Oswald Wirth (1889)
Suits
1
Cards
22
Author
Oswald Wirth
Year
1889
Pattern
Trumps only
License
Public domain
Twenty-two trumps and nothing else — this deck has no minor arcana at all. Oswald Wirth drew it in 1889 for Stanislas de Guaita, and it is the first tarot made deliberately as an occult instrument rather than as a game. Beside each card's number stands a Hebrew letter, the attribution the whole later esoteric tradition rests on. Wirth renames two: his Tower is the Fire of Heaven and his Star is the Stars. Scans from the Bibliothèque nationale de France via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
