Tarot Cards - Major Arcana

The 22 cards of the Major Arcana represent the big, life-changing events of a person's lifetime, and are the most powerful cards in the Tarot. When a card of the Major Arcana is present in a reading, it is interpreted to outweigh all other cards in the reading - if more than one is present, powerful changes indeed are indicated.

The Fool - 0

The Fool represents the beginning of new experiences, a fresh start, the first steps down a new path, a clean slate upon which anything can be drawn. He personifies unlimited potential, though the potential has not yet been realized.

Positive Aspects: Adventurous quest; choice of possibilities; enthusiasm; impulsiveness; new opportunities imagined; desire for change; naivety.
Reversed Aspects: Faulty evaluation; immaturity; apathy; indecision; lost opportunities; bad choice; no innitiative.

The Magician - 1

The Magician represents the power to create change in the material world, to direct the unseen (the mind, emotion, will-power) as a force to control the seen (the physical world.) He personifies applied creativity and potential.

Positive Aspects: Inventiveness; creativity; manipulating situations; organizational skill; planning goals.
Reversed Aspects: Inefficiency; hesitation and consequent loss; lack of confidence in one's visions; lack of determination or skill; concentrating on negative goals.

The High Priestess - 2

The High Priestess represents the power of the unseen world to influence the material world. She personifies the subconcious, the psychic, the spirit, and the hidden powers therein.

Positive Aspects: Wisdom; perception; intuition; learning; psychic abilities; foresight; natural forces; artistic gifts; a teacher; a positive guiding force.
Reversed Aspects: Ignorance; lack of foresight; faulty judgement; shallowness; egotistical; superficial knowledge; wearing blinders; using knowledge as a weapon to harm.

The Empress - 3

The Empress represents the creative abundance of nature, the promise of renewal and birth that is present in all living things. She is the sacred mother, the personification of Mother Nature, the life-force that binds all living things together.

Positive Aspects: Fruitfulness; fertility; pregnancy; creativity; attainment; development; maternal love; feminine influence; professional woman; protective; loyal; practical.
Reversed Aspects: Sterility; lacking maternal or protective instincts; disloyal; infidelity; disinterest; wasting resources; inaction; possible complication with pregnancy or poor health.

The Emperor - 4

The Emperor represents the balance between the physical, the spiritual, and the mental. He personifies enlightened rulership and responsible stewardship, and, as the consort of the Empress, represents the partnership and acceptance of the equality of the natural world and the spritual and mental worlds.

Positive Aspects: Leadership; dominance; authority; worldly power; masculine force; courage; strenght of character; patriarchal; reason and intellect dominating the emotions; wealth; vitality; stability; confidence.
Reversed Aspects: Immaturity; irresponsibility; indecisiveness; inability; inpotence; loss of wealth; loss of authority; weakness of character.

The Hierophant - 5

The Hierophant represents traditional, orthodox teachings considered suitable for the masses. He personifies the ruling power of external religion, conventionality, the perceived need to conform with the majority, and the control over the creative, formative, and material worlds that mass-rule tries to impose.

Positive Aspects: Traditional; conventional; a sense of history; mercy; not good at adapting; teaching; explanation; common knowledge; ritualization; resorting to old methods of thought or action; intolerance; conforming to mass-thinking.
Reversed Aspects: Non-conformity; rejection; unconventional; unorthodoxy; rebelliousness; superstition substituting for knowledge.

The Lovers - 6

The Lovers represents love, both romantic and familial, and it also represents the choice between two paths. It personifies the balance between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, and the different yet complementary nature of these two portions of the mind.

Positive Aspects: Love; infatuation; deep emotion; physical attraction; emotional involvement; union; compatibility; a choice between wisdom and passion; examining; yearning; tempting; equality between male and female; a choice to be made.
Reversed Aspects: Disloyalty; a possible parting; divorce; discord; end of a love affair; an unsatisfactory relationship; emotional distress; incompatibility; sexual frustration; torn apart by outside influences; indecision.

The Chariot - 7

The Chariot represents the control of the unruly forces of the mind and emotions, and the need to hold them both in balance and intact within the demands of the physical world. The chariot symbolizes the personality that is carried through the journey of life, and the sphinxes symbolize the external forces imposed upon it that one must hold steady against and maintain a firm rule against.

