Around 1789, Etteilla was the first to publish a tarot deck created especially for esoteric uses. Etteilla’s tarot included themes pertaining to ancient Egypt, in keeping with the unfounded assumption that such cards were originated from the Book of Thoth.
Esotericists utilize a 78-card tarot deck that is divided into two parts:
- 22 cards without suits make up the Major Arcana (greater mysteries), sometimes known as the trump cards:
- The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World, and The Fool are just a few of the characters mentioned. The Fool is the only card in the deck that is not numbered; it is sometimes dealt at the start of the deck as 0 or at the end as XXII. Cards from The Magician to The World are numbered in Roman numerals from I to XXI.
- 56 cards make up the Minor Arcana (lesser secrets), which is divided into four suits of 14 cards each.
- Four court cards and ten numbered cards. The King, Queen, Knight, and Page/Jack in each of the four tarot suits serve as the court cards. The four suits of the classic Italian tarot are swords, batons, coins, and cups; however, in contemporary occult tarot decks, the coins suit is frequently referred to as pentacles or disks, while the batons suit is frequently referred to as wands, rods, or staves.
The words “Major Arcana” and “Minor Arcana” are never used in relation to tarot card games, which follow a different set of rules, and were initially coined by Jean-Baptiste Pitois (also known as Paul Christian). Some decks only exist as works of art, and these decks may only include the 22 Major Arcana.
The Tarot of Marseilles, the Rider-Waite-Smith, and the Thoth tarot decks are the three most popular esoteric tarot decks.
Aleister Crowley, who together with Lady Frieda Harris created the Thoth deck, said the following about the tarot: “This deck of cards has a very hazy history. Some scholars want to date it back to the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt, while others want to move it forward to the fifteenth or possibly sixteenth century. The only notion about the Tarot that is truly intriguing is that it represents the universe admirably and symbolically, using information from the Holy Qabalah.”
In This Article...
How many different kinds of tarot cards exist?
There are normally 56 Minor Arcana cards and 22 Major Arcana cards in a tarot deck. Using a deck of cards to reveal hidden knowledge is known as cartomancy. Regular playing cards can be used for card magic, but more well-known decks include Tarot, Lenormand, Oracle, and Angel cards.
What are the names of the major tarot cards?
The Major Arcana of a tarot deck are considered to be its trump cards in esoteric rituals. In a typical 78-card pack, there are typically 22 of these cards, which are ordinarily numbered from 0 to 21.
The trumps were merely a component of a unique card deck used for gaming and gambling before the seventeenth century. The trumps may have had cultural and allegorical connotations, but they initially held little mystical or magical importance. These cards are distinguishable from the remaining cards, the suit cards, which are known by occultists as the Minor Arcana, when decks are used for card games (Tarot card games), serving as constant trumps.
The words “Major Arcana” and “Minor Arcana” was first used by Jean-Baptiste Pitois (18111877), who wrote under the pen name Paul Christian, in the occult and divinatory applications of the deck as in the Esoteric Tarot.
According to Michael Dummett, when the Major Arcana was created in the Italian courts of the 15th century, it had simple allegorical or esoteric meaning that was primarily rooted on elite ideology. With the publication of Le Monde Primitif by Swiss clergyman and Freemason Antoine Court de Gbelin in the 18th century, the occult importance started to become apparent. From then, the Major and Minor Arcana of the Tarot and their esoteric and divinatory significance were further constructed. For instance, Liphas Lvi worked to break away from the Egyptian nature of the divinatory tarot, bringing it back to the tarot de Marseilles, creating a “tortuous” kabbalistic correspondence, and even suggested that the Major Arcana represent stages of life. Court de Gbelin argued for the Egyptian, kabbalistic, and divine significance of the tarot trumps. Etteilla created a method of divination using ta The Major Arcana was created by the Marquis Stanislas de Guaita as an initiatory sequence for establishing a path of spiritual ascension and progress. Sallie Nichols, a Jungian psychologist, claimed in 1980 that the tarot had profound psychological and archetypal meaning. She even claimed that the tarot trumps included the complete Jungian individuation process.
These different interpretations of the Major Arcana evolved over time, and they all still have a big impact on how practitioners explain the cards.
What does the 22nd Tarot card mean?
One of the 78 cards in a tarot deck is The Fool. It is one of the 22 Major Arcana in tarot card reading, sometimes denoted by the numbers 0 (the first) or XXI (the last).
What do traditional tarot cards look like?
Standard Deck
- Big Arcana. The Dunce. a Devil. A star.
- Those Wands. Wands of Ace. Wands Seven. The Nine of Wands
- Those Cups. The Ace of Cups Seven of Swords. Cups number seven.
- The Blades. Swords, Ace of. Swords, five of. Swords seven. Swords, eight of. Swords, ten of.
Can I read tarot cards on my own?
It’s normal to be a little clumsy when you first start practicing the tarot. Tarot study is similar to learning a new languageit takes time to become proficient. But what happens if you no longer require the booklet and have intimate familiarity with the deck? Are you able to read yourself? No, except for a few rare instances. Simply put, it’s a horrible idea.
