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†
- 1. The Magician
- 2. The High Priestess
- 3. The Empress
- 4. The Emperor
- 5. The Hierophant
- 6. The Lovers
- 7. The Chariot
- 8. Justice or Strength‡
- 9. The Hermit
- 10. Wheel of Fortune
- 11. Justice or Strength‡
- 12. The Hanged Man
- 13. Death
- 14. Temperance
- 15. The Devil
- 16. The Tower
- 17. The Star
- 18. The Moon
- 19. The Sun
- 20. Judgement
- 21. The World
† 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.