The Tarot Deck - Part 1 - Overview

The 22 Trump cards in a Tarot deck are called the Major Arcana.

The card numbered 0 is called the Fool... and it is his journey of self-discovery that is described in the remaining 21 cards of the Major Arcana. The Fool is you or me... setting out on life's great adventure. Some see the Fool as an empty vessel... a tabula rasa... others see him as a fully-loaded set of templates waiting to be populated by personal experieces on his journey to 'self-actualisation', 'individuation' or 'self discovery' ...

The remaining 56 cards in the Tarot deck are called the Minor Arcana and they fall into 4 suits which correspond to our modern day playing card suits. The Tarot suits and their corresponding modern day suits and elements are as follows:

Denari or Pentacles = Diamonds = Earth

Bastone or Wands   = Clubs = Fire

Coppe or Cups = Hearts = Water

Spade or Swords = Spades = Air

The Minor Arcana might look unfamiliar to some audiences, but similar cards are still used in many parts of Europe as playing cards. The only real difference is that most Tarot decks will have 10 'Pip' cards and 4 'Court' cards per Minor Arcana suit (although some Tarot decks can have up to 6 'Court' cards); whereas the normal playing card decks will only have 3 'Court' cards - Jack, Queen and King.

The Minor Arcana is used in divination and fortune-telling as well as the Jungian approaches to Tarot. However, for the moment, I shall only be dealing with the Major Arcana in this blog.

If you need more information on the use of the Minor Arcana in Jungian Tarot then I would refer you to the excellent Jungian Tarot trilogy by Robert Wang (available on Amazon).