Reading Tarot: The Basics
One thing about me: I cannot tell a story without an even longer backstory.
In 2024, I kicked off a project to blog my way through the tarot. I take a lot of inspiration from these cards, and I wanted to see what would come up if I meditated on each one for 2000 words or so. Each of the blog posts in my Blogging The Tarot series dives deep into one card at a time.
However, I’d be remiss not to offer an ode to the deck itself.
I was introduced to tarot sometime in 2020. It started out as a novelty; one of my friends had a deck that was decades old and had belonged to her uncle. We pulled the cards out, did the spread that was outlined in the tiny book we found in the box, and interpreted each card based on a few cryptic sentences and key words. Some months later, I sat for a tarot reading with a compelling individual at a street fair. After that, I made a new friend who happened to have her own relationship with the tarot. We played with the cards together and she gave me permission to be curious about it.
In layers of exposure and moments of subtle contact,
I allowed myself to explore.
There’s a lot of mystique around the tarot, as is true with so much of spirituality. For some, it’s even taboo to get curious about it, let alone cozy with it. While I’m no expert on the history of tarot as a divination tool – if I were, I wouldn’t be able to condense it into a blog post anyway – I can at least offer practical guidance to help make the deck more accessible.
Because that’s the thing, tarot should be accessible to you.
Any of you. All of you. No matter your belief system or religious background or self-identity, tarot is for you. And in case you needed it: here is your permission to play with it. Your permission to buy a deck for yourself. To do a reading for yourself, for your friend for a stranger.
And now for some definitions.
Tarot Deck refers to the traditional Rider-Waite deck with artwork by Pamela Smith.
There are countless tarot variations that take artistic license on the names of the suits, the identities of the court cards, and the artwork for the cards.
The full deck of 78 cards can be thought of in two distinct groups:
the Major Arcana and
the Minor Arcana.
The Major Arcana consists of cards numbered zero (0) through 21 (XXI).
These cards in sequence, beginning with The Fool (0), are sometimes referred to as “The Fool’s Journey,” a variation on The Hero’s Journey, and we think of The Fool (0) as representing a person making his way through spiritual evolution.
The rest of the cards in the Major Arcana are the characters he meets along the path of his journey. These characters reveal truths and present challenges that enable The Fool to grow and evolve into the version of himself that he was meant to be.
Whenever Major Arcana cards come up in a reading, they usually represent major philosophical, mental, or emotional changes in a person’s life. These cards offer insight into a person’s soul growth.
The depth in each of these cards is immeasurable, the texts exploring each one innumerable. For a detailed breakdown of astrological associations within each card, I recommend Tarot and Astrology by Corrine Kenner. For a wonderful, story-like walk through of all the cards complete with in-depth exploration of the symbolism and meaning of each card, use Rachel Pollack’s Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom. For a practical, concise reference manual of definitions and major themes, I love Biddy Tarot. And for my personal connection and interpretation for each of the cards, explore my blog.
The Minor Arcana section of the deck consists of the suits:
Wands - associated with the element of fire; a dynamic suit where much of the action takes place.
Swords - associated with the element of air; heavily pensive; strategy and calculation.
Pentacles - associated with the element of earth; that which we can touch, our material possessions, our wealth, our abundance.
Cups - associated with the element of water; a deeply feeling suit, our emotional connections as well as our passions.
Each suit contains cards numbered Ace (1) through 10 plus the “court cards” of Page, Knight, Queen, and King. Where the Major Arcana deals with personal evolution that’s, well, major, the Minor Arcana tends to deal with life situations that are more tangible. These are the circumstances of our day to day lives – the people we encounter, the work situation we exist in, our comings and goings within the structure of our routine, and even forthcoming changes to our life situation. In readings I refer to these as “snapshots in time” as opposed to the Major Arcana which tend to be more of a state of being.
In every suit, the numbered cards can be thought to represent progress along a path. Aces (1) are beginnings, fives are midpoints or turning points, and tens are completion; all the numbers in between represent various other checkpoints or stumbling blocks along the way.
The court cards represent characters or individuals that embody the nature of the suit.
The Page is considered the purest expression of the suit. They are androgynous and youthful, maybe even can be considered prepubescent to convey their innocence. Their innocence makes the naïve and inexperienced.
The Knight is the doer of the suit. They are the ones that take action on behalf of the suit.
The Queen is the feminine ruler of the suit, her energy being of the intuitive and emotional sort.
The King is the masculine ruler of the suit, his energy concentrated in thinking and strategizing pursuits.
There you have the dead sprint through the tarot.
Much more depth will be uncovered as we make our way through the individual cards; in all honesty, every time I do a reading I learn something about the cards. So the study is endless, but like… in a fun way.
