Symbols · Tarot
Tarot, read with care.
The Marseille deck, read as a mirror rather than a verdict. Each card placed in its cultural history, not dressed up as fate.
The pieces
To read in this practice
Series
The Belline Oracle: history, the structure of its 53 cards, and how to read it The Belline Oracle explained: its history (Mage Edmond, Belline, Grimaud, 1961), the 53 cards across seven planetary suits, and how to read it as a mirror. Open the series →Series
The Love Tarot Spread: Read the Bond, Not the Future How to read a 3-card love tarot spread (you, the other, the bond), the single and couple variations, and why a reading shows a present state, never a verdict. Open the series →Series
Oracle cards: what they are, and how they differ from tarot What is an oracle deck? A free-structure deck with none of tarot’s 78 fixed arcana. How oracles differ from tarot, the best-known decks, and how to choose one. Open the series →Series
Yes or No Tarot: How to Pull a Single Card, and Read It Honestly The yes-no tarot reading explained: pull one card for a closed question, spot what leans toward yes or no, and read the answer as a tendency, never a verdict. Open the series →Series · 7 reads
Tarot explained: 78 cards, history, and reading as a mirror The 78 tarot cards explained: Major and Minor Arcana, Marseille or Rider-Waite-Smith, plus how to read a spread as a mirror of your present, not a verdict. Open the series →- How to Choose a Tarot Deck to Start: Marseille, Rider-Waite or Oracle
- Tarot and Astrology: The Golden Dawn Correspondence Map
- The 22 Major Arcana: tarot’s great story
- The 56 Minor Arcana: the everyday life of tarot
- The card of the day: a small daily tarot ritual
- The cross spread: the 5-card method of the Tarot de Marseille
The vocabulary
Words worth knowing
- 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.
- Minor Arcana The Minor Arcana are the 56 tarot cards divided into four suits: Cups, Swords, Wands and Pentacles.
- Cups (tarot) Cups are one of the four suits of the tarot’s Minor Arcana, tied to the element Water.
- Swords (tarot) Swords are one of the four suits of the tarot’s Minor Arcana, tied to the element Air.
- Wands (tarot) Wands are one of the four suits of the tarot’s Minor Arcana, tied to the element Fire.
- Pentacles (tarot) Pentacles are one of the four suits of the tarot’s Minor Arcana, tied to the element Earth.
- Reversed card A reversed card is one drawn upside down, its image appearing inverted to the reader.
- Marseille Tarot The Marseille Tarot is the classic 78-card deck, descended from patterns printed in Europe from the 17th and 18th centuries onward.
- Cross spread (five cards) The cross spread, or five-card cross, is the most common tarot reading method in the French tradition.
- Asking the tarot a question A tarot question is the way a query is framed for the cards before a reading.
- 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.
- Rider-Waite-Smith The Rider-Waite-Smith is the tarot deck conceived by A.E.
- 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 (XXI), the figure of fulfillment, with The Fool wandering freely through each stage.
- 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 Mother, the Sage, the Shadow).
- Celtic Cross The Celtic Cross is the most widespread tarot spread in the English-speaking world, popularized by A.E.
- Tarot numerology Tarot numerology reads a card’s number as a stage in a cycle from one to ten.
- Tarot and astrology Tarot and astrology meet through a system of correspondences fixed by the Golden Dawn esoteric society around 1888.
- 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.
- Reversed meaning The reversed meaning is the sense given to a card drawn upside down.
- Ace (tarot) An Ace is the first numbered card of each of the four Minor Arcana suits, four Aces in a 78-card deck.
Explore further
Every card, one by one
The questions people ask
Short answers, straight to the point.
- Can the tarot be wrong?
- A reading is neither true nor false: it's either fertile or barren. If a spread doesn't speak to you, it hasn't lied to you; it has handed you an image that found nothing to reflect that day. The card opens a question, and you're the one holding the answer. Read tarot as a mirror →
- What's the difference between the Major and Minor Arcana?
- The 22 Major Arcana tell the great thresholds: the Lovers, Death, the Star, the figures that cross a whole life. The 56 Minor Arcana handle the everyday: the moods, the gestures, the small battles, split into four elemental suits. In a spread, the two registers answer each other like the plot and the scenes of a single story. Browse the 22 Major Arcana →
- How do you learn to read the cards as a beginner?
- Start with a single card in the morning, before the day sweeps you up. You look at it, you name what it stirs in you, you let it settle: that's the daily card ritual, and it teaches more than ten manuals. The big spreads will come once all 78 faces feel familiar. Take up the daily card →
- Does your first tarot deck have to be a gift?
- It's a stubborn myth, and no old tradition requires it: the cardmakers of Marseille sold their decks to anyone who wanted one. Choosing your own deck, holding it, letting it catch your eye, that's already the beginning of the relationship. If someone gifts you one, lovely; if not, go pick it out yourself.
- Which tarot deck should you start with?
- Two schools dominate: the Tarot de Marseille, graphic and old, and the Rider-Waite-Smith, whose every minor card is illustrated with a scene, which helps enormously at the start. The right deck is the one whose images hold you. Look at a few before you decide.