Tarot Major Card of the Day

Tarot — The 22 Major Arcana

A full Tarot deck runs to 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana alongside 56 Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana carry numbers from 0 through XXI, and each one stands for an archetype along the human journey. They run as follows: The Fool (0), The Magician (I), The High Priestess (II), The Empress (III), The Emperor (IV), The Hierophant (V), The Lovers (VI), The Chariot (VII), Strength (VIII), The Hermit (IX), Wheel of Fortune (X), Justice (XI), The Hanged Man (XII), Death (XIII), Temperance (XIV), The Devil (XV), The Tower (XVI), The Star (XVII), The Moon (XVIII), The Sun (XIX), Judgement (XX) and The World (XXI).

If you have seen one modern deck, it was probably the Rider-Waite. The Rider Company put it out in 1909, with art by Pamela Colman Smith working under the occultist Arthur Edward Waite. There is also the older Tarot of Marseille, a French style going back to the 17th century whose woodcut imagery is plainer.

Applications

People reach for it in plenty of ways: as entertainment, as a prompt for self-reflection journaling, as a source of ideas for storytelling and game design, and as divination for those who practice it. Important notice: this is a recreational tool. Tarot has no scientific backing and is no substitute for professional medical, psychological, financial or legal advice.

FAQ

Why 22 Major Arcana? The count matches the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. That parallel was pushed hard by 19th-century occultists like Eliphas Lévi, who tied Tarot to Kabbalah. Read in order, the cards also trace a full narrative arc, the one often called the Fool’s Journey.

What is the difference between Rider-Waite and Marseille? Rider-Waite (1909) gave all 78 cards a detailed pictorial scene, the Minor Arcana included, and that made the cards easier to read at a glance. Marseille leaves its Minor Arcana as abstract pip cards, the way an ordinary playing-card deck looks, with symbolism that is older and more austere.

Who was Pamela Colman Smith? An American-British illustrator (1878–1951) who painted all 78 cards of the Rider-Waite deck. Her work was uncredited and underpaid for decades; only recently has she received broader recognition as one of the most influential figures in modern Tarot.