Tarot glossary

Tarot has a small working vocabulary, much of it older than it looks. The terms readers ask about most are the querent (the person a reading is for), the significator (a card chosen to stand for that person), the spread (the pattern the cards are laid in) and the Arcana (the two great divisions of the deck). This glossary defines 61 terms plainly, grouped by theme.

The deck

Arcana

Arcana is the plural of the Latin arcanum, a secret, and names the two divisions of the tarot deck: the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. The terms were coined in nineteenth-century France, usually credited to the writer Paul Christian, long after the cards were first made.

Major Arcana

The Major Arcana are the 22 picture cards that stand apart from the suits, numbered 0 to XXI, from the Fool to the World. They describe the larger movements of a life, and in a reading they tend to carry more weight than the cards around them.

Minor Arcana

The Minor Arcana are the 56 suited cards of the tarot deck: four suits of fourteen cards, each running Ace to Ten and then four court cards. They describe everyday matters, the people and events through which the larger themes take shape.

Trump

A trump is one of the Major Arcana. The word comes from the Italian trionfi, “triumphs”, the name of the fifteenth-century card game in which these picture cards outranked the ordinary suits. The English “trump”, for the winning suit in card games, has the same root.

Pip card

A pip card is one of the numbered Minor Arcana cards, Ace to Ten. The name comes from playing cards, where the pips are the printed suit symbols. Older decks show only an arrangement of symbols on these cards; the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition gives each one a scene.

Court card

A court card is one of the sixteen figure cards of the Minor Arcana, in most modern decks a Page, Knight, Queen and King in every suit. A court card often stands for a person in your life, or for a side of you, holding the suit’s quality at a stage of maturity.

Suit

A suit is one of the four families of the Minor Arcana, each of fourteen cards and each linked with a classical element. The suit tells you the territory a card belongs to before you know the card itself: will, feeling, thought or the material world.

The four suits

The four suits of tarot are Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles, linked in the modern tradition with Fire, Water, Air and Earth. They descend from the Italian suits of batons, cups, swords and coins. The guide The four suits of tarot, in this Library, takes each in turn.

Wands

Wands are the suit of Fire: will, energy, ambition, creativity and the drive to begin. Other decks call them Rods, Staves or Batons. A spread crowded with Wands tends to describe movement and initiative, and a situation that wants action more than further thought.

Cups

Cups are the suit of Water: feeling, love, friendship, intuition and the inner life. Some decks call them Chalices. A Cup card usually asks what is felt rather than what is planned, and a spread heavy in Cups points toward relationships.

Swords

Swords are the suit of Air: thought, words, truth, decision and conflict. The suit holds some of the hardest images in the deck, such as the Three of Swords, heartache and painful truth, but its gift is clear sight.

Pentacles

Pentacles are the suit of Earth: work, money, craft, the body and the home. Older decks call them Coins, and the Thoth deck calls them Disks. Pentacles describe what is built slowly and what lasts, and a spread rich in them turns on practical matters.

Readers and questions

Querent

The querent is the person a tarot reading is for, the one who brings the question. The word comes from the Latin quaerere, “to seek” or “to ask”, and is also used in horary astrology. When you read for yourself, you are reader and querent at once.

Seeker

Seeker is another word for the querent, preferred by readers who find “querent” too formal. It stresses that a reading begins with someone looking for understanding rather than a verdict. In TarotSeeker, Seeker is also the name of the free account.

Reader

The reader is the person who lays out and interprets the cards, for someone else or for themselves. Good practice asks the same of both: attention to the question, honesty about what the cards suggest, and restraint about what they cannot say.

Querent’s question

The querent’s question is the question a reading is built around, and it shapes everything that follows. A clear, open question about your own part in a situation gives the cards something to answer. The guide How to ask tarot a question, in this Library, shows how to frame one.

Reframing

Reframing is rewording a question so that the cards can answer it usefully. “Will he call?” becomes “What can I understand about this connection?” A reframed question moves away from prediction and toward the choices and patterns within your own reach.

Significator

A significator is a card chosen to stand for the querent, set apart before the reading or placed at its centre. It is usually a court card matched by age, temperament or sign, so that a quick, exacting mind might be given the Queen of Swords. Many modern readers leave it out.

Queen of SwordsClear sight earned through sorrow: incisive, independent, and hard to fool.

Reading the cards

Upright

Upright describes a card that lands the right way up, facing the reader. The upright meaning is the card’s theme in full and open expression. Readers who do not use reversals read every card upright and let the neighbouring cards supply the shading.

Reversal

A reversal is a card that lands upside down. It rarely means the simple opposite of the upright card; more often its energy is weakened, turned inward, blocked or not yet ready. The guide Reading reversed cards, in this Library, shows how to choose between those readings.

Jumping card

A jumping card is a card that falls or flies out of the deck while you shuffle. Some readers note it as a message before the reading begins; others simply return it to the deck. Either habit is sound, as long as you keep to it.

