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.