Deck
The game of tarot is played using a 78-card tarot deck. This deck is composed of:
- 21 numbered trump cards (atouts),
- 1 Fool (l'Excuse), and
- 4 suits of 14 cards each;
- numbered "pip cards" from 1 to 10 (the "Ace" is always the lowest value and so is marked with its number 1 instead of the "A" common in 52-card decks), and
- four "face cards"; the Valet (Jack), Chevalier (Knight; not seen in 52-card decks), Dame (Queen) and Roi (King).
The tarot deck commonly used in cartomancy, the Rider-Waite, was derived from the original Tarot de Marseilles card designs and deck composition used for this game. In modern times, for ease of play, a deck style known as the "Tarot Nouveau" or "Bourgeois Tarot" is used to play the game. This deck, which began to appear around the turn of the last century, has card designs similar to the French styling of the "Anglo-American" 52-card Poker or Bridge decks, and replaces the traditional allegorical images of the atouts with depictions of typical turn-of-century French life and leisure.
Read more about this topic: Tarot (game)
Famous quotes containing the word deck:
“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“And every sea-god pays a gem,
Yearly out of his watery cell,
To deck great Neptune’s diadem.”
—Thomas Campion (1567–1620)
“Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hooves i’ the receiving earth;
For ‘tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)