The Tarot Basics…
Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva
The very basics…
Traditionally tarot is 78 cards full of illustrations, symbolism, numbers, archetypes and human experiences. A traditional tarot deck has 22 Major Arcana cards (0-21) with names like The Fool, Death, The Moon and The Devil, just to name some of the more famous cards.
The Major Arcana cards often represent life changing lessons, all or nothing messages and are the “trump cards” of the tarot.
The Minor Arcana system is pretty much like a playing card deck. It consists of our suits, Cups, Pentacles, Swords and Wands with numbers Ace to 10 and 4 court cards for each suit. Page, Knight, Queen and King, these cards often represents you, an aspect of your personality or a person close to you (Note: The court cards is a whole study in itself, let’s save that for a future blog post) The four suits represent the four universal elements, Water (Cups), Earth (Pentacles), Air (Swords) and Fire (Wands). The traditional meaning of each individual card is basically determined by the imagery, the number and the element. The Minor Arcana cards often carry messages that are more day-to-day and passing issues/situations than the Major Arcana.
Each card in the deck has a common traditional meaning and then the tarot reader adds on their intuitive interpretation. The tarot reader shuffles the cards and draws cards for the seekers' questions and then the interpretation and storytelling begins…
The personal touch…
Some tarot readers like to cleanse the space before a reading with eg. sage or palo santo, meditate, include runes, special candles or do other rituals before getting out the cards. There is no rule book and each person can do whatever feels right for them in their tarot practise.
Personally I do not make a big ritual out of a tarot reading. However I find it helpful to be in peaceful surroundings, (and a bit of white sage or Palo Santo burning never hurt anyone…) But basically being calm and collected. Read more about me and my reading style HERE.
Worth noting for the tarot novice reader, this is only the very basics. This basic info is based on the classic Rider-Waite-Smith cards that most modern decks lean on. The reality is that tarot decks out there today are full of additional cards, different imagery, alternative meanings and names, endless possibilities of themes, guidebooks etc. Pretty nerdy really and pretty awesome if you ask me.
