A deck of 78 and the light of the moon
Where tarot comes from, what we choose to believe and not believe, and why everything we do is named after the moon.
Tarot didn't start as fortune-telling
This surprises many people, but tarot appeared in Italy in the mid-15th century as a card game called carte da trionfi, later known as tarocchi. It was a pastime of the nobility, with 22 special cards that could beat the others — the set we now call the Major Arcana.
For about three hundred years the deck was used for play, and nobody used it to predict anything.
The turning point came in late-18th-century France, when it was claimed that the cards preserved ancient Egyptian wisdom. The claim never had any evidence, and historians today consider it untrue — but it sparked the use of tarot for divination, and the first decks designed specifically for it.
The images most people know come from a deck published in 1909, illustrated by the artist Pamela Colman Smith — the first to put narrative scenes on all 56 minor cards instead of rows of symbols. That deck's success owes a great deal to her artwork, even though her name has been remembered far less than it deserves.
So what do we believe?
We don't claim the cards know the future, or that they connect to any mysterious force.
What the cards can do, and do very well, is help people talk about hard things. The images are open enough for anyone to see their own situation in them, and having someone read them aloud lets thoughts that have been circling finally become words.
Often the answer is already there. People just need a space safe enough to say it. That's what we set out to build.
And that's why we set limits on ourselves. If the cards work by helping people think more clearly, declaring death or illness, or that a relationship will certainly end, helps nobody think — it only plants fear. So we don't predict those things, however directly we're asked.
Why the moon?
Every package is named after the moon — Guiding, Greeting, Glowing, Clear, Full and Halo Moon. There are three reasons.
The moon never stands still
It waxes and wanes every night, and no two nights are quite the same. Just as we believe nothing is fixed, a reading is about sensing the rhythm, not handing down a verdict.
Moonlight doesn't glare
It's bright enough to see the path but never so bright you have to look away. That's what we want a reading to be: honest without hurting.
We look at the moon when we can't stop thinking
Sleepless nights with something on your mind are the nights people look up. We want to be right there, in the moment before there's anyone to talk to.
The name Montra (มนต์ตรา) joins two feelings we wanted together: the enchantment of things that can't be fully explained, and the clarity of a sign that can be read. Tarot is both — an image to interpret, not a message you read once and forget.
Our deck is made from scratch
We don't use images from other decks. All 78 cards were created in one palette — indigo, gold and moonlight — so that when several appear together they read as one story, not pictures that happened to meet.
That's why we're comfortable selling the artwork as files, and the income funds the next deck.