tarot
An image featuring a tarot card, or drawn to look like a tarot card.
Tarot is a set of cards originally designed to be used as playing cards, but which was later adopted by occultists as a means of divination. A typical tarot deck consists of 78 cards, divided into two groups: the Minor Arcana and the Major Arcana.
The Minor Arcana consists of 56 cards divided into four suits: swords, wands (batons), cups, and pentacles (coins). Each suit has ten numbered cards and four court cards: Kings, Queens, Knights, and Pages.
The Major Arcana, or trump cards, consists of 22 cards without suits:
- 0. The Fool (tarot)†
- 1. The Magician (tarot)
- 2. The High Priestess (tarot)
- 3. The Empress (tarot)
- 4. The Emperor (tarot)
- 5. The Hierophant (tarot)
- 6. The Lovers (tarot)
- 7. The Chariot (tarot)
- 8. Justice (tarot) or Strength (tarot)‡
- 9. The Hermit (tarot)
- 10. Wheel of Fortune (tarot)
- 11. Justice (tarot) or Strength (tarot)‡
- 12. The Hanged Man (tarot)
- 13. Death (tarot)
- 14. Temperance (tarot)
- 15. The Devil (tarot)
- 16. The Tower (tarot)
- 17. The Star (tarot)
- 18. The Moon (tarot)
- 19. The Sun (tarot)
- 20. Judgement (tarot)
- 21. The World (tarot)
† The Fool is unnumbered and not considered a trump card in traditional decks. It may be numbered 0 or 22 in decks designed for fortune-telling.
‡ In traditional decks, Justice is the 8th card and Strength is the 11th card. Starting in the early 20th century, they swapped positions in many fortune-telling decks.
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Aliases: none