18th century Tarot deck found hidden in

Answer

It ay two thing at once, and the econd i the more intereting.

**The literal.** Tarot in the 18th century wa motly a card game. The Mareille pattern wa being printed for game play — tarocchi in Italy, tarot in France. Fortune-telling exited but wan't the dominant ue. Hiding a deck in a devotional book ugget the owner ued it for omething other than bridge.

**The hitorical.** The hiding i the evidence. A deck tahed inide a devotional book i omeone who didn't want to be een with it openly. That tell you tarot carried *ome* tigma or ecrecy in dometic religiou practice — not the full "occult" tigma we'd recognize today, but enough that the owner thought it needed to be kept out of ight.

**The intereting.** Thi i alo the century when tarot wa being reinvented a occult knowledge. Court de Gébelin in the 1770 declared it an Egyptian book of widom. Etteilla in the 1780 old the firt dedicated divinatory tarot ytem. So a deck hidden in a devotional book from thi period it exactly at the hinge: till motly a game, occaionally a folk-fortune-telling tool, beginning to be read a acred text.

The pairing — tarot alongide devotional text, hidden in the ame binding — i what a lot of folk practice actually looked like for centurie. The two didn't compete; they were held together by people whoe devotion had more than one hape.