DARWIN, Australia - s4story -- Independent author, publisher and researcher Peta Oakes, writing as Gaelic Mac Dubhdara, announces the forthcoming release of The Cards of Fate, a historical exploration of one of the world's most recognisable and enduring systems of symbolism and divination.

For centuries, Tarot has occupied a fascinating place between art, history, spirituality, mysticism and the human desire to understand fate. Its seventy-eight cards, richly illustrated with figures, allegories and mysterious imagery, have become familiar across cultures, yet their origins and transformation remain far less widely understood.

The Cards of Fate traces Tarot's development from its emergence as a card game in fifteenth-century Renaissance Italy to its later association with fortune-telling, occult philosophy, ceremonial magic and modern spiritual practice.

More on S For Story

• HSS Medical Supply Celebrates One-Year Anniversary of Its Top Performing Sales Team
• Jacombs Tickets Partners with UEFA to Offer Champions League Tickets
• For National Novel Writing Month: Check out a Painting and a Poem by Robert M. Barrows called "The Publisher's and Producer's Lament"
• American Liberty Publishers Announces Two New Author Releases: A Memoir and a Cookbook
• Award-Winning Author Publishes Memoir

The investigation explores the Visconti-Sforza cards, the Tarot de Marseille, the rise of cartomancy, eighteenth-century French occultism, the influence of Antoine Court de Gébelin and Etteilla, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the creation of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite and artist Pamela Colman Smith.

Through historical sources, surviving decks and the evolution of Tarot imagery, the book examines how ordinary playing cards acquired extraordinary symbolic meaning. It considers the development of the Major and Minor Arcana, the influence of religious allegory, Renaissance culture, astrology, numerology and esoteric traditions, and the emergence of Tarot as a language through which people explore uncertainty, choice and destiny.

Rather than presenting Tarot's later mystical interpretations as established ancient history, the book distinguishes between documented origins, evolving symbolic traditions and the beliefs subsequently attached to the cards.

More on S For Story

• More than 50 authors to participate in 2026 Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books
• Architects of Authoritarianism: The Claremont Institute and the Making of the MAGA New Right
• New Book - RUN: The Wilmot Collins Story—From Liberian Refugee to the First Black Mayor in Montana
• Award-Winning Author Carew Papritz Spotlighted by Los Angeles Tribune for Turning "The Legacy Letters" Into a Mission of Advocacy
• Geospatial Innovation Comes to Sacramento: FOSS4G NA 2026

At its heart, The Cards of Fate asks a compelling question: How did a Renaissance card game become one of humanity's most enduring instruments for contemplating fate and the unknown?

Readers interested in Tarot history, divination, Renaissance Europe, occult history, cartomancy, mysticism, esoteric philosophy, symbolism and cultural history may find particular interest in this forthcoming release.

The book is available now through Amazon.

Official Website:
https://macdubhdara.com

Official Trailer:
https://youtube.com/shorts/eqSeI4d4WVw