Tarot

A tarot deck holds seventy-eight cards: twenty-two trumps, called the major arcana, and fifty-six suit cards, the minor arcana, in four suits of fourteen. The arrangement this reading works from is the one the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn built in the late nineteenth century, in which every trump carries a Hebrew letter and an astrological attribution and every numbered minor arcana card carries one of the zodiac's thirty-six decans.

History

Tarot begins as a card game, not a divination tool. The earliest attested decks come from the courts of northern Italy in the 1440s, in Milan and Ferrara, made for a trick-taking game called tarocchi that added a suit of trump cards to the ordinary four-suit deck already in use across Europe. It stayed a game, played much like bridge, for over three centuries.

The turn toward divination is French and considerably later. In 1781 the writer Antoine Court de Gebelin claimed, without evidence, that the tarot preserved the secret wisdom of ancient Egypt, a claim modern scholarship rejects outright but which reshaped how the cards would be read from then on. Jean-Baptiste Alliette, writing as Etteilla, published the first deck designed specifically for divination shortly afterward. The esoteric magician Eliphas Levi, in the 1850s, was the first to pair the twenty-two trumps with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, tying the deck to the Kabbalah's Tree of Life.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in London in 1888, built a full correspondence system from Levi's pairing, circulated among its members as an internal teaching document usually called Book T: every trump given a Hebrew letter, a path on the Tree of Life and a planet or zodiac sign, and every one of the thirty-six numbered minor arcana cards given one of the zodiac's thirty-six decans, the same ten degree sub-divisions Western astrology's own vocabulary uses. The deck now most widely used, designed by the Golden Dawn member Arthur Edward Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, published in 1909 and generally called the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, follows this system, and was the first popular deck to give every minor arcana pip card its own illustrated scene rather than a bare arrangement of suit symbols. It also reordered two trumps, Strength and Justice, to positions eight and eleven against the older Marseille-style tradition's eleven and eight, specifically to keep the Golden Dawn's letter-to-sign logic consistent.

The Major Arcana

The twenty-two trumps read as the large arcs of a situation, and in the Golden Dawn's own attribution each carries a Hebrew letter and a planet, a zodiac sign or an element:

• 0 The Fool, Aleph, air.
• I The Magician, Beth, Mercury.
• II The High Priestess, Gimel, the Moon.
• III The Empress, Daleth, Venus.
• IV The Emperor, Heh, Aries.
• V The Hierophant, Vav, Taurus.
• VI The Lovers, Zayin, Gemini.
• VII The Chariot, Cheth, Cancer.
• VIII Strength, Teth, Leo.
• IX The Hermit, Yod, Virgo.
• X Wheel of Fortune, Kaph, Jupiter.
• XI Justice, Lamed, Libra.
• XII The Hanged Man, Mem, water.
• XIII Death, Nun, Scorpio.
• XIV Temperance, Samekh, Sagittarius.
• XV The Devil, Ayin, Capricorn.
• XVI The Tower, Peh, Mars.
• XVII The Star, Tzaddi, Aquarius.
• XVIII The Moon, Qoph, Pisces.
• XIX The Sun, Resh, the Sun.
• XX Judgement, Shin, fire.
• XXI The World, Tau, Saturn.

The Minor Arcana And The Suits

The fifty-six minor arcana cards fall into four suits of fourteen, an ace, the numbered cards two through ten, and four court cards, page, knight, queen and king. Each suit carries an element: Wands with fire, Cups with water, Swords with air, and Coins, sometimes called Pentacles, with earth. Where the majors read as the arc of a situation, the minors read the specific conditions inside it.

In the Golden Dawn's arrangement, each of the thirty-six numbered pip cards, two through ten across the four suits, is paired with one of the zodiac's thirty-six decans, and so inherits that decan's own planet ruling within its sign; the four aces are read differently, as the pure, undivided force of their element before it is split across the numbered cards at all.

How A Reading Is Constructed

A reading begins with a question and a spread, a fixed layout of positions, each position asking something different of the card that lands in it; the Celtic Cross is the best known, ten positions covering the situation, what crosses it, what lies beneath and ahead, and an outcome. The deck is shuffled and the cards are drawn into the spread's positions in order.

Reading them works from the vocabulary above: a major arcana card in a position speaks to the large arc that position is asking about, while a minor arcana card speaks to the specific condition there through its suit's element and, for the Golden Dawn-minded reader, its decan and planetary ruler. Court cards are usually read as a person, an approach or a stage of mastery relevant to the question, rather than as an arc or a specific condition. The images themselves, especially on an illustrated deck such as the Rider-Waite-Smith, carry as much of the reading as the attributions do; a reader works from what a card shows as readily as from what it corresponds to.

Where To Read More

• The FoolMajor Arcana0 The Fool: Hebrew letter Aleph, the element air.
• The MagicianMajor ArcanaI The Magician: Beth, Mercury.
• The High PriestessMajor ArcanaII The High Priestess: Gimel, the Moon.
• The EmpressMajor ArcanaIII The Empress: Daleth, Venus.
• The EmperorMajor ArcanaIV The Emperor: Heh, Aries.
• The HierophantMajor ArcanaV The Hierophant: Vav, Taurus.
• The LoversMajor ArcanaVI The Lovers: Zayin, Gemini.
• The ChariotMajor ArcanaVII The Chariot: Cheth, Cancer.
• StrengthMajor ArcanaVIII Strength: Teth, Leo. Waite reordered this trump from the older Marseille position XI to keep the Golden Dawn's letter-to-sign logic consistent.
• The HermitMajor ArcanaIX The Hermit: Yod, Virgo.
• Wheel of FortuneMajor ArcanaX Wheel of Fortune: Kaph, Jupiter.
• JusticeMajor ArcanaXI Justice: Lamed, Libra. The other half of the Strength and Justice reorder.
• The Hanged ManMajor ArcanaXII The Hanged Man: Mem, the element water rather than a planet or sign.
• DeathMajor ArcanaXIII Death: Nun, Scorpio.
• TemperanceMajor ArcanaXIV Temperance: Samekh, Sagittarius.
• The DevilMajor ArcanaXV The Devil: Ayin, Capricorn.
• The TowerMajor ArcanaXVI The Tower: Peh, Mars.
• The StarMajor ArcanaXVII The Star: Tzaddi, Aquarius.
• The MoonMajor ArcanaXVIII The Moon: Qoph, Pisces.
• The SunMajor ArcanaXIX The Sun: Resh, the Sun itself.
• JudgementMajor ArcanaXX Judgement: Shin, the element fire.
• The WorldMajor ArcanaXXI The World: Tau, Saturn, the last trump.
• WandsWands, the suit of fire.
• CupsCups, the suit of water.
• SwordsSwords, the suit of air.
• CoinsCoins, the suit of earth, sometimes called Pentacles.
• Decan 1 of AriesAriesOne of thirty-six decans, the layer each numbered minor arcana card is paired with in the Golden Dawn's arrangement.
• Decan 2 of TaurusTaurusA second decan, showing the same thirty-six part division at a different degree band.
• Celtic CrossTen-Card SpreadsThe Celtic Cross, the best known ten-position spread a reading is laid out in.