The tarot deck originally had nothing to do with fortune-telling. Tarot’s famous trumps (special cards that rank above ordinary suit cards) emerged as an innocuous addition to existing playing-card decks in 15th-century Italy and were used to play the popular game tarocchi. Only centuries later, in another country, were tarot decks and their trumps portrayed as embodiments of ancient wisdom that could be used in occultism and divination.

“It is of course in the interests of those who make their living from occultism, cartomancy [divination with cards] and selling tarot packs designed for these purposes to try to perpetuate the myth that these cards are of ancient origin and have some mystical meaning or even power, and to ignore the use of them for games,” says John McLeod, a historian of card games and the co-author of the 2004 book A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs. “Their propaganda over the last 150 years or so has been extremely successful, so it is probably still the case that most people believe that tarot cards were originally used for divination of some kind.”

More: Tarot Cards Began as a Renaissance Card Game | HISTORY