Tarot Cards
The tarot deck consists of 78 cards divided into two sections, Major and Minor Arcana. The majority of either Arcana in a spread determines the seriousness or depth of the reading.
Major Arcana
Major Arcana: 22 cards that deal with the major issues that need the most or immediate attention. This Arcana consists of cards numbered 0 through 21. Major Arcana cards are also known as Keys or Pip cards. The actual names and/or elements represented by this Arcana may vary depending on the deck you are using. This is by no means an all inclusive list, nor are the descriptions the only meaning to the cards; however, in most decks, there are:
The Fool: Key 0. Contrary to the actual definition, the Fool usually represents innocence and simplicity.
The Magician: Key 1. The Magician represents the ability to make something of nothing through sheer will power and determination.
The High Priestess: Key 2. Usually represents intuition, inspiration, feminine mysteries, and secrecy.
The Empress: Key 3. Think Mother Earth in that she represents the lifecycle, fertility, good luck and success.
The Emperor: Key 4. Represents order and authority figures (i.e.: police, fathers, bosses, etc), logic and reasoning.
The Hierophant: Key 5. Tradition, organizations (i.e.: family, corporations, religion, etc) and education
The Lovers: Key 6. Choices, relationships, love life and duality, this card represents changes in close personal relationships.
The Chariot: Key 7. Youthful energy, power, ambition, and determination; success through self-discipline and will power.
Strength: Key 8. Trust in one’s own abilities and strength from within. Harmony between opposing forces and internal power.
Hermit: Key 9. As the definition suggests, the Hermit represents solidarity and self containment while seeking wisdom of the higher self.
Wheel of Fortune: Key 10. You don’t have to stay locked in place, your connection to luck and destiny is revealed through this card.
Justice: Key 11. This card reminds us that life is a two way street; represents choice, karmic justice, and impartial compromise.
The Hanged Man: Key 12. Life in suspension, postponed plans, frustration, and the need to look at things from another perspective.
Death: Key 13. Transformation, transition and permanent change. Consider it a card that represents sweeping away the old so you can experience something new.
Temperance: Key 14. Represents the need to balance your conscious and subconscious through figuring out what balance is right for you.
The Devil: Key 15. Temptation, misdirection, taking the path of least resistance instead of what’s right.
The Tower: Key 16. This card represents imprisonment and the inability to break free of destructive patterns.
The Star: Key 17. Wanting to experience your highest potential and you achieve balance through order and peace.
The Moon: Key 18. Connects to mystery, intuition, seduction, and fear of the unknown. Also represents sabotage and deception.
The Sun: Key 19. Success, achievement, creativity. The card itself is a sign of cleansing and purification. However, it can also represent arrogance and egotism.
Judgment: Key 20. Signals the integration of the higher self with every day knowledge, knowledge, and contentment.
The World: Key 21. Deep understanding, finishing a journey, availability and the realization of the inner self’s ability to radiate and affect the world around you.
Minor Arcana
Minor Arcana: 56 cards that deal with everyday things, but not issues as important as those the Major Arcana represents. This Minor Arcana consists of four suits: Cups, Swords, Pentacles and Wands. Like the Major Arcana, these may differ from deck to deck; however, the majority of decks use those listed. Each suit contains ten numbered cards like those of a regular deck of playing cards. There is also a Page, Knight, Queen and King for each suit; these are referred to as the Court Cards.
Representing the Element of Water, the Cups deal with emotions, including anything that completes of fills a person in an emotional state.
The Element of Air is represented by the double-edged sword. This suit deals with communications, reasoning, thinking and health.
The five-pointed star represents the Earth Element. The suit of Pentacles deals with money and/or anything that can be bought or sold. There are five ways of receiving or making money:
1. gifts, legacies, inheritances, winnings
2. marriage, marrying into money
3. prostitution, selling your ideas, selling yourself in anyway
4. illegal ways, stealing, cheating, counterfeit
5. working, the hard everyday life, earning money through labor
This two sided suit represents the Element of Fire through the wand. Answers to hierarchy and sex are found here; however, answers to sexual relationships are usually only in the court cards (Page, Knight, Queen and/or King).
