Study corner
Tarot glossary
The words you meet when you study tarot, from arcana to significator, explained plainly. 31 terms.
A
- Arcana
- From the Latin for "secrets". Tarot decks are divided into the Major Arcana (22 cards) and the Minor Arcana (56 cards).
B
- Birth card
- A Major Arcana card worked out from your date of birth, a method popularized by the author Mary K. Greer. More →
C
- Cartomancy
- Fortune telling with cards, whether tarot or ordinary playing cards. Divination with tarot became popular in France in the late eighteenth century. More →
- Celtic Cross
- A ten-card spread, one of the best known. Waite’s Pictorial Key (1911) presents it as "An Ancient Celtic Method of Divination".
- Clarifier
- An extra card some readers draw to shed light on a card they find unclear. It is a modern habit, not a fixed rule.
- Court cards
- The Page, Knight, Queen and King of each suit, 16 cards in all. Readers interpret them as people, roles or ways of acting. More →
- Cups
- The suit of Water: feelings, love, relationships, intuition. Also called Chalices. More →
D
E
- Elemental dignities
- A way of reading neighboring cards by how their elements get along, so that Fire and Air strengthen each other, for example, while Fire and Water weaken each other. It comes from the Golden Dawn tradition.
F
- Fool’s Journey
- A modern way of teaching the Major Arcana as one story, with The Fool meeting each card in turn. The phrase was popularized by the author Eden Gray in 1970. More →
G
- Golden Dawn
- The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult society founded in London in 1888. Its system linked tarot cards to astrology, the elements and the Hebrew letters, and Waite and Smith were both members. More →
J
- Jumping card
- A card that falls out of the deck while shuffling. Some readers treat it as part of the reading; others simply put it back.
M
- Major Arcana
- The 22 picture cards numbered 0 (The Fool) to 21 (The World), also called the trumps. They are usually read as big themes and turning points. More →
- Minor Arcana
- The 56 cards in four suits of 14: an Ace and the numbers Two to Ten, plus four court cards. They are usually read as everyday matters. More →
P
- Pentacles
- The suit of Earth: money, work, the body and home. Also called Coins or Disks in other decks. More →
- Pip cards
- The numbered cards of the Minor Arcana, Ace to Ten. The name comes from playing cards, where the "pips" are the suit symbols printed on the card. More →
- Position
- One place in a spread, such as "past" or "advice". The position shapes how the card in it is read. More →
Q
- Querent
- The person asking the question in a reading. When you read for yourself, you are both reader and querent.
R
- Reader
- The person laying out and interpreting the cards.
- Reversed
- A card that lands upside down. Readers differ: some read it as the opposite meaning, some as the same energy blocked or turned inward, and some ignore reversals altogether. More →
- Rider-Waite-Smith
- The deck designed by the artist Pamela Colman Smith under the direction of A. E. Waite and published by William Rider & Son in London in December 1909. Most modern English-language decks follow its pictures.
S
- Significator
- A card chosen, rather than drawn, to represent the querent or the subject of the question. Waite describes choosing one at the start of the Celtic Cross; many modern readers skip it.
- Spread
- A layout of cards in which each place has its own meaning, from a single daily card to the ten-card Celtic Cross. More →
- Suit
- One of the four families of the Minor Arcana: Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. Each is linked to an element and to an area of life. More →
- Swords
- The suit of Air: thoughts, words, decisions and conflict. More →
T
- Tarot de Marseille
- A traditional French pattern of tarot deck, widely printed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its numbered cards show the suit symbols arranged in patterns rather than scenes.
- Thoth deck
- A deck designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris between 1938 and 1943, published in 1969. Some of its card names and attributions differ from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.
- Trumps
- An older name for the Major Arcana, from the card game the tarot began as in fifteenth-century Italy, where these cards beat the others.
U
- Upright
- A card that lands the right way up in a reading.
W
- Wands
- The suit of Fire: energy, ambition, creativity. Also called Rods, Batons or Staves in some decks. More →
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