Glossary 20 terms

Tarot

  1. Major Arcana The Major Arcana are the 22 master cards of the tarot, numbered from The Fool (0) to The World (21), also called trumps. Each one embodies a great archetypal figure, and…
  2. Minor Arcana The Minor Arcana are the 56 tarot cards divided into four suits: Cups, Swords, Wands and Pentacles. Each suit runs from Ace to Ten and is completed by four court cards (Page,…
  3. Cups (tarot) Cups are one of the four suits of the tarot’s Minor Arcana, tied to the element Water. They speak of the heart: emotions, bonds, love, intuition. In a reading, a majority of…
  4. Swords (tarot) Swords are one of the four suits of the tarot’s Minor Arcana, tied to the element Air. They speak of the mind: thought, ideas, speech, but also conflict, choices and the search…
  5. Wands (tarot) Wands are one of the four suits of the tarot’s Minor Arcana, tied to the element Fire. They speak of momentum: energy, action, creativity, desire, projects that are getting…
  6. Pentacles (tarot) Pentacles are one of the four suits of the tarot’s Minor Arcana, tied to the element Earth. They are also called Coins or Deniers. They speak of the concrete: work, the body,…
  7. Reversed card A reversed card is one drawn upside down, its image appearing inverted to the reader. Far from being bad news, it brings a nuance: a softened or delayed meaning, a turn inward,…
  8. Marseille Tarot The Marseille Tarot is the classic 78-card deck, descended from patterns printed in Europe from the 17th and 18th centuries onward. It gathers 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor…
  9. Cross spread (five cards) The cross spread, or five-card cross, is the most common tarot reading method in the French tradition. Five cards form a cross: on the left the favorable forces, on the right…
  10. Asking the tarot a question A tarot question is the way a query is framed for the cards before a reading. Tradition favors open questions (what is at play in this relationship, how to approach this…
  11. Court cards The court cards are the sixteen character cards of the tarot’s Minor Arcana: Page, Knight, Queen and King in each of the four suits. They can stand for people around you,…
  12. Rider-Waite-Smith The Rider-Waite-Smith is the tarot deck conceived by A.E. Waite, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith and published in London by the Rider company in 1909. Its great innovation: the 56…
  13. The Fool’s journey The Fool’s journey is a symbolic reading of the 22 Major Arcana as a path of initiation: from The Magician (I), the young energy that already holds every tool, to The World…
  14. Tarot and psychology Tarot and psychology meet around the notion of the archetype developed by Carl Gustav Jung: the figures of the tarot are seen as embodying universal patterns of the psyche (the…
  15. Celtic Cross The Celtic Cross is the most widespread tarot spread in the English-speaking world, popularized by A.E. Waite in 1911. It lays out ten cards in fixed positions: 1 the…
  16. Tarot numerology Tarot numerology reads a card’s number as a stage in a cycle from one to ten. The classic pattern: 1 (Ace) the seed and potential, 2 balance and choice, 3 creation and growth,…
  17. Tarot and astrology Tarot and astrology meet through a system of correspondences fixed by the Golden Dawn esoteric society around 1888. Each Major Arcanum receives a planet, sign or element: The…
  18. Three-card spread The three-card spread is the tarot’s most-used short reading: three cards in a row, each holding a position decided in advance. The best-known frame is past, present, future,…
  19. Reversed meaning The reversed meaning is the sense given to a card drawn upside down. Rather than a flat negative, tradition offers several frames: blocked or repressed energy, a softened or…
  20. Ace (tarot) An Ace is the first numbered card of each of the four Minor Arcana suits, four Aces in a 78-card deck. It carries the number 1: the pure seed of its element, potential not yet…