is "the" correct way to read Marseille — they're two authored methods within the same historical family.
The Egyptian-occult branch — several systems, one shared theme
"Egyptian tarot" isn't a single lineage. Etteilla's original deck carried Egyptian theming from the start; later 19th-century authors Paul Christian and his illustrators Falconnier and Wegener built their own 22-card Egyptian-themed system; 20th-century organizations like the Church of Light produced their own full 78-card Egyptian deck with an entirely separate guidebook. These share imagery and a claimed ancient-Egyptian connection, not a common author or rulebook.
Modern authored decks: a shared skeleton, not a shared system
Since the mid-20th century, decks like Motherpeace, the Haindl Tarot, and the Wildwood Tarot have kept the familiar 78-card, four-suit structure as scaffolding while building entirely their own imagery and, often, their own interpretive layer — closer to a new authored work than a Rider-Waite-Smith reskin. Treat each as its own system with its own guidebook, not a variation to be read with RWS meanings.
What's next to tarot, but isn't tarot
Petit Lenormand is a separate 36-card cartomancy system with its own imagery and method — not a tarot variant, despite often sharing shelf space with it. Kipper cards form a different picture-card divination tradition again. And several historically related card games — Austrian Tarock, Italian Tarocchini, French Tarot itself — use tarot-pattern decks purely to play a trick-taking game, with no reading tradition attached at all.
Frequently asked
Is there an official, complete list of every tarot system?
No. No museum, publisher, or research body maintains a definitive global registry of every tarot system and school — new authored decks and teaching lineages keep appearing. What follows is a map of the major, well-documented ones, not a closed list.
What's the actual difference between a "system," a "deck," and an "edition"?
A system is a set of rules for what the cards mean and how they relate to each other. A deck is one specific artistic execution of a system, or of no system at all. An edition is a particular publisher's release of that deck — a different print run, size, border, or translation of the same underlying artwork. A redesigned deck doesn't automatically carry a new system, and a new edition doesn't automatically carry new meanings.
Is BOTA the same thing as Rider-Waite-Smith?
No. BOTA (Builders of the Adytum) is a teaching organization founded by Paul Foster Case, a Golden Dawn-trained occultist who built his own tarot curriculum alongside Kabbalah and ceremonial color work. It shares intellectual ancestry with Waite's deck through the Golden Dawn, but it's a distinct school with its own materials, not a reskin of RWS.
Who was Etteilla, and why does his name keep coming up?
Jean-Baptiste Alliette, writing as Etteilla, was the first person to publish a deck built specifically for divination rather than play, in the late 1700s. He's the starting point for almost every later "system designed to be read," including the correspondence-heavy approach the Golden Dawn later formalized.
What does the Golden Dawn actually have to do with tarot cards?
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn wasn't a deck — it was a 19th-century occult order that built a detailed correspondence system linking tarot to astrology, Kabbalah, and the classical elements. Both A.E. Waite and Aleister Crowley trained within it before creating their own, differently-branded decks, which is why so much of modern esoteric tarot traces back to one order's internal teaching material.
Is Tarology the same as reading Marseille tarot generally?
No — Tarology is a specific method developed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa, built around visually and symbolically reading the Marseille pattern for self-knowledge. It's one authored approach to Marseille, not the only way to read it, and not a requirement for using a Marseille deck.
Can I safely apply Rider-Waite-Smith meanings to a Marseille or Thoth deck?
Not reliably. Marseille's numbered Minor Arcana show repeated suit symbols rather than illustrated scenes, so RWS-style scene-reading often doesn't transfer. Thoth renames several Major Arcana cards outright and layers in its own astrological and Kabbalistic correspondences. Card number and English name aren't a safe bridge between systems.
Is Lenormand a type of tarot?
No. Lenormand is a separate 36-card cartomancy system with its own imagery, symbolism, and reading method. It's often sold alongside tarot and can look superficially similar in a card shop, but it isn't a tarot variant or school.
What about "Egyptian tarot" — is that one system?
No, it's several unrelated branches that share a theme rather than a lineage: Etteilla's original Egypt-flavored deck, later 19th-century authors like Falconnier and Wegener, and 20th-century decks like the Brotherhood of Light Egyptian Tarot. Treat "Egyptian" as a visual and thematic label, not proof of a shared system.
Do modern authored decks like Motherpeace or Haindl follow Rider-Waite-Smith rules?
Often only loosely. Many keep the familiar 78-card, four-suit structure as a shared skeleton, but define their own imagery, card names, and sometimes their own interpretive framework — closer to a new authored work built on a common scaffold than a simple RWS reskin.
Sources
U.S. Games Inc. (Golden Dawn Tarot, BOTA lineage notes), British Museum (Etteilla), Builders of the Adytum (BOTA's own materials), hermetic.com (Crowley's Book of Thoth), cbdtarot.com (Yoav Ben-Dov's Open Reading method), Inner Traditions (Jodorowsky & Costa's The Way of Tarot).