The Tarot Cards
Structure of a Tarot card deck
A typical Tarot card deck has 78 cards, divided in 2 series:
- The Major Arcana
This is a series of 22 cards, numbered 0 to 21. They are the most important cards in Tarot and represent our inner forces and motives. - The Minor Arcana
The remaining 56 cards show how the Major Arcana manifests in our day-to-day life.
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Tarot Card Decks
There are literally 1000's of different Tarot card decks. This makes it impossible to give a complete overview of all these decks.
However almost all these decks are derived from 3 decks. Below is a short description of these three.
Tarot of Marseille Card Deck
The Tarot of Marseille is the oldest Tarot card deck that is still in use. Though it's use has diminished a lot, it is still important from a historical point of view.
Many practitioners of the old esoteric schools used it. Also researchers on symbols, from the school of Jung, used the Tarot of Marseille as subject of their study.
This makes that this Tarot card deck still plays an important role in the modern application of Tarot.
Crowley Tarot Card Deck
The Crowley Tarot card deck was published by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris. It is characterized by it's vivid and energetic images.
The fact that Aleister Crowley called himself a black magician, has not contributed to the popularity of his Tarot deck. Nevertheless The Crowley Tarot deck is an enrichment for the modern Tarot.
This card deck is also known under the name Toth Tarot deck.
Rider Waite Tarot Cards
This card deck is the most used one by Tarot readers all over the world. It is by far the most important one.
The Rider Waite Tarot deck was conceived by Arthur Waite and drawn by Pamela Coleman Smith. In 1909 it was published by the London editor Rider.
The Rider Waite Tarot deck has a high usability because of it's very consistent symbolism. And perhaps even more because this Tarot deck was the first one that had images on all of the 78 cards. Before only the 22 cards of the Major Arcana had images.
All this makes that the Rider Waite Tarot deck is easy accessible. For that reason one can say that this deck is the fundament of modern Tarot.
Most of the many new Tarot card decks that appear nowadays, are derived from the Rider Waite deck.
Remark
Images from Tarot cards on this website are taken from the Rider Waite deck.