I just got clued into a very interesting fact from that article which uses the game Monopoly as an analogy for understanding historically the Tarot deck & game system.

It seems that the game Monopoly is actually a variation of a board game called “The Landlord’s Game” invented in 1903 by a Quaker woman named Lizzie Magie. Her game was intended to teach players the evils of real estate monopolism, and to help them understand why certain tax reforms ought to be supported and passed into law. In her version of the game, basically everybody lost, because you could only ever rent property, and never really accumulate wealth… or something along those lines. I also just found another article about this which has some of the original patent drawings of her gameboard. Also, here are some more links on Monopoly history.

It’s pretty wild how the original purpose of the game is pretty much exactly the opposite of what it turned into. I mean, I guess you could still interpret it this way, but I don’t think anybody really does. Although, there was also a game created in 1974 by Ralph Anspach, called Anti-Monopoly, where players went around breaking up big-business monopolies. Interestingly enough, Monopoly sued Anti-Monopoly, claiming that it had exclusive rights over the word “monopoly” (they have a “monopoly” over it). It’s been in and out of court battles ever since basically.