Tarot table

This is a table I put together for my own mnemonic use. I've been using the Waite-Smith-Rider deck for 40 years, and the characters on the cards seem like old friends. When I use a deck of ordinary playing cards, or a Tarot deck with no pictures on the Lesser Arcana, I can usually call the corresponding picture to mind. But I thought if I had some kind of scheme it might help me remember. These are my own interpretations and may not be "correct", but my take on Tarot is that it's like dream interpretation. For me it's a way to look into my subconscious, and so I'm not that worried about being correct. I don't personally think it can foretell the future. It's more about understanding myself.

Of course I have read many books on Tarot over the past decades. Two that helped me the most in making this list were Eden Gray's The Tarot Revealed and Annie Lionet's Secrets of the Tarot. I also discovered, after beginning this project, that a much more knowledgable person named Ravensong had made a similar table. However, I found it very valuable to put one together for myself, and categorize the cards in a way that made sense to me.

For all these years I've had trouble with the court cards, but making this table helped. I plan to make for my own personal use a list of people I know (in person or in the news or literature) who fit these characteristics, as a way of helping me visualize them. But I'll keep that private for obvious reasons.

When I was first encountering Tarot, back in my early teens, I took the court cards pretty literally. Many books gave them phyical characteristics like skin and hair coloring, which I focused on. Maybe that's why they never really came alive to me. I think it will be more helpful to focus on their personalities. Even the age and gender characteristics I've listed here are only archetypes; the person suggested by the card may not be that age or gender at all. An adult might be childlike or immature; a child might be precocious or mature. A man may have "feminine" qualities; a woman may have "masculine" qualities.

1 is unity by definition. The aces are like abstract values for each suit.
2 is balance, like an old-fashioned scale. Two lovers, two choices.
3 is more than 2, so I see it as an expansion beyond the limitations of the 2s. You meet more people, embark on new ventures, and sometimes get your heart broken in the process.
4 is solid, "four-square", so it reminds me of non-motion.
5 could be visualized as the five corners of a pyramid, which I imagine struggling upward to a point.
6 I see as a Star of David, a male triangle and a female triangle like a Yin and Yan in harmony.
7 reminds me of "Heaven", which reminds me of the visions of the 7 of Cups, and therefore of dreams and aspirations.
8 is like a wheel, which turns and rolls, bringing about changes.
9 is just short of ten, so it reminds me of someone reaching for a goal with hope, or despairing of reaching the goal.
10 is the last number used on the cards, so I see it as the culmination.

I notice that sometimes the swords are like the negation of the general meaning. For example, the 8 is a person stuck, unable to move. And the 9 is despair, while the other three feel more hopeful. And in several cases the wands are a little less positive than the cups and pentacles.

When using ordinary playing cards, the Jacks can be thought of as having the qualities of both the Pages and Knights, which are very similar anyway.

Update I seem to resonate better with words than with pictures sometimes. My Prayer beads page is full of words that are evocative for me. So I took an ordinary deck of cards and labeled each one with a title in large black letters using a permanent marker. I used the chart above as an aid. Since cards can be oriented two ways, I put a title on each end. You could use the same title on both ends, or use "reversed meanings", or use two synonyms for the two titles. I don't do reversed meanings, but I did decide to use two synonyms for each card, to take advantage of the subtle nuances of language. I've found that it's a huge aid. While I can call up the images and meanings from memory, taking that effort out of the picture makes for a much more relaxed interpretation experience. I still find myself visualizing the Tarot images, but the words add an element of abstraction that feels like poetry. The table below is similar to the one above, but only contains the two titles I chose. (I'm still tweaking them.) I included two Jokers, one to represent the Fool and one to represent the World.

Card	Meaning	Cups (Hearts)	Wands (Clubs)	Pentacles (Diamonds)	Swords (Spades)
Ace	Unity	Love, Fertility	Birth, Beginning	Wealth,Prosperity	Intelligence, Force
2	Balance	Lovers, Soulmates	Decision, Choice	Juggling, Preoccupation	Indecision, Stalemate
3	Widening the circle	Friendship, Comfort	Enterprise, Venture	Craftsmanship, Artistry	Grief, Heartache
4	Stability, stagnation	Inertia, Disenchantment	Celebration, Festival	Miser, Hoarder	Rest, Convalescence
5	Struggle	Partial loss, Imperfection	Competition, Struggle	Poverty, Financial worry	Enemy, Defeat
6	Harmony	Memories, Nostalgia	Triumph, victory	Gifts, Charity	Vacation, Respite
7	Dreams and Schemes	Fantasy, Illusion	Advantage, Success	Progress, Long-range plan	Scheme, Plot
8	Change, upheaval	Turning away, Changing course	Action, Energy	Creativity, Apprenticeship	Frustration, Bondage
9	Hope and despair	Satisfaction, Well-being	Wariness, Watchfulness	Opulence, Reward	Guilt, Despair
10	Culmination	Happiness, Peace	Burden, Resolution	Estate, Legacy	Disaster, Devastation
Jack	Child, new beginnings, messenger	Imaginative, Romantic	Messenger, Opportunity	Diligence, Scholarship	Spying, Vigilance
Queen	Woman, emotions	Intuitive, Inner Self	Extrovert, Friendly	Gracious, Generous	Intelligent, Aloof
King	Man, intellect	Kind, Counselor	Politician, Good communicator.	Practical, Dependable	Authority, Analytical
Joker	Fool	Folly, Frivolity
Joker	World	Synthesis, Liberation

This got me to thinking about using the cards in an ordinary deck to represent the trumps. One idea would be to choose a trump suit and use the numbers of the cards to reflect the numbers of the trump cards somehow. But I also thought of using the court cards to represent some of them, since the court cards have never been as resonant for me as the rest of the cards in the deck. The aces and tens could also do double duty. Here are some possibilities:

Card	Cups (Hearts)	Wands (Clubs)	Pentacles (Diamonds)	Swords (Spades)
Ace	The Sun	The Moon	The Star	Death
10	The Lovers	Justice	The Wheel of Fortune	The Tower of Destruction
Jack	Judgment	The Chariot	The Hermit	The Magician
Queen	The Empress	Strength	Temperance	The High Priestess
King	The Hanged Man	The Emperor.	The Heirophant	The Devil
Joker	Fool
Joker	World

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Table of the Lesser Arcana Tarot cards

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