What the tarot is, structurally
A tarot deck has 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana (Fool through World — the archetypes of a complete life) and 56 Minor Arcana (four suits of fourteen — Cups/Wands/Pentacles/Swords, mapping to Water/Fire/Earth/Air).
It is structurally complete: the Majors trace the hero's journey; the Minors trace the texture of any given moment. A well-laid spread is a snapshot of a question, not a sentence of fate.
The European Hermetic root
The earliest known tarot decks were 15th-century Italian (Visconti-Sforza). The system as we know it was developed by 19th-century French and English occultists — particularly Eliphas Levi, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and Arthur Edward Waite, whose Rider-Waite deck (1909) is the visual ancestor of nearly every modern deck.
How a reading actually works
A spread is a position-key map. A three-card spread might be Past / Present / Future — or Body / Mind / Spirit — or Question / Hidden / Action. The cards land into positions and the position is half the meaning.
The Celtic Cross (10 cards) is the classic complete reading — situation, challenge, root, recent past, possible future, near future, self, environment, hopes/fears, outcome.
How we use tarot in our synthesis
Tarot is our fast lens — when you want a 90-second reflection rather than a 30-page report. It is one of four systems we cross-reference. The AI narrative will never claim tarot "predicts" — it will say what the cards suggest, in the position they landed.