Tarot
Tarot began in 15th-century Italy as an ordinary card game called tarocchi. It was only in the 1700s that French occultists recast the cards as a tool for divination, and the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909 gave us the imagery most readers use today.
Below are the 22 Major Arcana cards with their traditional meanings, the zodiac sign or planet each is linked with, and a card drawn for today.
The 22 Major Arcana
Tap any card to see its upright and reversed meaning.
Card illustrations: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite-Smith deck, 1909 (public domain).
Upright
Reversed
How a tarot deck works
The big life themes, from The Fool to The World. Many readers see them as a story of one journey from beginning to completion.
Cups (feelings), Pentacles (money and the material), Swords (thoughts and conflict) and Wands (energy and ambition), each running Ace to Ten plus four court cards.
A reader shuffles, lays cards in a spread such as past, present and future, and interprets each card by its position and whether it lands upright or reversed.
Does the Death card mean death?
Almost never. In traditional readings Death stands for an ending or transformation, closing one chapter so another can begin. Horror films made it famous for the wrong reasons. Like the rest of tarot, there is no scientific evidence that it predicts events; most people use it as a prompt for reflection.
Astrology, Chaldean numerology, angel numbers and crystals, with the history behind each tradition and what the research actually says.
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