What is tarot, really?
Purpose
There are many misconceptions about tarot, due to a surprising amount of ignorance surrounding its origin and usage. It is often stereotyped as a tool used strictly for fortune-telling, and mislabeled as an occult device used to contact spirits or play hide-and-seek with the Christian devil. As is always the case, people will believe what they will–but when you get right down to it, tarot is a collection of 78 plastic-coated cardboard scraps decorated with ink–not much different from your average deck of playing cards (from which the system evolved), and with a multitude of uses often detached entirely from religious or spiritual practices.
To get a better idea of some of the common uses of tarot, read this short article: Tarot Usage
History
Tarot is thought to have been invented in 15th Century Italy, modeled after traditional Italian playing cards with an extra “suit” of 22 cards called “trumps” which were archetypal, representing vices, virtues, and religious figures. Tarot (Tarocchi, in Italian, or Tarock in German) was originally a complicated card game similar to Spades or Bridge. Since its conception, it took centuries for tarot to evolve into what we know today (for those of us who do).
I won’t get into the details here, because there are a lot; but I highly suggest reading this fascinating breakdown of tarot history: Tarot History
Cards
A traditional modern tarot deck consists of 56 ‘Minor Arcana’ cards divided into four suits (similar to typical 52-card poker decks) and 22 ‘Major Arcana’ (trump) cards–’arcana’ being the plural of the Latin word ‘arcanum,’ which means ‘profound secret’ or ‘mystery.’ The names for the minor arcana suits can vary, but typically maintain similarities between decks and correspond to the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water). Traditionally, the suits are: cups (chalices), wands (rods, staves, batons), swords, and pentacles (coins, disks, bolers), each consisting of a typical Ace-Ten set (sometimes called ‘pip’ cards, and four ‘court’ cards (like face cards). The most common suit correspondences to the elements and to typical playing cards are as follows:
Cups – Water – Hearts (Emotions, relationships, family, spirituality)
Wands – Fire – Clubs (Spirit, creativity, work, ambition, sexuality)
Swords – Air – Spades (Mind, intellect, conflict, study, legal matters)
Pentacles – Earth – Diamonds (Body, health, money, property, material things)
As you can see, each suit channels a different kind of energy. Some decks prefer different associations, the most common switch being between Wands and Swords (Wands being associated with Air, Swords being associated with Fire). The court cards usually represent people, and are typically labeled as follows, ranking low to high: Page (Knave, Princess), Knight (Prince), Queen, King. Pages are typically representative of young children, Knights teenagers or young adults, and Queens and Kings adults. Court cards can also channel the energy of a suit in terms of outside forces or personality traits within oneself, wherein the stage of said energy’s development usually increases with age (for example, if one were to read a Page of Cups as a personality trait, it could be described as someone who is inexperienced in love or emotionally immature.
The 22 Major Arcana are perhaps the most ‘important’ cards of the deck, and are usually given more weight in a reading. Whereas the Minor Arcana usually represent day-to-day life and activities, the Major Arcana or trump cards represent ‘larger-than-life’ rulers, religious figures, events and issues. The cards are traditionally titled as follows:
0 – Fool
1 – Magician
2 – High Priestess (Popess)
3 – Empress
4 – Emperor
5 – Hierophant (High Priest/Pope)
6 – Lovers
7 – Chariot
8 – Strength (sometimes Justice)
9 – Hermit
10 – Wheel of Fortune
11 – Justice (sometimes Strength)
12 – Hanged Man
13 – Death
14 – Temperence
15 – Devil
16 – Tower
17 – Star
18 – Moon
19 – Sun
20 – Judgment
21 – World
As you can see, the names of the major arcana can vary as well, as well as the position of Strength and Justice–which will not cause problems with energy associations like the switching of the Wands and Swords suits, but can cause issues for people who study the cards based on numerology.
To learn more about the individual cards and their meanings, see here: Tarot Cards
Decks
There are three basic models after which most modern tarot decks are designed (based on style and symbolism): Marseilles decks (utilizing primary colors and unillustrated pip cards); Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) decks (with illustrated pips/minors; the most popular model for most tarot decks today); and Crowley-Thoth decks (lying somewhere in between, and in a class of their own).
There are decks that are ‘clones’ of these patterns. There are decks that are historical reproductions. There are decks based on cities and religions and animals. There are decks based on famous artists and poets and other historical greats, decks based on comics and animé series, decks based on food and puppets and science. Some people collect decks just to collect them, and don’t ever read them at all.
I do both. Take a look at what the world offers. I did, and I never came back.
