Deck Deck Suggestions Major Arcana Minor Arcana Spreads FAQ

Tarot Decks

The most widely accepted theory of the Tarot is that it began life as a deck of cards for playing games. The Italian Tarot was initially called Trifoni which means "cards with trumps". As such the Tarot deck bears many similarities with our modern 52-card packs of playing cards.

The Cards of the Tarot Deck

Like our modern cards, the Tarot Decks contains four suits, most commonly called Wands, Swords, Cups and Disks. Each suit contains cards numbered from one to ten plus court cards. Unlike our modern decks which contain three court cards (Jack, Queen, King) the Tarot Deck contains four court cards in each suit. The names of these vary between decks, common names including Page, Knight, Prince, Princess, King and Queen.

These 56 cards make up what is known as the Minor Arcana. The divinatory meaning of the Minor Arcana cards is a combination of their number and suit.

The main difference between the Tarot deck and our modern playing cards is that the Tarot also contains twenty-two special cards. These "trumps" - known as the Major Arcana - are numbered from 0 to 21. They do not have suits and each has its own special divinatory meaning.

The Major Arcana cards are considered more powerful than the Minor Arcana and are paticularly relevant when they appear in a reading.

All Tarot decks I know of have individual illustrations for each of the Major Arcana. The Minor Arcana varies between decks. Some decks have a separate picture for every card. Other decks simply have generic designs for the Minor Arcana - in much the way that our modern playing cards usually just show the appropriate number of suit symbols.

Reading the Tarot

To conduct a Tarot reading, the cards are first shuffled. Usually the querent is asked to shuffle or at least cut the deck. Then the reader deals cards into a "spread". There are numerous spreads in common use ranging from the simple to the complex. Each position in the spread is allocated a particular significance and each card read accordingly.

Because generic minor arcana cards are more difficult for a beginner to read, some people prefer to use just the major arcana. Personally I consider this a mistake - the cards are too powerful to be used on their own in this way.

Readers vary as to how they treat "reversed" cards in a spread. Some people like to read them as indicating negative aspects of a card, others see a reversed card as more powerful. Still others - including me - prefer not to pay any attention to whether or not a card is reversed and to determine whether or not it is beneficial from the context of the other cards.