About the Tarot Deck

Now to the meat of the matter, the Tarot deck itself. Remember, you don’t have to memorize the whole thing, just let your subconscious mind embrace it. Your readings will come from there.

As previously mentioned, the Tarot deck consists of seventy eight cards. These seventy eight cards are divided into two distinct parts, or houses, that are referred to as the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. The word “arcana” itself basically means “secrets”, so we have a collection of major and minor secrets. Sounds mystical, doesn’t it?

The Major Arcana of the Tarot contains twenty two cards. Each of these cards is numbered from zero to twenty one, and represents people or ideas like “The Magician”, “The High Priestess”, “The Moon”, “Judgment”, etc. These are sometimes referred to as the “trump” cards, and are considered to be the cards in the deck that speak of the most important issues.

It should be noted that from deck to deck, while concepts of the Major Arcana will remain relatively the same, the order of some of the cards may differ. The first card in the Major Arcana, card zero, is typically The Fool, but in some decks this card is placed at the end and numbered twenty two. Likewise, the position of the two cards Strength and Justice, typically card numbers eight and eleven respectively, are reversed in some decks. Be aware of these differences but do not pay too much attention to them as again, there is no right or wrong here.

The Minor Arcana consists of the other fifty six cards in the deck, and are the cards that most closely resemble the normal decks of playing cards that everyone is familiar with. The Minor Arcana cards are divided into four suits in the same manner as regular playing cards, although the names of the suits of the Tarot are not the same as those of playing cards. We will cover this in detail in the next section.

The cards within each suit are numbered one through ten (ace through ten), and then include the court cards as do playing card decks. The difference here being that the court of the Minor Arcana of the Tarot includes four cards for each suit rather than the three found in playing card decks. In a deck of playing cards you find a Jack, Queen and King; whereas in the court of a Tarot deck you find first a Knave (or Page), then a Knight (Jack), then the Queen and King. The Knave represents a younger version of the Knight, perhaps an apprentice. You will see how they fit in as you work through your own deck.