A tarot deck is comprised of sixteen court cards, forty pip cards
("minor arcana") and twenty-one cards with special importance and
meanings ("major arcana") for a total of seventy-seven cards. Each of
these cards has their own value in a tarot reading.
Minor Arcana
Minor arcana cards each fall into one of four suits - wands, cups, swords or
pentacles. Wand cards are associated with matters of creativity, cups with
emotion and intuition, swords with intellect, and pentacles with physical
well-being and prosperity. Each card has an individual meaning depicted by the
art on its face. In general, the meanings can only be mastered through
memorization. Ace cards depict new opportunities in one of the four realms, and
the ten cards depict the culmination of a cycle in the creative, intellectual,
emotional or material realm.
Major Arcana
Major Arcana cards depict twenty-one essential lessons that we each must
learn to make the most of our lives. They are traditionally read as a narrative
of adventure that begins with The Fool, symbolizing the beginning of a journey,
and ends with The World, which announces a harmonic, enlightened and fulfilled
state of being. The rest of the cards can be experienced in any order, and some
spiritual individuals claim that it may take many lifetimes to learn the
intricacies of each.
Where the Minor Arcana cards are more concerned with everyday life, Major
Arcana cards deal with life-changing challenges and decisions. Also, new
students of the tarot often find Major Arcana cards easier to learn and
remember, because their names and artistry call their meaning to the mind more
easily than the other cards.
Court Cards
The four court cards are divided into Kings, Queens,
Knights and Pages. Your deck may call the latter two Princes and Princesses, or
some equivalent title. The meaning remains the same. Knights and Pages
represent new, vital, but undeveloped and unbalanced masculine and feminine
energies. Kings and Queens represent mature, balanced,
optimal masculine and feminine energies. Each suit has a set of all four court
cards, and these together represent the full range of development for the
traits the suits represent.