Love this story, and I highlighted this part to lay bare Tarot.

Tarot’s great rebranding boils down to two guys who decided the cards weren’t just for games.

No, they were ancient Egyptian secrets!

First: Antoine Court de Gébelin—the “scholar”. In 1781, he published a sprawling work insisting Tarot was the “Book of Thoth,” somehow preserved from the destruction of ancient Egypt. Why? The imagery just "felt Egyptian" to him. He had no basis in facts, no linguistics, no archaeology. Just vibes.

Second: Jean-Baptiste Alliette--the hustler. He was the first to make a deck built specifically for divination, then turned readings into a lucrative service, basically laying the groundwork for the modern business of the professional occultist.