Dr Terror deals the Death card: how tarot was turned into an occult obsession

It was a nice innocent game played by Renaissance courtiers, often featuring strong women. Why were these artistically dazzling cards given a black magic makeover that endures to this day?

As the train hurtles along, the art critic sniffs scornfully at the idea that tarot cards can tell your future. But he lets Dr Terror lay out his pack anyway, as does everyone else in the compartment. And, one by one, they are all dealt the same final card. It is Death.

This chilling scene, from the 1965 film Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, is fairly standard tarot fare. Many people use the cards to tell the future, or to meditate and find mindfulness. In any occult shop, you’ll find a huge selection of decks. Just in time for Christmas, traditionally a great time for card games, a famous pack – created in 1910 by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith – is being reissued by Taschen, complete with Waite’s booklet explaining the supposed mystic roots of tarot and what the symbols all mean: “Death: End, mortality, destruction, corruption. Reversed: Inertia, sleep, lethargy.”