Need a guide to the cards in a nutshell? Here we go! Tarot decks are comprised of the Minor Arcana and the Major Arcana.

Minor Arcana

In divination, the Minor Arcana cover day-to-day life, minor life events, and the details that guide our actions.

There are four suits:

• Cups (emotion, intuition, connection)
• Swords (intellect, learning, conflict)
• Wands/Staves (passion, creativity, vocation/avocation)
• Coins/Pentacles (material goods, health, security)

Each suit has an ace through ten, and face cards (like normal playing cards).

• Aces are beginnings, possibilities, the raw energy of a new project
• Twos are balance and duality
• Threes are groups and the expression of an ideal
• Fours are foundational concepts and manifestation
• Fives are conflict, instability, and challenges
• Sixes are harmony and alignment
• Sevens are introspection and desires
• Eights are action, mastery, and rebirth
• Nines are anticipation (the good kind) and abundance
• Tens are renewal and completion, happy beginnings and endings
• Pages are the seeds of something new, hopefulness (Earth energy)
• Knights are action and opinion, forward motion (Air energy)
• Queens are passionate and nurturing (Water energy)
• Kings are structured and controlling (Fire energy)

Interestingly, the face cards can be read as specific people in your life, not just themes or ideas. I struggle with this, personally, because I can’t see any person as embodying one concept. Not because I’m enlightened or some silliness, but because I second-guess everything and everyone.

Major Arcana

These are the heavy hitters, representing large shifts in thinking, life changes, transitions, and major events. The Universe might tap you on the shoulder with Minor Arcana. But eventually, you’re gonna get the 2×4 of a Major Arcana card. And then it’s time to step back and take a look at the bigger picture.

• The Fool is new beginnings, innocence, and taking a leap of faith
• The Magician is resourcefulness and turning ideas into reality
• The High Priestess is intuition, hidden knowledge, and divine wisdom you might not yet understand
• The Empress is abundance, fertility, and a nurturing nature
• The Emperor is authority, structure, stability, and a need for control
• The Hierophant is tradition and conformity (for good and ill)
• The Lovers is a difficult choice
• The Chariot is willpower, overcoming obstacles, and being on the path to success
• Strength is courage, inner power, and compassion
• The Hermit is introspection in solitude
• The Wheel of Fortune is good luck, destiny, and a reminder of the cyclical nature of life
• Justice is fairness, truth, and consequences
• The Hanged Man is gaining new perspectives by letting go and being vulnerable
• Death is a transformation or transition, aka rebirth and change
• Temperance is finding balance and moderation
• The Devil is your attachment to harmful things, overindulgence, and self-imposed restriction
• The Tower is a sudden upheaval, chaos, or a foundational shift
• The Star is renewed hope, faith, and rejuvenation
• The Moon is illusion, fear, the darkness that can consume our rational selves, but also the subconscious necessary to gestate ideas
• The Sun is joy, vitality, and positivity, especially in human community
• Judgement is reflecting on your life, or an awakening/reckoning to something you need to address
• The World is completion, accomplishment, the end to a project or phase of life

In my youth, I struggled with the fact that this wasn’t a simple “journey from dark to light/struggle to success,” but now I see it for the allegory it is (more on that in a future post).

I’d love to dive into each card separately in its own post. But I’m a bit of a chaos goblin, so I don’t want to do it in numerical order. Let me know in the survey below which cards you’d like to learn more about next!