U.S. Games Systems, Inc. (USGS) is a publisher of

playing cards A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a fi ...

tarot cards The tarot (, first known as '' trionfi'' and later as ''tarocchi'' or ''tarocks'') is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play card games such as Tarocchini. From their Italian roots ...

, and games located in

Stamford, Connecticut Stamford () is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut, outside of Manhattan. It is Connecticut's second-most populous city, behind Bridgeport. With a population of 135,470, Stamford passed Hartford and New Haven in population as of the 2020 ...

. Founded in 1968 by Stuart R. Kaplan, it has published hundreds of different card sets, and about 20 new titles are released annually. The company's product line includes children's card games, museum products, educational cards, motivational cards,

tarot The tarot (, first known as '' trionfi'' and later as ''tarocchi'' or ''tarocks'') is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play card games such as Tarocchini. From their Italian roots, ...

cards, and other

fortune telling Fortune telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. Melton, J. Gordon. (2008). ''The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena''. Visible Ink Press. pp. 115-116. The scope of fortune telling is in principle identical w ...

card decks. These are marketed through a network of retailers, including bookstores, museum gift shops, metaphysical shops, greeting card stores; toy and game stores; hobby shops, and mail order catalogs. The company started as a U.S. distributor of European tarot decks. The tarot decks sold well in bookstores and Kaplan decided to begin publishing tarot decks himself. In 1971, the company acquired the rights to publish the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. The deck was extremely popular and served as the basis for the company's early success. Other tarot sets published by U.S. Games include a traditional

Tarot of Marseilles The Tarot of Marseilles is a standard pattern of Italian-suited tarot pack with 78 cards that was very popular in France in the 17th and 18th centuries for playing tarot card games and is still produced today. It was probably created in Milan befo ...

, two

Visconti-Sforza tarot deck The Visconti-Sforza Tarot is used collectively to refer to incomplete sets of approximately 15 decks from the middle of the 15th century, now located in various museums, libraries, and private collections around the world. No complete deck has su ...

s, an

Oswald Wirth Joseph Paul Oswald Wirth (5 August 1860, Brienz, Canton of Bern – 9 March 1943) was a Swiss occultist, artist and author. He studied esotericism and symbolism with Stanislas de Guaita and in 1889 he created, under the guidance of de Guaita, ...

tarot, and the

Thoth Tarot The Thoth Tarot is an esoteric tarot deck painted by Lady Frieda Harris according to instructions from Aleister Crowley. Crowley referred to this deck as The Book of Thoth, and also wrote a 1944 book of that title intended for use with the dec ...

Aleister Crowley Aleister Crowley (; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the pro ...

and drawn by

Lady Frieda Harris Marguerite Frieda Harris, Lady Harris (née Bloxam, 13 August 1877, London, England — 11 May 1962, Srinagar, India), referred to by her own insistence by the incorrect style “Lady Frieda Harris”, was an artist and, in later life, an associ ...

. The company is also known for its commitment to novel interpretations of the tarot, featuring new artwork in a variety of styles and formats. Some of the best known of these are the

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

-influenced Aquarian tarot, the borderless Morgan-Greer tarot, the circular Motherpeace tarot, and the Tarot of the Witches by Fergus Hall, which was featured in the

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

movie '' Live and Let Die''. Popular playing card games published by U.S. Games include the Wizard Card Game, Authors, the Natural World Series,

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

and

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

Games, the Creative Whack Pack, Mystery Rummy, and Continuo. Some of the company's card decks make use of museum holdings of artwork, like the Mummy Deck, from the holdings of the

Museum of Fine Arts in Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, and the Women in Works of Art deck, drawn from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. In the 1970s, the company branched out into publishing books about the history of tarot. Stuart Kaplan co-wrote with Jean Huets the four-volume ''Encyclopedia of Tarot'', which was published over the course of two decades. In 2009, U.S. Games published a commemorative Rider-Waite box set including Pamela Colman Smith's tarot cards, a selection of her art prints, and a short book about her, written by Kaplan. Kaplan's interest in Pamela Colman Smith's work as a theatrical set designer and costumer, her involvement with the

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn ( la, Ordo Hermeticus Aurorae Aureae), more commonly the Golden Dawn (), was a secret society devoted to the study and practice of occult Hermeticism and metaphysics during the late 19th and early 20th ce ...

, and her collaboration with the noted occultist

Arthur Edward Waite Arthur Edward Waite (2 October 1857 – 19 May 1942) was a British poet and scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider–Waite tarot deck (also called the Rider–Waite–Smith o ...

on the Rider-Waite deck, led him to research and co-write the biography ''Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story'' with Mary Katherine Greer, Elizabeth Foley O'Connor, and Melinda Boyd Parsons. The company's logo is a silhouette of The Fool tarot card, taken from the drawing by

Pamela Colman Smith Pamela Colman Smith (16 February 1878 – 18 September 1951), nicknamed "Pixie", was a British artist, illustrator, writer, publisher, and occultist. She is best-known for illustrating the Rider–Waite tarot deck (also called the Rider–Wait ...

for the Rider-Waite Tarot.

References

{{Playing cards Playing card manufacturers Publishing companies established in 1968 Book publishing companies of the United States 1968 establishments in Connecticut