Positive Aspects: Overcoming obstacles; travel; conflicting influences; conquest; triumph of will; controlling the direction of one's life; a difficult decision made; gathering momentum; keeping the emotions in check.
Reversed Aspects: A lack of control; a lack of vision causing uncertainty of direction; defeat; failing to face reality; loss of emotional control; ruled by emotions.

Strength - 8

Strength represents the triumph of the mental and spiritual over the material. It personifies the struggle to control material demands and desires with the force of the mind and spirit, and the need to bring love and compassion into the forefront of this eternal battle.

Positive Aspects: Spiritual and/or mental strength; courage; determination; moral force; fortitude; willpower; mastery; defeating negative impulses; confidence; fervor; success; love triumphing over hate.
Reversed Aspects: Weakness; fear; temptation to give in to baser instincts; having little faith in one's abilities; abuse of power; choosing hate over love.

The Hermit - 9

The Hermit represents the inner guidance and knowledge present and available to all people, once they learn to listen. He personifies the search for true spiritual knowledge, the meaning of life, and the correct path of light.

Positive Aspects: A search for wisdom and truth; counsel; knowledge given or received; sound judgement; re-evaluation; soul-searching; inner wisdom; awareness; enlightenment; beyond the need for material gain; meditation.
Reversed Aspects: Stubborness; a closed mind; bad advice; isolation; looking only at the surface value; foolish or immature behavior; denying truth.

The Wheel of Fortune - 10

The Wheel of Fortune represents the cyclic nature of life. It personifies the ups and downs, rights and wrongs, happy events and sad events, highs and lows that everyone experiences, and the remembrance that all situations eventually change, evolve, and/or reverse.

Positive Aspects: Destiny; fate; consequence; wealth or poverty; unexpected good or bad luck; culmination; conclusion; results; chance; enevitability; this will change.
Reversed Aspects: Interruption due to outside forces; unexpected negative situation; unforeseen events; bad luck; failure; stagnation.

Justice - 11

Justice represents the true, fair nature of things on both the physical and spiritual realms, and the immutable laws of life and balance that all are subject to. It personifies the need to maintain fair and equable actions to avoid having unfair actions imposed upon oneself, and that none are exempt from this requirement.

Positive Aspects: Fairness; justice; righting wrongs; virtue; honor; just rewards; good judgement; poise; recognizing temptation and avoiding unfair actions; proper balance; an end to a lawsuit; good intentions; well-meaning actions.
Reversed Aspects: Prejudice; false accusations; unfair judgement; abuse; poor choices and decisions; severity; intolerance; deliberate harming of another; untrustworthy.

The Hanged Man - 12

The Hanged Man represents surrender to higher spiritual forces and ways of thinking. He personifies the rejection of conventional concepts and mass-thinking, and acceptance of the guidance he has found within.

Positive Aspects: Transition; a changing situation; abandonment; renunciation; transformation; regeneration; inner peace; conquering material temptation; unselfishness; a pause in activities; self-sacrifice.
Reversed Aspects: Unwilling to make a sacrifice; selfishness; materialistic; ego gratification; spiritual emptiness; failure to find true meaning in one's life.

Death - 13

Death represents the inevitable transformation of all lives. It personifies the neccessity of change to achieve growth, the loss of one thing to gain another, the shedding of the old to make way for the new. It does not ususally indicate physical death, however.

Positive Aspects: Change; transformation; alteration; the end of a phase and the beginning of a new phase; renewal; loss; transition; liberation; reincarnation.
Reversed Aspects: Catastrophe; disorder; lack of change; stagnation; immobility; inertia; feeling trapped by present circumstances.

Temperance - 14

Temperance represents moderation, balance, and harmony between the physical and the spritual needs. It personifies the need to not place one of these above the other, and warns against over-indulgence of one need to the exclusion of another.

Positive Aspects: Balance; discipline; harmony within one's self; patience; self-control; frugality; unity; a combination of forces; moderation; positive influence; good omen.
Reversed Aspects: Unstable efforts and actions; changes of mood; disharmony; intemperance; emotional imbalance; a bad combination; incompatibility.