You see, the majority of us turn to astrology or tarot when we’re looking for clarity amid a period of ambiguity. In contrast to astrology, which is quite technical, our consciousness restricts our capacity to read tarot cards. Working with your personal interpretation of the cards, you are not constrained by short- and long-term cycles like the planets’ orbits. It might be tricky to go beyond your current circumstances while utilizing the tarot to better understand a trying scenario. Even if all the cards are spread out in front of you, putting them together requires such a broad perspective that it is all but impossible to fully understand the meaning of each card. Basically, any biases you already have will always be reflected in your tarot reading!
The purpose of oracle cards
Decks of Oracle Cards to Consider The cards, according to the author, are intended to aid in the development of your intuition, self-love, inner beauty, and emotional well-being. They can be used daily for contemplation, meditation, or in a tarot-inspired spread.
How do the 21 tarot cards translate?
The World card has multiple tarot connotations, according to A.E. Waite’s 1910 book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot:
THE WORLD, 21
Guaranteed success, payment, travel, route, emigration, flight, and relocation.
Inertia, fixity, stagnation, and permanence inverted.
The World is the culmination of one cycle of life and the interim period between that cycle and the following one, which starts with the fool. Between the heavens and the earth, the figure is masculine and female from above and below. It’s completion. The possibility for perfect oneness with the One Power of the universe is claimed to be represented by it as well as cosmic consciousness. It teaches us that in order to truly be happy, we must also give to the world by imparting what we have learned or acquired. According to Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene’s book The New Mythic Tarot (p. 82), the woman’s image, known in Greek mythology as Hermaphroditus, represents wholeness unrelated to sexual identity but rather of combined male and female energy on an inner level, integrating opposite traits that emerge in the personality charged by both energies. The opposite traits of male and female that cause us stress are united in this card, and the idea of becoming entire is portrayed as an ideal goal rather than something that can be attained.
The four creatures on the Universe card, according to Robert M. Place in his book The Tarot, symbolize the fourfold framework of the physical world, which encloses the holy center of the world, a location where the divine can incarnate. The fifth element is spirit, or the sacred center, and its name is Sophia, which means Prudence or Wisdom (the dancing woman in the middle). The fourth Cardinal virtue in the Tarot is prudence. The woman in the middle represents the aim of mystical seekers. This prominent character can be Christ in some older decks or Hermes in others. This card represents what is actually desired whenever it appears.
Do you draw many tarot cards?
If you find this daunting, Howe advises you to take a deep breath and believe in your own initiative. “In order to see it less as “This holds all of these secret meanings that I have to do all this work to access” and more as “I know all the meanings; it’s just a matter of establishing the connections and being able to articulate them,” use language or knowledge that you already possess. She points out that the four elementsearth, water, fire, and airplay a significant role in the tarot, which is advantageous because the majority of people already have an understanding of the meanings of each element. ” If you do that, your viewpoint will be more personal, and you will be able to express yourself more freely.
Howe suggests the three-card draw and the Celtic Cross as the two fundamental spreads for beginning readers. In the former, three cards are chosen at random from the deck to symbolize the subject’s mind, body, and spirit, or past, present, and future. According to Howe, you could even up the stakes and use a six-card draw, with one card for each location.
What kind of religion are tarot cards?
Tarot cards also include four suits, but they are different depending on the region: French suits are found in Northern Europe, Latin suits are found in Southern Europe, and German suits are found in Central Europe. Each suit contains 14 cards: four face cards (King, Queen, Knight, and Jack/Knave/Page) and ten pip cards, numbered from one (or Ace) to ten. In addition, the tarot features a unique 21-card trump suit and a solitary card known as the Fool; this 22-card group of cards is referred to as the Major Arcana in the world of divination. The Fool may serve as the top trump or alternatively may be played to avoid doing so, depending on the game. In parts of Europe, these tarot cards are still used to play traditional card games without any occult connotations.
Tarot cards are mostly employed for amusement and divination in English-speaking nations where these activities are less popular, typically with the aid of specially created packs. Although academic research has shown that tarot cards were partially invented in northern Italy in the 15th century (16 of the modern 22 Major Arcana cards) and combined with a deck of four suits, “the Mamluk deck,” some people who use tarot for cartomancy believe the cards have esoteric links to ancient Egypt, Iran, the Kabbalah, Indian Tantra, or the I Ching. The Mamluk deck of cards was created in or before the 14th century and arrived in Western Europe after paper was produced in Asia (see Playing Card – Egypt and following sections). By the end of the thirteenth century, Europeans were making the Mamluk deck with customized “court cards” and suit symbols.
Although some people think that tarot cards were not used for divination until the late 18th century, there is evidence of an early tarot deck that was “used in divination to determine the querent’s prospects in love” (Fernando de la Torre’s “Juego de Naypes” deck of Spain, 1450), each card having an image and verse.
What is the Tarot card number 11?
In A. E. Waite’s 1910 book Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the Justice card is associated with the following divinatory concepts:
ELEVEN. JUSTICE
Equity, rightness, probity, and governmental authority; the legal victory of the deserving side. Reversed: Law in all of its facets, complex legal issues, prejudice, discrimination, and overly harsh punishment.
The planet Venus and the zodiac sign Libra are related to the justice card in astrology.
