There are 78 cards in a Tarot deck, divided into the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. The word "Arcana" (singular: Arcanum) comes from the Latin arcanus, meaning closed or secret. In the context of the Tarot, it means a secret or a mystery, and is usually used in the plural form.
The Major Arcana, or trump suit, consists of twenty-two cards. Each card has a different picture which illustrates an action, behavior and/or event. Each card also has a label, which is a name, a title, or a description of the picture on the card. All the cards in the Major Arcana except one are numbered, from One to Twenty-One. The Fool, which is the only unnumbered card, is generally considered to be number Zero. In a reading, the Major Arcana represents states of being--your mental, emotional, and/or spiritual condition at the time of the reading, or in terms of the situation being described.
The remaining fifty-six cards in your deck are called the Minor Arcana. These are divided into four suits: Swords, Cups, Coins, and Wands. There are fourteen cards in each suit: ten numbered (or pip) cards, from Ace to Ten, and four face (or court) cards: Page, Knight, Queen, and King. In the reading, the Minor Arcana describes events or situations and each suit focuses on a different area of your life. In general, Swords describe your mental or intellectual state, and Cups your emotional life. Coins correspond to Your physical or material status, and Wands to career, abilities, or potentials. The court cards sometimes represent actual people in your life, or they may have the same kind of interpretation as the pip cards.
It is the cards of the Minor Arcana which correspond to today's modern deck of playing cards. In the modern deck, the Knight was eliminated, and the Page became the Jack, leaving only three court cards to each suit. The Tarot's Swords have become Spades; Cups became Hearts; Coins are called Diamonds; and Wands are Clubs. The only card from the Major Arcana that has made the transition from the Tarot to the playing deck is The Fool, which has become The Joker.
History of the Tarot
There are many theories about the origin of the Tarot, but no
one knows for certain where and how the cards were first developed. Some
authorities claim the Tarot evolved from the yarrow sticks used with the
Chinese divination system called I Ching; others say that it was
adapted from the legendary Book of Thoth. Still others place its origin
as recently as fourteenth
or fifteenth century Europe, since the earliest known complete
deck dates from that time.
The most popular theory is that the Tarot was invented in ancient
Egypt, and brought to Europe around the fourteenth century by wandering
tribes of Gypsies. According to these scholars, the allegorical illustrations
shown on the cards of the Major Arcana were derived from the teachings
of the secret schools of Egypt. Papus, in Key to Occult Science,
explains that the kingdom was in danger of being overthrown, so the priests
of ancient Egypt designed the Tarot as one way of preserving their secrets
for initiates of future ages. The Major Arcana portrayed the stages of
personal development required of initiates as they progressed toward the
status of adept. By recording their teachings in a symbolic manner, it
would be available to serious students of the occult arts, yet the Tarot
deck itself would appear to be only an amusing game to the uninitiated.
Other schools of thought also theorize that the Major Arcana is a record of the secret teachings of various underground religious groups. One such group to whom the origin of the Tarot is attributed is the Gnostics, early Christian sects often considered heretical for their spiritual beliefs, who were indeed forced to take their faith underground to escape persecution.
Another theory suggests that the Tarot philosophy was derived from that of the Cabala (Qabala). The order of the Major Arcana is connected to the Hebrew system of letters and numbers. The Cabala is a mystical Jewish tradition which teaches that it is possible, through symbolic interpretation of ancient texts, to raise your consciousness above the level of mundane knowledge and lead you to an understanding of and union with the Divine. In this teaching, letters and numbers are not merely a way of writing down thoughts and events, but rather reservoirs of divine power which contain volumes of information and enlightenment accessible to the adept. (It is interesting to note that the Greek neo-Pythagorean school also taught that letters and numbers were divine beings which possessed their own supernatural powers.)
Many of the teachings of the Cabalists were never written down; they were passed from teacher to student by word of mouth and kept secret from outsiders. The kind of symbolism used in the Major Arcana is a way of preserving those secrets without making them readily available to the uninitiated. In this theory, then, the Tarot is an allegorical representation of the path to enlightenment, which again would be understandable only to those who were trained in this symbolic method of study.
The origin of the Minor Arcana is also in question. Some researchers believe they were part of the original Egyptian deck; others say they were added around the fourteenth century from an Italian card game known as tarrochi.
In fact, even the origin of the name "Tarot" is in doubt. One simple explanation is that the name was derived from the crossed lines which appear on the back of the cards, a design called tarotee. Others say the name comes from the tarrochi, which supplied the cards of the Minor Arcana.
Etteilla, a great exponent of the Tarot, explains that the name
derives from the Egyptian words tar, "a path," and ro or ros,
"royal," meaning together "the royal path of life." J.E Vaillent
(in Les Romes, histoire vraie des vraise Bohemiens, 1857), states that
"the great divinity Ashtaroth, As-Taroth, is no other than the Indo-Tarter
Tan-tara, the Tarot, the Zodiac." And still other authorities teach that
both the Tarot and the Book of Thoth derive their names from the
Egyptian word taru, meaning "to require an answer" or "to consult."
Whatever the origin of the Tarot, it is clear that the symbolism
on the cards is universal, speaking to many different cultures and
philosophies. People of all religious, ethnic, or national backgrounds
have used the Tarot, and developed their own versions of the deck.
And the one point on which all authorities agree is that the Tarot, especially
the Major Arcana, contains
a complete book of occult knowledge which can lead dedicated
students to an understanding of both themselves and the mysteries of creation--if
only you can learn to decipher their true meaning.
~Excerpted from Tarot For Beginners by P. Scott Hollander
page copyright Ma'at 2000
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