Thought to cause insanity and madness in those who read it, the play The King in Yellow has haunted the imagination and hopes of humanity like a dirge since its first appearance in 1895. But among the fortune-tellers of Europe, the play was not the beginning of something new but the culmination of something old: the King in Yellow Tarot, a legendary deck that had been the subject of rumours for at least two hundred years before the play’s publication.