Female suits include Pentacles and Cups and represent the subconscious mind passivity and receptive energy. Male suits include Swords and Wands and represent Conscious Mind, aggressiveness and assertive energy.
You will find that if you put two aggressive people together you'll always have a fight. Where you find two passive people, you find that nothing gets done; they each wait for the other to do it. It takes passive and aggressive together to obtain balance and to get things done. The court cards show the attitudes of the querent, the maturity of the person, and what the person is like on the inside. The Kings and Queens are mature, they are finishers. The Knights and Pages are immature, but the Knights are starters; the Pages need others to care for them.
When working with the Court Cards, pay attention to the direction the card is looking. The direction a person faces will tell you what the card is looking at. If the person on the card is looking to the left, they are looking back at what was or is looking away and doesn't want to deal with the present or future. If the person in the card is looking at you then they are dealing with issues in the present, here and now. If the card is looking to the right, they are looking to the future.
If you have two people in the cards facing each other, something is going on between them; however, if they are looking away from each other then they don't want anything to do with each other. If two people are in the cards where one is looking at the other, but the other is not looking back, that means one is not paying attention to the other for some reason or that the one looking is trying to communicate, but the other is not wanting to deal with it at that time.
Remember that only the Court Cards are the actual people cards. The Court Cards show the querent, actual people or the people they are or will be dealing with. Keep in mind that the people you see throughout the deck are only sides of a person, such as their passive or aggressive side showing, their childish side, or what they are creating.
Care and Cleaning of Your Cards
It is recommended to cleanse your cards and have a proper way to store them immediately after they are given to you or they are purchased (like any magical object or tool, Tarot cards work best if they are made or a gift).
When you shuffle the deck, the Element of Air refreshes your deck. However, there are times when the deck itself becomes too laden with other people’s energy, or when a negative force has influenced the deck.
You can hold you cards in the smoke of burning sage to wisp the negativity into the atmosphere, asking the god and goddess to disburse it as they see fit. You can also take each card, one by one, and place it in between your hands and project positive thoughts and mentally reprogram them for use again.
You can also use the clarifying powers of stones to keep you cards clean Simply store one or two crystals in the bag or box with the cards after each reading. Of course, the stones will need to be smudged to cleanse them as well (the amount of readings you do will determine the cleaning ritual schedule).
Cards are best kept in a silk or cotton cloth bag or wooden box (elements of Earth) to keep the cards “grounded.” Make sure that you choose a way to hold your cards that pleases you and creates “white” energy for you, as this will help keep your readings positive.
Please do not use your cards for a reading immediately after someone else has held them! When a person touches a Tarot deck, a portion of their energy stays with the deck. Cards should be cleansed after each reading and after someone other than you touches them. Someone with negative energy or wishing for answers could throw off your reading
The movies portray gypsies reading cards on elaborate tablecloths surrounded by crystal balls and tapestry curtains. You do not need to follow this stereotype unless it suits you. Create a space where you are comfortable and feel good. Again, positive energy from you will create a positive connection between you and the cards. Add personal touches to transform whatever space you use into something that resembles you.
Some readers use tools to assist them in their readings. For example, amethyst quartz can be used to strengthen your communication, and clear crystals can represent clarity.
You may also wish to cast a circle around your space by using salt to contain your thoughts to your reading or possible intrusive “vibes.” I highly recommend cleansing the space before you do your first reading to remove any lingering negativity. The easiest way to do this is to place white tea light candles in every corner of the room. (White is purifying, and the light will chase away the darkness in the corners to remove any chance of a dark space for the negativity to hide in.)
Begin Your Reading
It is not advised for you to do your own readings. It is easy for a person to misinterpret the card meanings to get the information they want rather than what has been presented. However, if you do a reading for yourself, keep detailed records of everything you see, think or feel min regards to the reading. Writing it down is best as it allows you to return to the reading at a different time and re-examine your conclusions when you are in a different state of mind. This will also help you see patterns in your readings.