Clarifier card

A clarifier card is an extra card drawn after a spread is laid, to shed light on a card or position that seems unclear. Used sparingly it can sharpen a reading. Used often it blurs one, since each new card adds a meaning that also needs reading.

Recurrence

Recurrence is the return of the same card, suit or number across several readings over a period of time. A recurring card often marks a theme not yet resolved. The guide When the same card keeps appearing, in this Library, discusses how to read one.

Archetype

An archetype is a universal pattern of character or experience, such as the mother, the trickster or the wise elder. The idea comes from the psychologist Carl Jung, and modern readers often apply it to the Major Arcana, whose figures can be met within yourself and in others.

Fool’s journey

The Fool’s journey is a way of reading the Major Arcana in order, as one story. The Fool, card zero, sets out with nothing but openness, meets the teachers and trials of the cards that follow, and arrives at the World, where a cycle closes. It is a modern reading, not an ancient one.

The FoolUnbound potential at the edge of a cliff: a new beginning that could become flight or a fall.

Spreads and positions

Spread

A spread is a set pattern for laying tarot cards, in which each place carries its own meaning. Spreads range from a single card to ten or more. The guide Tarot spreads: how to choose one, in this Library, matches spreads to the questions they serve best.

Layout

A layout is the physical arrangement of a spread on the table: where each card goes and in what order. The word is often used as a synonym for spread, though strictly a spread is the layout together with the meanings of its positions.

Position

A position is one place within a spread, with its own meaning: the present, a past influence, what crosses you, a probable outcome. The same card reads differently in different positions, so a card is always interpreted in the light of the place it fills.

Draw

To draw is to take cards from the deck for a reading, from the top of a shuffled pile or chosen from a fan of cards laid face down. “A draw” can also mean the cards drawn, as in a one-card draw.

Shuffle

To shuffle is to mix the deck before a reading, by an overhand shuffle, a riffle or a wash of the cards face down across the table. Many readers hold the question in mind as they do. The guide How to shuffle tarot cards, in this Library, compares the methods.

Cut

To cut is to divide the shuffled deck into piles, often three, and gather them back in a new order before laying the cards. Some readers ask the querent to cut, as a way of taking part; others cut the deck themselves, or skip the step.

Crossing card

The crossing card is the card laid sideways across the first card of a cross-shaped spread such as the Celtic Cross, in the position called “what crosses you”. It describes the challenge or counterweight to the heart of the matter, and many readers take it as upright whichever way it falls.

Three-card spread

A three-card spread is the simplest reading that shows a relationship between cards, and the most widely used. The best-known version lays past, present and future, but the three places can also hold mind, body and spirit, or a story in three acts.

Simple Cross

The Simple Cross is a five-card spread laid in the shape of a cross. A centre card holds the heart of the matter; below it lie the roots, to the left past influences, above it aspirations, and to the right the probable outcome.

Celtic Cross

The Celtic Cross is a ten-card spread, the best known in tarot, set out by A. E. Waite in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1910. Six cards form a cross at the centre and four rise in a staff beside it. The guide The Celtic Cross, in this Library, reads all ten positions.

Practice

Daily draw

A daily draw is a single card taken each morning as a theme for the day. It is one of the simplest ways to learn the deck, since you meet one card at a time and can see how its meaning sits against an ordinary day.

Card of the day

The card of the day is the single card drawn in a daily draw, and the theme it offers for the hours ahead. It is best read as a way to meet the day, an attitude or a question to carry, rather than a description of what the day will bring.

Reading journal

A reading journal is a record of your readings: the date, the question, the cards, their positions and what you made of them. Read back over months, it shows your recurring cards and how your interpretations change. The guide Keeping a tarot journal, in this Library, suggests a format.

Cleansing

Cleansing is a ritual of reset for a tarot deck, meant to clear it after a run of readings or before first use. Methods include sorting the cards back into order, a long shuffle, a night’s rest, smoke or a spoken intention. Its surest effect is on the reader’s attention.

Correspondences

Correspondences

Correspondences are the links between tarot cards and other symbolic systems: the elements, astrology, the Hebrew letters, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and number. The scheme most readers use was set down by the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth century.

Element

An element is one of the four classical principles, Fire, Water, Air and Earth, through which tarot organises its cards. Each suit belongs to one element, and the Major Arcana carry elements through their astrological links. Sorting a spread by element shows which quality leads and which is missing.

Dignity

Dignity is the condition of a card as strengthened or weakened by the cards beside it. The idea comes from astrology, where a planet gains or loses strength by its position. In tarot, dignity is judged chiefly by element, and some readers use it in place of reversals.

Elemental dignities

Elemental dignities is the method of reading how neighbouring cards affect one another through their elements. Cards of one element strengthen each other; Fire opposes Water, and Air opposes Earth; Fire and Air support each other, as do Water and Earth. Schemes differ on the remaining pairs.

