Major Arcana
22 cards representing the soul's journey — universal archetypes that carry the greatest weight in any reading.
Suit of Wands
Fire element — ambition, creativity, passion, enterprise. Wands deal with what drives us forward.
Suit of Cups
Water element — emotions, relationships, intuition, the inner world. Cups reflect what we feel.
Suit of Swords
Air element — intellect, conflict, truth, communication. Swords cut through — which can heal or harm.
Suit of Pentacles
Earth element — material world, work, money, body, long-term building. Pentacles deal with what we create and sustain.
Understanding tarot
What you're actually reading
Tarot is not fortune-telling. It is a structured system for examining a situation from multiple angles — the 78 cards map the full range of human experience.
The Rider-Waite-Smith Deck
Created in 1909 by Arthur Edward Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, this is the standard deck. Almost all modern decks derive from it. The RWS innovation was giving pictorial scenes to the Minor Arcana — previous decks used only pips.
Upright vs Reversed
A reversed card is not simply the opposite of upright — it may indicate blockage, internalisation, or a quality that is emerging rather than expressed. Many readers work without reversals entirely. Neither approach is more correct.
Numerology in the Minor Arcana
Each number carries its own archetype across all four suits. Aces are raw potential, Twos are duality, Threes are first synthesis. The Tens complete a cycle. Understanding numbers gives you a key that works across all 40 numbered Minor Arcana cards.
Spreads
A spread is a structured layout where each position has a designated meaning. The three-card past-present-future is the standard entry point. The ten-card Celtic Cross is the traditional deep-dive. One card daily is the most sustainable practice.
Related wisdom
Across traditions
Tarot intersects with astrology through planetary and zodiacal correspondences, with numerology through card numbers, and with crystals as companions to card energies.