Module 1.3:
The Tarot System
Exploring the Major and Minor Arcanas.
Tarot is less about memorization and more about understanding. This section will help you decode the Tarot card meanings by relating the card system to real life experiences. This section breaks down the deck by part. By identifying the main anatomy of the Tarot deck, you can read spreads faster and with greater clarity.
Each traditional Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck includes:
78 cards in a complete deck
1 "wild" card called the Fool which is card 0. He travels through the deck.
21 Major Arcana cards--Life lessons
56 Minor Arcana cards--Daily activities. This includes 16 court cards, the persons and personalities we experience.
5 suits. The Major Arcana are the trumps. The Minor Arcana contains Swords, Cups, Wands and Pentacles.
Scroll for the full details on the Tarot system.
What makes the Tarot deck unique?
Exploring Tarot's "Big" and "Little" Secrets
The traditional Tarot deck is composed of 21 trumps called Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards which are illustrated pips. The words “arcana” means “secret”. Therefore, the Tarot deck is divided between big and small secrets. Often the Fool is regarded as a Major Arcana card which would bring the total number of Major Arcana cards up to 22, however, the history of Tarot shows that the Fool was intended to be “outside” of the suit of trumps and pips. As a kind of wild card and journeyman, the Fool runs parallel to the deck. If the Major and Minor Arcana are the secrets or lessons of the Tarot, then the Fool stands in as the person experiencing the lessons.
Most books and websites will include the Fool in the Major Arcana series of trumps. That is okay too. You’ll find that the more you discover about the Tarot, the more you’ll see how each reader relates the deck to their personal journey. It is my hope that you’ll find your own way of interpreting Tarot and the card meanings and that this course is but a stepping stone of a life-long quest.
The Major Arcana
The biggest difference between major and minor cards is the range of meaning within each card and the time period under which that meaning unfolds. The trumps represents long term processes. The entire Major Arcana is metaphorical for the life’s journey from birth to death. The Fool’s Journey, as it’s referred to, starts with the birth of a child who then grows up and faces challenges, finds his own path, and then finally reaches the status of spiritual awakening to the Divine. Each Major card encompasses a karmic lesson along the Fool’s journey, or a deep moral battle of the soul. The Minor Arcana, however, takes on a lighter tone, representing a smaller cycle of day-to-day activities and with it passing lessons of insight.
The Minor Arcana
The Minor Arcana is composed of four different suits. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck these suits are referred to as wands, cups, swords, and pentacles. There are other terms used for some of the suits. Often the suit of pentacles is referred to as coins or disks. Try not to focus so much on the name of each suit, but rather the energy it is trying to describe. The suit of pentacles is an earthly energy, for example. We’ll discuss elemental energies in the deck a little later.
The Minor Arcana can be further classified as each suit is numbered from ace to ten, indicating a beginning through completion of a process. Each number in the sequence represents a milestone. Following the tenth card, the Minor Arcana has “court” cards. The court cards depict a hierarchy of elevated positions, and it’s here where the Middle Age and Early Renaissance origins of the Tarot shine. The Rider-Waite-Smith presents the court as pages, knights, queens, and kings. Whereas the pip cards are about activities, the court cards represent people or personalities.
Elements
The Minor Arcana’s four suits also correspond to the four elements as we mentioned on the cheat sheet:
Swords – Air – Thoughts, Communication, Logic
Cups – Water – Emotions, Creativity, Relationships
Wands – Fire – Spirit, Will, Soul, Life’s Work
Pentacles – Earth – Physical, Finances, Environment, Day-Job
Many decks will also include other identifiable systems that provide layers of meaning to the cards. This could be seasons, symbols, masculine/feminine qualities, animals, age, etc. If your deck come with a book, even if it’s just a Little White Book, you should give it a quick read to see the author and artist’s original intention.
The Tarot focuses on balance and harmony. It is advised to always interpret the cards by keeping the context of the question in mind with the overall spread. Each card stands alone, but also fits like pieces of a puzzle interconnected within a spread. Just as you are experiencing this present moment as a connection to the past and your future, the Tarot deck was designed to connect all of life’s energies, activities, people and problems. Drawing out the story that the cards tell us reveals the true answer to the question.
Learning Made Easy
A Tarot Deck has 78 Cards
A standard Tarot deck, as previously noted, has 78 cards. The deck is divided into different suits and is numbered. What makes Tarot unique are the illustrated images on each card.
Learning Made Easy
The first 22 cards create the "Major Arcana"
The first card, numbered zero is The Fool. He travels through out the Tarot to explore life lessons. The next 21 cards are the karmic lessons the Fool experiences. Each set of 7 cards represents a phase of life, or a level of ascension of the soul based on the philosophies of Plato.
Learning Made Easy
Did you know, A standard playing card deck *is* Tarot?
What makes Tarot unique is the illustration on each card. Without these illustrations you would clearly see that the 56 Minor Arcana cards are a standard deck of playing cards. Cards have always been used for games, gambling and divination.
Learning Made Easy
Tarot has 5 suits
Occultists renamed the playing card suits you might be familiar with to make the Tarot sound a little more mystical. The hearts became cups or chalices. The spades became swords. Clubs were transformed into wands. And coins, also recognized as diamonds, became pentacles. The mystical names of the Tarot cards can help us connect with the symbolic meaning of each suit, which also relates to the four elements, four seasons and four colors.
Learning Made Easy
A Royal Court at Your Service
Just as a regular deck of playing cards, the Tarot contains court cards. The Jacks are known as Pages in the Tarot, and we also see Knights, Queens and Kings. They tell us about people and personality types in readings.