Well-dignified

A well-dignified card is one supported by its neighbours, usually because they share its element or carry a friendly one. Its meaning comes through strongly and in its better form, so that even a hard card tends to show its constructive side.

Ill-dignified

An ill-dignified card is one weakened by its neighbours, usually because they carry an opposing element, as when a card of Fire sits between two cards of Water. Its meaning is muted, strained or expressed in its harder form, much as some readers read a reversal.

Astrological correspondence

Astrological correspondence is the link between a tarot card and a sign, planet or element. In the Golden Dawn system, twelve Major Arcana belong to the signs, seven to the planets and three to the elements, so that Strength belongs to Leo and Justice to Libra.

Decan

A decan is one third of a zodiac sign, a span of ten degrees. The Golden Dawn assigned the 36 decans to the 36 numbered Minor Arcana cards from Two to Ten, each with a planet and a sign: the Three of Swords, for example, is Saturn in Libra.

Kabbalah and the Tree of Life

In tarot, Kabbalah means the Western occult use of the Tree of Life, a diagram of ten spheres joined by twenty-two paths. The Golden Dawn placed the 22 Major Arcana on the paths, each with a Hebrew letter, and the numbered cards on the spheres. The links are modern, not ancient.

Numerology

Numerology in tarot is the reading of a card’s number as part of its meaning. Across the four suits, each number marks a stage in a cycle: Aces begin, Fives disrupt, Tens complete. The guide Numbers in tarot, in this Library, follows each number in turn.

Birth card

A birth card is a Major Arcana card found by adding the day, month and year of your birth and reducing the total to a number from 1 to 21. It is read as a lasting theme of character. The guide Tarot birth cards, in this Library, gives worked examples.

Year card

A year card is found the same way as a birth card, with the current year in place of the year of your birth. It offers a theme to reflect on for the twelve months ahead: a quality to cultivate, not a forecast of events.

Traditions and decks

Trionfi and tarocchi

Trionfi, “triumphs”, is the earliest recorded name for tarot, used in northern Italy in the 1440s for a card game with a suit of allegorical trumps. By the early sixteenth century the deck was called tarocchi, the word from which the French tarot derives.

Visconti-Sforza

The Visconti-Sforza cards are the best-known early tarot, painted by hand with gold leaf for the rulers of Milan in the middle of the fifteenth century and often attributed in part to Bonifacio Bembo. No complete deck survives; the remaining cards are divided among several collections.

Marseille

The Tarot de Marseille is the standard French pattern of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, printed from woodblocks and coloured by stencil. Its pip cards show arrangements of suit symbols without scenes, and it places Justice at VIII and Strength at XI. Nicolas Conver’s deck of 1760 is its best-known example.

Etteilla

Etteilla was the pen name, his surname spelled backwards, of Jean-Baptiste Alliette, often called the first professional tarot reader. He published books on reading tarot in the 1780s and, around 1789, a deck redesigned for divination, with short meanings for the upright and the reversed card.

Golden Dawn

The Golden Dawn, in full the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, was an occult society founded in London in 1888. It gave tarot the correspondences most readers still use, assigning the suits to the elements and the trumps to letters, paths and signs, and it moved Strength to eight and Justice to eleven.

Rider-Waite-Smith

The Rider-Waite-Smith deck, published in London in 1909, was designed by A. E. Waite and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. It was the first widely used deck to give every pip card an illustrated scene, and most modern decks follow its pattern. The guide Rider-Waite-Smith, Thoth and Marseille compares the three.

Thoth

The Thoth deck was designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris between 1938 and 1943, and first published as a deck in 1969. It renames several trumps, so that Strength becomes Lust and Temperance becomes Art, and it prints astrological symbols on many of its cards.

Cartomancy

Cartomancy is divination or reflection with cards of any kind: tarot, playing cards, Lenormand cards or oracle decks. Etteilla’s first book, in 1770, set out a method for ordinary playing cards before he turned to tarot. The guide Cartomancy: reading with other cards, in this Library, surveys the traditions.

Lenormand

Lenormand is a 36-card deck named after Marie Anne Lenormand, a Parisian fortune-teller who died in 1843; the deck was published under her name after her death. Its simple images, such as the Ship and the Clover, are read in pairs and lines rather than one at a time.

Oracle deck

An oracle deck is a deck made for reflection or divination with no fixed structure. Each oracle deck sets its own number of cards, themes and meanings, unlike tarot, whose 78 cards are shared across decks. The guide Tarot and oracle cards, in this Library, compares the two.

The vocabulary in practice

Most of these terms are at work in every TarotSeeker reading. Lay a spread from your own deck, or let the app draw for you, and the companion reads each card in its position and names the connections it draws on: elemental dignities, numbers, the weight of the Major Arcana, the court cards. Its reasoning is left in view, so the words above become things you can see and test in your own spreads.