Michael Dummett and John McLeod: A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack : The Game of Triumphs

My guess is that more than 99% of what is written about tarot in English is about fortune-telling. That's too bad, as divination wasn't the original purpose of tarot cards. They are playing cards, made for playing games - and there are plenty of great games played with the several different tarot packs, many of which are played actively even today.

Michael Dummett is one of the leading experts in the field of tarot games, while John McLeod, the owner of Card Games web site is one of the leading experts on card games in general. Together they have created an excellent book, covering basically all forms of tarot played in Europe. The book is based on all sorts of documents and literary sources, but also plenty of fieldwork amongst the actual players of the games.

This is a very professional and serious book, filled mostly with rules of games. Casual card gamer will probably find it rather dry and over-whelming, and will fare better with what McLeod has published on his web site. For serious tarot fans, there just isn't another book like this. You need to have this book in your collection, no doubt about it.

The first volume covers tarot games of Italy, France and Switzerland, from the earliest games to the modern French and Italian games. The second volume covers the Austrian 54-card branch. [ A History of Games Played With the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs, Vol. 1 at Amazon.com ] [ A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Trumps: v. 1 at Amazon.co.uk ] [ A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Trumps: v. 2 at Amazon.co.uk ] [ A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack in LibraryThing ]