Tarot deck how many cards

Depending what cards are around a certain card, it will influence the meaning. I do readings in my apartment, which is great because I can control the environment.

Find a Way to Start a Reading That Feels Right for You Traditional tarot books or readers might advocate for a lengthy or ritual process of beginning a reading.

Howe says the most important element is to just do what feels right for you. You have to just figure out whatever it is that will make the reading flow the easiest. Change is really positive. I drew the Grim Reaper in this jungle atmosphere with all these plants and life and butterflies that symbolize change and transformation. See, not spooky at all. What do I need to read tarot cards?

The most popular and well-known deck is the Rider-Waite , drawn by illustrator Pamela Colman Smith and published in These cards are known for their simple imagery, their simple color scheme featuring lots of yellow, sky blue, and gray , and their symbolism. The Wild Unknown deck is particularly pretty, though — fair warning — a bit less intuitive for newcomers.

The Morgan Greer deck is a bit like the Rider-Waite on steroids: The symbols are similar, but the faces are bigger and bolder and the colors more vivid and varied. There are modernized, diverse decks and Game of Thrones- themed decks. What do the different types of tarot cards mean? Though design varies greatly, all tarot decks are uniform in a couple of ways. Each includes 78 cards divided into two groups: the major and minor arcana.

The minor arcana, by contrast, refer to more everyday matters and influences. These 56 cards are divided into four suits: wands, swords, pentacles, and cups. Each suit represents a different facet of life. Typically, wands symbolize creativity and passion, swords symbolize intellect, pentacles symbolize work and money, and cups symbolize emotion.

For instance, a three-card spread that includes three pentacle cards strongly suggests an issue having to do with money. Despite its ubiquity, though, the art can still seem elusive and confusing. What exactly is tarot?

What do the cards mean and how are they used? Don't fret: The fundamentals are easy to understand. Here's what every beginner should know about the history of tarot, as well as tips and tricks for kick-starting your unique practice. Surprisingly, it is a relatively modern craft. Though tarot decks date back to the s, pictorial cards were originally used for games rather than prediction.

Cartomancy, or fortune-telling through the use of playing cards, actually wasn't developed until , when French occultist Jean-Baptiste Alliette — known by his pseudonym, Etteilla , the inversion of his surname — created comprehensive links between illustrated cards, astrology, and ancient Egyptian lore.

Over the next century, mystics and philosophers continued to expand the role of tarot. In the late s, several London-based occultists formed the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, one of the groups responsible for the modern magical revival. Two of the group's founders, husband and wife MacGregor and Moina Maters, wrote a manual that detailed tarot's symbolic power, entitled Book T. This timeless deck is commonly known as the Rider-Waite deck and is still the most popular tarot variant for both beginner and professional card readers.

Their Thoth deck , named after the Egyptian god of alphabets, incorporates specific astrological symbolism into each card, linking the divination practice to the cosmos. Let's talk about the structure of the deck and the meanings of its cards. Any magical practice — tarot, astrology, or spell work — is based on the Hermetic axiom "as above, so below. Accordingly, the entire universe exists within a tarot deck, with each card representing a person, place, or event.

These symbols are depicted in both the Major Arcana cards, which speak to greater secrets, and the Minor Arcana cards, which speak to lesser secrets. The Major Arcana cards represent monumental, groundbreaking influences. They punctuate our journeys and each stands alone as a powerful message, representing life-changing motions that define the beginnings or ends of cycles. These dynamic cards appear during major transitions, signaling distinctive moments of transformation. The cards are numbered to represent stations within our greater journey through life; their chronological order reveals the passing of time.

The Minor Arcana cards, on the other hand, reflect everyday matters. These cards showcase ordinary people engaging in mundane activities, such as dancing, drinking, sleeping , or quarreling.

They suggest action that is triggered by human behaviors and appear during gentle transitions that may be temporary or have only minor influence. The Minor Arcana cards are broken up into four suits, each containing ten numbered cards and four court cards.

In the Minor Arcana, the card's number reveals the stage of an event: The ace card represents the beginning, while the 10 symbolizes the end. Similarly, the progression of the court cards demonstrates our understanding of circumstances on an individual level, representing either personality types or actual people.

The Page or Princess, in some decks , Knight, Queen, and King interpret circumstances with increasing levels of understanding and wisdom. The suits Wands, Pentacles, Swords, and Cups correspond to their own unique areas of life and astrological elements.

Wands symbolize passion and inspiration corresponding with the fire element , Pentacles represent money and physical realities corresponding with the earth element , Swords depict intellectual intrigues corresponding with the air element , and Cups illustrate emotional matters corresponding with the water element.

These suits reveal which spheres of influence are being activated, offering guidance on how to best manage any circumstances at hand. Together, the Major and Minor Arcana cards create a comprehensive pictorial language. It is important to remember that all the answers we seek exist innately within the deck, with each card illustrating a person, circumstance, or potential outcome. Since there are no secret puzzles or hidden agendas with tarot, the ability to discern meaning lies within your own narrative interpretation.

Before any reading, be sure to shuffle or "clear" the deck.