I think that we have to be careful to to try to answer an unrealistic
question. There is no "absolute" or "correct" classification of Tarot
cards or anything else. A classification system is a way of grouping
objects so that things which may be of interest to an enquirer are found
together, either on shelves or as records in a database. You can't tell
the best place(s) for one object without knowing where the other objects
have been put.

Shelves generally require a linear arrangement, so that an object can be
put in only one place, but in a database an object can be juxtaposed to
as many other objects as are appropriate, by allocating it to more than
one classification. In the same way, it can be given as many subject
index terms as necessary so that it will be retrieved by each of the
approaches that the cataloguer considers possible or likely.

The original enquirer, Janis Wilkens, said that she had tried AAT and
Nomenclature without success. We cannot say how an object would usefully
be classified and indexed for her collection without knowing more about
the systems she is actually using. If she is using one of these
vocabularies, or if she has developed her own classification scheme or
thesaurus, the question becomes "In what class, or under what broader
terms, _within this scheme_ could Tarot cards appropriately be placed?"
to which the follow-up is "What classes or broader terms have you got?"

I don't know much about Tarot, but I would start looking at the way in
which the scheme structures the two aspects: "documents and other
printed objects" and "fortune telling". Start at the top of the
hierarchies containing these topics and work down until you find
somewhere sufficiently specific for the collection; if nothing is found,
consider how the scheme can be extended to meet the need.

I'm sorry if this is a more general response than may have been wanted,
but I think it is often worth standing back a bit and thinking about
principles when tackling interesting problems of this type.

Leonard Will
--
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