They've gone mainstream. No longer confined to emporiums of the occult and mail-order catalogs, tarot cards are now prominently displayed in major chain bookstores. There also are 15,000 tarot-related sites on the Internet.

"For us, sales of tarot cards increase every year, but this year and last year, there's been a resurgence of interest in tarot from a wider range of people," says Janet Bennett, vice president of sales and marketing for U.S. Games Systems Inc., the largest distributor of tarot decks.

"It's no longer a niche market like it was in the '60s," agrees Maynard Friesz, a spokesman for Llewellyn Publications in St. Paul, long-time publishers of tarot cards. "Tarot readers are the people next door."