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6 decks · 1650–2012

Tarot decks compared

Tarot decks compared: six decks spanning 362 years, from the Marseille pattern of 1650 to independents published in 2012. All six carry the same 78 cards in the same 22-plus-56 structure — what changes is who drew them, what they renamed, and whether the minor arcana show a scene or just a count of symbols. That last difference is the one that decides how hard a deck is to learn.

What the decks share — 22 majors and four suits: The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, suit of Wands, suit of Cups, suit of Swords and suit of Pentacles.

Tarot Decks Compared: Who Made Them, When, and What Changed

In order of appearance

DeckPublishedDrawn byCards
Tarot de Marseille 1650 Anonymous woodblock cutters 78
Rider–Waite–Smith 1909 Pamela Colman Smith 78
Thoth 1969 Lady Frieda Harris 78
Dalí Universal Tarot 1984 Salvador Dalí 78
DruidCraft 2004 Will Worthington 78
The Wild Unknown 2012 Kim Krans 78
The six decks on one timeline, 1650 to 2012
Six tarot decks by year of first publication165017001750180018501900195020002050Tarot de Marseille1650Rider–Waite–Smith1909Thoth1969Dalí Universal Tarot1984DruidCraft2004The Wild Unknown2012Publication years: deck publishers and catalogsastrohot.comSix tarot decks by year of first publication1650Tarot de Marseille259 years1909Rider–Waite–Smith1969Thoth1984Dalí Universal Tarot2004DruidCraft2012The Wild UnknownPublication years: deck publishers and catalogsastrohot.com

The gap after the Marseille pattern is the long one: 259 years pass before the Rider–Waite–Smith, and the other four decks then follow within 103 years of it.

1650 · Multiple workshops

Tarot de Marseille

It predates the occult revival entirely: it was a card game deck first, and the divinatory readings were attached to it more than a century later.

  • Its minor arcana show only counted suit symbols with no scene, which is why readers of this deck lean on number and suit rather than pictorial memory.
  • Long out of copyright — the pattern is reproduced freely.

1909 · William Rider & Son

Rider–Waite–Smith

It was the first widely published deck to give every minor arcana card a full scene instead of a bare count of suit symbols. That single decision is why the minors can be read at all by a beginner, and why nearly every modern deck copies its imagery.

  • Pamela Colman Smith drew all 78 cards for a flat fee and no royalties. For most of the century the deck was named after Rider and Waite alone; the S was added to the name only after her contribution was reassessed. The only earlier deck with a scene on every card, the Sola Busca of the 1490s, survived as a rarity, and Smith is thought to have seen it in photographs at the British Museum.
  • Published in 1909, the original deck has long been in the public domain in the United States. In the UK and EU copyright runs for 70 years after the artist's death, so Pamela Colman Smith's artwork became free to reproduce there only on January 1, 2022 — though the images have been reprinted and cloned for decades.

The full story of this deck →

1969 · Ordo Templi Orientis

Thoth

It was painted between 1938 and 1943 but not published until 1969, more than two decades after Crowley died. Harris repainted some cards eight times.

  • It renames several cards — Strength becomes Lust, Judgement becomes the Aeon — so readings written for one deck do not transfer cleanly to the other.

1984 · Comas

Dalí Universal Tarot

It was commissioned in 1973 for the James Bond film Live and Let Die. The deal collapsed, Dalí finished it anyway, and it was published a decade later.

  • It is collage rather than drawing: Dalí cut and reassembled classical paintings, putting himself on the Magician.

2004 · Connections

DruidCraft

It deliberately merges two separate traditions — Druidry and Wicca — into one deck, which is unusual: most decks pick a single system and stay inside it.

  • It keeps the Waite structure and suit names — wands, cups, swords and pentacles — so readings transfer; what changes is the imagery, set in a seasonal pagan landscape.

2012 · Self-published, later HarperOne

The Wild Unknown

It started as a self-published run and became one of the best-known decks of the 2010s revival, a sign of how far the market had moved toward independent artists.

  • It drops human figures almost entirely in favor of animals and plants, so the court cards read differently from any Waite-based deck.

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Cite this page

AstroHot. “Tarot Decks Compared: Who Made Them, When, and What Changed.” Accessed October 29, 2026. https://astrohot.com/tarot/decks/

For Wikipedia {{cite web |title=Tarot Decks Compared: Who Made Them, When, and What Changed |url=https://astrohot.com/tarot/decks/ |website=AstroHot |access-date=2026-10-29}}