The Devil - 15

The Devil represents the outward forces or ideas that can imprison us. It personifies the ability to release ourselves from the prisons of ignorance, illusion, greed, malevolence, and temptation if we seek the truth of life.

Positive Aspects: A slave to materialism; subordination; subservience; violence; malevolence; unethical behavior; self-destruction; cruelty; bad temper; choosing to remain in a bad situation; failure.
Reversed Aspects: The rejection of materialistic values; overcoming obstacles; releasing one's self from a bad situation; awareness of the needs of others; spiritual enlightenment; tossing off the invisible chains that enslave.

The Tower - 16

The Tower represents turbulent, possibly traumatic, wide-sweeping change. It personifies a radical departure from what was previously accepted as truth, a shattering of old ways, a tearing-down to make way for the re-building.

Positive Aspects: A traumatic change that leads to new awareness; ending a relationship; destruction; adversity; catastrophe; chaos; loss of security; transition; freedom or liberation gained, but with a cost.
Reversed Aspects: Stagnation; unable to make a needed change; trapped in an oppressive situation; imprisonment; lack of insight; clinging to old beliefs preventing growth and development.

The Star - 17

The Star represents the truth of life, the everlasting aspects of the universe that all share in common, the undying nature of the spirit. It personifies hope, inspiration, and encouragement, fortified by genuine insight into the true nature and inter-connectedness of all things.

Positive Aspects: Spiritual illumination; hope; faith; the truth unveiled; satisfaction; success; realization; comprehension; spiritual guidance; trusting one's intuition; psychic or spiritual gifts.
Reversed Aspects: Unfulfilled hopes; disappointment; restriction; disharmony; a narrow, closed metal attitude; mental illness.

The Moon - 18

The moon represents illusion, uncertainty, and hidden knowledge. It personifies the need to distinguish reality from fantasy, to see past the veil of illusion to the truths obscured, to discern the difference between insight and imagination.

Positive Aspects: An illusory situation; fraud; insincerity; entrapment; negative influences; hidden enemies; false friends; imagination; emerging talent; development of psychic powers; intuition.
Reversed Aspects: Small deceptions; overcoming serious temptation; a mystery solved; upset emotions; dishonesty.

The Sun - 19

The Sun represents the powers of the material world attained, and illuminates the path to the higher spiritual worlds beyond. It personifies the achievement of perfection on the physical plane, and the successful completion of material goals.

Positive Aspects: Contentment; joy; material happiness; emotional happiness; love; devotion; engagement; marriage; sincerity; success after a period of uncertainty; freedom; liberation; achievement; satisfaction.
Reversed Aspects: Success delayed; unhappiness; loneliness; lacking friendship; a warning of fire; a project cancelled; an engagement cancelled; fantasy taking the place of success; wasted talents.

Judgement - 20

Judgement represents the concept of karma, the reward or punishment of all of our deeds. It personifies the credo, "As you sow, so shall you reap." This card reminds us of the message in card 11 - Justice, and that every action has an eventual reaction.

Positive Aspects: Faith; listening to inner truths; immortality; higher mind; awakening to truth; right judgement; understanding; rewards for good deeds; the result of past actions; conscience; good behavior; another chance.
Reversed Aspects: Lacking faith; materialism; confusion; mortality; fear and guilt; being unaware of greater truths; retribution for bad deeds; regret; a time of reckoning; the bad outweighs the good; lack of conscience.

The World - 21

The World represents attainment in all worlds, physical, spiritual, and mental. It personifies the ultimate goal, the completion of spiritual evolution, the realization of truth and the nature of all things, a state of perfection and eternity.

Positive Aspects: Successful completion; accomplishment; victory; reward; final result of efforts; attaining a goal; salvation; insight; fulfillment; complete satisfation; fully self-aware; realizing one's dreams.
Reversed Aspects: Anxiety; limitations; inertia; hindrance from an unknown source; obstacles upon one's chosen course; failing to reach a goal; giving up one's hope's and dreams; loss of direction.

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This page was last updated on - Feb. 1997. "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!"
Copyright © 1997 Lia Wolf-Gentry A member of