The first and most important part of reading the cards is to remember you’re using your intuition to read the cards, not the person you’re reading for – otherwise known as the querent. If the person is asking questions, don’t let them determine the interpretation of the card. The cards may signify people who may be an influence on the person, but they will never signify the sex, race, or age of the querent.
There are no set directions to assist you in shuffling. However, you need to leave the cards to play themselves naturally. This requires leaving some to be inverted, or reversed. If you are reading for someone, have them cut the cards to put a touch of their energy into them.
If a card falls or “leaps” out of the deck during the shuffle, read it as a single card. There is always a reason for a card to feel it is important enough to be noticed.
They way you “deal” Tarot cards can affect the reading. The cards should be pulled from the deck - either by flipping them or by turning them over – in a consistent manner. It does not matter which way you choose, just do what feels right and remember to keep pulling them the same way throughout the reading.
The layout – or spread – can vary depending on the reason for the reading. Whatever layout you choose, make sure you have enough room available for all cards necessary. While a simple reading only requires one card, a double horoscope spread uses 24.
Please remember that nothing is good or bad in Tarot, there are only positive and negative readings. For example, the Death card – Key 13 of the Major Arcana and the card most people fear in a reading – means a transformation or rebirth, and the Devil card- Key 15 and a truly devilish looking card in most decks – signifies fear, temptation and misdirection, not evil incarnate.
The first card in the reading will usually determine the set of the reading… in other words, if you pull a Death card, the entire reading will most likely be about a significant change. However, if the Fool is your first card you should not continue the reading. It indicates that the reading you’re about to do will not benefit anyone. It could mean the person is concentrating on something else or that the reading is being done at the wrong time for that the person to get a useful answer.
Just as the first card tailors the reading, the last card will determine the outcome. This card will guide the querent in what steps are necessary to reach the result of the reading. It will also indicate if the person will actually listen to the cards and their directives, or if they don’t really mean to follow the reading.
If there is a negative card presented in the reading, it will most likely have a positive card to offset or create balance in the reading.
A card appearing upside down is said to be “reversed.” This will not only create balance in your spread, it will also create another balance in the card. Each card has a positive and negative meaning; however one is usually more dominant than the other. Inverted cards have another balance or alternative meaning – usually the opposite - meaning to the card in the upright position. Each card represents a color, symbol, position in the layout, and each number on the card also affects the meaning of the card, so each card has a plethora of meanings attached to it.
All the Minor Arcana cards have numbers (except the Court cards- Paige, Knight, Queen and King). The number indicated on the card will reflect the influence of the card. By totaling up the numbers in each area of the reading or the entire spread, you determine the Major Arcana equivalent and therefore the direction the person needs to go in order to achieve the purpose of the reading. Since there are 22 Major Arcana cards, your total number needs to be 22 or less. (Example: 5 of Pentacles, Death – or Key 13 - and 10 of Wands would total 28 (5 + 13 + 10). Since this number is over 22, you’ll need to break it down further- 2 + 8 = 10 or the Wheel of Fortune card.
All cards, except the court cards, of the Tarot are numbered and have a major influence in a reading. Study the cards with the same numbers together, notice the energies and what is most positive and most negative with each, how they compliment each other, etc.
When you do a reading for someone sitting right in front of you, deal the cards so they face you, not your querent.
• The cards that come out facing upright have the original meaning to the card.
• The cards that are upside down are reversed and usually the opposite of the upright meaning.
• In spreads containing cards placed on their side, the left side (your left side) is the past and represents passive, receptive, female, and the subconscious.
• The right side of a card is the future and is considered aggressive, assertive, male, and the conscious.
• In spreads where the cards are crossed at the middle, the center of the card represents the present and balance of the past and future.
• You can do readings on anything- people, places, animals, etc. Everything is fair game; however, if you read for kids, you need to have the consent of a parent or guardian try to get yourself in the mind state of the same age as the child you’re reading for so they can understand what you are trying to read to them.
Each spread has its own meaning, its own way of answering the question brought before it. The position of the cards in the spread, as well as the symbols represented by the card, speak to our subconscious. They tell us a story to assist in the reading