The earliest evidence of tarot cards appears in Italy and France during the 15th century. Playing cards had arrived in Italy approximately 100 years earlier. There is speculation that the French/Italian tarot was a development of Mamluk cards from Persia, which were heavily decorated and used the suits coins, clubs, jugs, and swords.
Mamluk Kanjifah cards (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Can you recall any scene from a movie that shows tarot reading? For sure most of the scenes you recall involve a fortune teller sitting in a dark room, giving off vibes and a weird and mysterious score in the background. And that is when you developed a notion that tarot cards are evil or satanic. The practice of Tarot is a tool for personal growth and self-discovery, not a form of divination or black magic.
A deck of tarot cards and an explanatory reference book are brilliant tools for a fiction writer. Use tarot cards to plan out your novel. Use them to develop characters. Use them when you get to a ‘what’s next’ moment. There is an Italian book, called The castle of crossed destinies (Il castello dei destini incrociati) of Italo Calvino, that used tarots to write and tell short stories.
As many of you already know, each Minor Arcana suit relates to a different issue: Cups relate to emotional issues, Coins relate to money and home, Swords relate to conflict and over thinking, and Wands relate to work issues and ambition. But in origin, these cards referred to social classes. In particular, swords to the warrior class, coins to the merchant class, cups to the clergy and wand to peasants. Very often, as you can see, things are much simpler than they seem.