Tarot cards

Tarot (tah-roh) is a cartomancy system used for divination. It consists of 78 cards divided into two groups. The major arcana is 22 cards that represent a journey, starting at the Fool and ending at the World. The minor arcana is 56 cards of four suits, each having 14 cards. The suits are traditionally called wands, swords, pentacles, and cups. Each suit has an Ace, numbers 2 to 10, a page, a knight, a queen, and a king.

The major arcana tends to deal with big, major life events and issues whereas the minor arcana tends to deal with more day to day things.

Each card in the tarot has a traditional meaning that goes along with it. Some diviners prefer to stick to the traditional meanings, others prefer to just go with their intuition, and still others prefer to do a bit of both.

Most tarot decks can be read in an upright or reversed (rx) position which effectively gives you double the number of meanings. For example, Death means sudden and drastic change when it is upright, but rx it means stagnation.

Some tarot decks are designed to be read in the upright position only, the guidebook with the cards will usually tell you if this is the case.

Tarot is often read with each card in a specific context or category in a spread. For example a common spread is past, present, and future. In this spread the first card represents the past aspects of the situation you are reading about, the middle card represents what is going on right now, and the last card represents what is likely to happen. Another example would be situation, action, outcome. The first card represents what is going on right now, the middle card represents what you should or could do in relation to that situation, and the last card represents the likely outcome should you follow the advice of the middle card.

Of course, you don’t have to use a specific spread to read the tarot, you can just let your intuition tell you how many cards to pull. Doing this means you’ll have to figure out the meanings without the context of their position in a spread, but it’s certainly doable.

You can use the tarot to read on anything and everything. You can use it for yourself, for others. You can use it for purely spiritual matters or mundane daily life things, it’s entirely up to you.