Trump

The French word atout is a contraction of a tout, meaning against all the other cards. It appears in French in the 16th century, alongside the development of trick-taking games. In tarot, the Italian trionfi — which appeared in Milan and Ferrara around 1440 — already designated this higher series that triumphed over the other suits during play. Since the tarot was first a trick-taking game and not a divinatory tool, the term trump reflects this playful origin. Court de Gebelin, in 1781 in Le Monde primitif, was one of the first to recast these trumps as esoteric symbols.

In the contemporary French tarot game, still played in clubs of the French Federation of Tarot, the 21 numbered trumps plus the Excuse still form the higher series. The divinatory tradition, beginning with Etteilla (1788) and then Eliphas Levi (1854), reinterprets these trumps as Major Arcana carrying symbolic meaning. The dual use of the word persists: a tarot player speaks of trumps in the technical sense, while a cartomancer refers to trumps as a synonym for the 22 Major cards. Grimaud, Camoin and Lo Scarabeo continue to use this terminology on their decks.

In a divinatory reading, speaking of a trump most often refers to a Major Arcanum drawn in the spread. The appearance of a trump is traditionally interpreted as a strong signal in the reading: a life stage, a structuring decision, an active force. Some tarot readers, such as Alejandro Jodorowsky in The Way of Tarot (2004), prefer the word card and reserve trump for the gaming context. On Tarotoui, the word is used as a synonym for Major Arcanum in short presentations. Spreads using only trumps are common for fundamental questions.

Confusing trump and arcanum is not a mistake, but reflects two eras. Trump preserves the memory of the medieval card game; arcanum refers to the 19th-century occultist re-reading. Note that the Excuse (The Fool) plays a hybrid role in some tarots: neither trump nor ordinary suit, which makes it a singular card even in the gaming context.