How a 78-Card Deck Is Organized
Learn the relationship among Major Arcana, suits, court cards and numbered cards.
Major and Minor Arcana
A conventional tarot deck contains 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. The 22 trumps often portray figures or situations interpreted as broad themes. The Minor Arcana comprise four suits with ten numbered cards and four court cards each.
Decks vary in their names, images and organization. Some systems swap numbering for Strength and Justice, and some artists reinterpret familiar images. Learn the conventions of the deck in your hands instead of treating all decks as identical.
Suit vocabularies
Wands are often linked with initiative and creative action, Cups with emotion and relationship, Swords with thought and conflict, and Pentacles with material life and care. These are interpretive patterns, not scientific properties of cards.
The same image may suggest different things in different questions or cultural settings. Good study begins with describing what is actually pictured before importing a memorized keyword.
Put it into perspective
Sort a conventional deck by arcana, suit, and rank. Write down one question about a court card and one about a trump.
Research leads: Ethan Doyle White, Wicca (2016); Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon (1999); publicly documented descriptions from living traditions.
Review your understanding
Choose one answer per question. Feedback explains why each answer is correct.