Major Arcana and Minor Aracana in Tarot

Cards Explanation Window: The Meaning of the Tarot Cards

Here you can find the meanings of all 78 cards of the Tarot deck, with the focus on the Thoth-Crowley Tarot.

Please note that this section is a part of my Tarot Site and so designed that you can float it above the main part of the regular site, in order to get the meaning of a card while dealing with it on some other page.
Therefore most links in here leading out of this section will display in the main part of the Tarot Site - and IF this window is standing outside the main frame, the new page opens behind the Card Explanation Window. This might cause some confusion when this window covers the newly displayed page and you think nothing has happened.. If that is the case simply reduce this window's size or move it aside.

The Major Arcana & the Minor Arcana

The Tarot cards are set together of two parts - the Major Arcana which includes the 22 trump cards representing the archetypes or the classic 'trionfi', and the 56 cards of the Minor Arcana, which consists of the four suits Cups, Disks, Swords and Wands, each suit containing four court cards and ten numbered cards (the Ace is counted as 1).

While the trump cards are representing the paths connecting the ten Sephirot of the Tree of Life, the suits are attached to the four elements Fire, Air, Water and Earth as follows:

	Wands the element of the fire, standing for the spiritual, for creativity, mysticism, imagination (world of Atziluth)
	Cups the element of water, standing for emotion, feeling, relationship (world of Briah)
	Swords the element of the air, standing for the intellectual, the logical and scientific (world of Yetzirah)
	Disks the element of the earth, standing for the materials, the body, the 'down-to-earth-matters' (world of Assiah)

The court cards are the Knight, the Queen, the Prince and the Princess - in the Thoth deck. This can get a bit confusing when using other decks, where the court cards are called King, Queen, Knight and Page (or Child), especially when the Thoth deck calls 'Knight' what most others call 'King' and 'Prince' what most others call 'Knight'.

Here it might be helpful to remember the 'traditional' view to sort it like 'Father of the element', 'Mother of the element', 'Son of the element' and 'Daughter of the element'.

The ten numbered cards represent the ten Sephirot, i.e. the ten steps of the element from Kether (Ace) to Malkuth (Ten).

As for the meanings, always remember the one rule that someone might tell you a lot of the card, but only you yourself will really know what it means for you.

"Prediction is extremely difficult. Especially about the future..."
(Niels Bohr)

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