Tarot cards are a magical gift. You can learn so much about yourself when choosing to let the cards guide you through a certain situation or life itself. It can feel overwhelming when you first look at a deck of tarot cards and see all the images, colors, numbers, and symbols. Once you take the time to understand each card and the meaning behind it, you open yourself up to new opportunities.
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What To Expect In This Post:
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Origin of Tarot Cards
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Summary of the Major Arcana Cards
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Summary of the Minor Arcana Cards
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Popular Spreads
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Example Reading
Origin of Tarot Cards
Table games and playing cards have been associated with divination on and off for centuries. When stakes are high, we seem to have an instinct to read into our fate in search of meaning, satisfaction, clarity and direction.
Tarot cards is a tool we use to bridge divination and reality into one.
The tarot card deck is developed from the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. (I will get into what each section means later in this post) “Tarot cards likely originated in northern Italy during the late 14th or early 15th century. The oldest surviving set, known as the Visconti-Sforza deck, was created for the Duke of Milan’s family around 1440. The cards were used to play a bridge-like game known as tarocchi, popular at the time among nobles and other leisure lovers. According to tarot historian Gertrude Moakley, the cards’ fanciful images—from the Fool to Death—were inspired by the costumed figures who participated in carnival parades. ” (Where do tarot cards come from?, BRENDAN I. KOERNER)
Major Arcana
Cards 1-21 comprise the Fool’s journey, where The Fool (the adventure seeker in all of us) travels through life’s major experiences, represented in these 21 archetypal personas to gain knowledge, grow, and achieve an epitome of freedom, joy, and love.
Each Major Arcana card has it’s own interpretation and description of the name, drawing, symbols, numbers, and colors. To learn the full description and meaning of each card archetype, you definitely need: Tarot For Beginners, by Meg Hayertz on Amazon.com.
Here is a list of the 21 Major Arcana cards:
The Fool’s Journey – Major Arcana Cards
The Fool
Represents a leap of faith, innocence and adventure.
The Magician
Represents creativity, manifestation and ability.
The High Priestess
Represents inner knowledge, intuition, and duality.
The Empress
Represents beauty, motherhood and creativity.
The Emperor
Represents reliability, fatherhood, and responsibility.
The Hierophant
Represents education, knowledge, religion and conformity.
The Lovers
Represent connection, fulfillment, love, and choice.
The Chariot
Represents momentum, breakthrough, and travel.
Strength
Represents compassion, perseverance, and power.
The Hermit
Represents wisdom seeker and inner voice.
Wheel of Fortune
Represents change, patterns and fortune.
Justice
Represents balance, objectivity, fairness and equity.
The Hanged Man
Represents trust, self-sacrifice and waiting.
Death
Represents endings, grief, transformation, and rebirth.
Temperance
Represents creativity, art, healing and balance.
The Devil
Represents vitality, plat, temptation, and oppression.
The Tower
Represents destruction, consequences, catastrophe, and detoxification.
The Star
Represents guiding vision, healing, and creativity.
The Moon
Represents dreams, instinct, and crisis.
The Sun
Represents joy, success, health, and children.
Judgement
Represents higher calling, criticism, judgment call, and absolution.
The World
Represents completion, celebration, and wholeness.
Minor Arcana
While the Major Arcana represent major events in our life, the Minor Arcana indicate specific facets of everyday life. These are known as the “minor mysteries” of life. The Minor Arcana highlight situations and influences which are temporary compared to the Major Arcana.
There are four suits in the Minor Arcana: Cups, Pentacles, Swords, and Wands. Each suit is made up of 10 cards and four court cards: Pages, Knights, Queens, and Kinds.
The four suits map our experiences into four different spheres of energy. Each is associated with a natural element to further guide the qualities of the suit.
Here is a list of the four Minor Arcana Suits:
CUPS
Is associated with the water element. This suit represents matters of emotions, relationships, inner life, and spirituality.
PENTACLES
Is associated with the earth element. This suit represents matters of the physical world, raw material, the body, health, resources, money and career.
SWORDS
Is associated with the air element. This suit represents matters of critical thinking, clarity, and mindsets.
WANDS
Is associated with the fire element. This suit represents matters of creativity, family, workplace, and…
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