Interpretation
About the tarot reading
A tarot deck has 78 cards divided into two parts. The 22 cards of the Major Arcana, numbered from 0 (The Fool) to XXI (The World), show large allegorical figures such as The Magician, Death, The Tower and The Star. In a reading they point to the deeper forces and turning points in a situation. The 56 cards of the Minor Arcana are arranged in four suits, usually Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles (or Coins), each with ten numbered cards and four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen and King. They describe everyday matters: work, feelings, conflict and money.
Where the tarot comes from
The tarot did not begin as an oracle. The earliest surviving decks were painted in northern Italy in the 15th century, among them the luxurious Visconti-Sforza cards made for the ruling families of Milan. They were used to play a trick-taking game called trionfi, later tarocchi, in which the allegorical cards served as trumps. The game spread to France, where the woodcut pattern known as the Tarot de Marseille became standard.
The occult reading of the tarot is an 18th-century development. In 1781 the French scholar Antoine Court de Gébelin argued in Le Monde primitif that the cards preserved the wisdom of ancient Egyptian priests, a theory historians reject but one that gave the cards their mystical reputation. A few years later Etteilla published the first books on divination with the tarot. In the 19th century Éliphas Lévi linked the 22 trumps to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In 1909 A. E. Waite and the artist Pamela Colman Smith produced the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, whose illustrated scenes on every numbered card shaped most modern decks.
How a spread works
A spread is a fixed layout in which each position carries a meaning, such as past, present and future, or the situation, the obstacle and the advice. The card that falls in a position is read in the light of that position, and then the cards are read together as a story. Many readers also use reversals: a card that appears upside down may show its energy as blocked, delayed, turned inward or excessive. Others read every card upright. Either approach works if you decide on it before the reading.
How to ask a question
Open questions work best. “What do I need to understand about my new job?” invites a fuller answer than “Will I get rich?” Keep the question focused on one matter and hold it clearly in mind while the cards are shuffled and drawn.
Further reading
- Egyptian Magic in Practice: Amulets, Papyri, Scribes and the Grimoires How Egyptian magic actually worked in objects, names and handbooks, how its script shaped our alphabet, and how its papyri reached the European grimoires while tarot's Egyptian past was invented.
- Decans and Planetary Hours: How the Grimoires Keep Time How the Chaldean order of the planets shapes the 36 decans, the planetary hours and the week, how the Golden Dawn laid tarot and Goetia on the decans, and how horary astrology uses the hour.
- Synchronicity Synchronicity - coined by Carl Jung in the 1920s - has been used as an explanatory theory in borderline fields like astrology, tarot, and I Ching. Here we explore why through the lens of quantum physics and the holographic universe.