The tarot is a set of cards which depicts concepts, stages, situations and conditions of life. These have been broken down and put into a clear system, a table, a structure.

The tarot consists of 22 “trump cards” making up the major arcana and 4 sets of 14 cards each, similar to gaming cards, making up the 56 minor arcana card set.

Major Arcana(1):

The Major Arcana (Trumps Major, Major Trumps) of the Tarot deck consists of 22 cards. The name Major Arcana is used only in esoteric practice. Game players using Tarot decks for playing call them Trumps and usually only show a Roman or Arabic numeral on each card, plus some decoration that is identical on all of them. In esoteric sets, each Major Arcanum depicts a scene, mostly featuring a person or several people, with many symbolic elements. In many decks, each has a number (usually in Roman numerals) and a name, though not all decks have both, and some have only a picture.

Minor Arcana(2):

The Minor Arcana of the Tarot deck consist of 56 cards, which are closely related to the deck of 52 playing cards used in most modern card games. It comprises four suits, derived from the older Latin playing card suits most commonly named Wands or Batons, Cups, Swords, and Coins (also called Pentacles or Disks), although there is a wide variety of different names and suit symbols used in different decks. The name Minor Arcana is used only in esoteric practice; Game players using Tarot decks for playing call them suit cards and sometimes use the more modern hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs suit system.

Over the course of time I will go into more detail of the structure of such a (traditional) tarot deck. And, later in time we will compare some of the non-traditional decks with the Raider-Waite which will serve us for the purpose of this blog as common ground and basis.

Feel free to create your own spreadsheet to keep track of the essence of various postings I’ll be doing, if you are interested in having your own table as a collection of data which will serve you as a reference tool. But think of the spreadsheet only as a quick reference tool. Buy yourself a large paper (poster size) and draw the grid onto that. This will allow you much better to sit in front of it and to reflect and to look at the different entries and open the doors for getting your own understanding of interlinking within the grid.