It is believed that the Tarot, a 78 card deck, originated in Egypt. It was carried across Europe by the Romans and was soon used throughout. Games were created in the Taverns and Pubs, eventually, 26 of the cards were dropped leaving today’s 52. The Clubs, Spades, Diamonds, and Hearts of today were the Disks, Swords, Rods, and Cups of yesterday. If you don't have a Tarot deck but want to do some readings simply take the Minor deck interpretations for the above.
Basic card meanings
Trumps/Major Arcanes
Card # Card Name – (Correspondence) Meaning
O The Fool- (Air) In spiritual matter, represents ideas, thoughts, spirituality, that which endeavors to transcend earth. Ill dignified: folly, eccentricity, mania
I The Magus-(Mercury) Skill, wisdom, adroitness, elasticity, craft, cunning, deceit, theft, sometimes occult wisdom or power, messages, business transactions. Ill dignified: learning or intelligence interfering with the matter in hand.
II The Priestess-(Moon)Pure, exalted, & gracious influence enters the matter, hence change, alteration, increase, decrease, fluctuation.
III The Empress-(Venus) Love, beauty, happiness, pleasure, success, fruitfulness, good fortune, graciousness, elegance, gentleness. Ill dignified: dissipation, debauchery idleness, sensuality.
IV The Emperor-(Aries) War, conquest, victory, strife, stability, power, originality, government, energy, ambition. Ill dignified: Overweening pride, megalomania, rashness, ill temper.
V The Hierophant-(Taurus) Divine wisdom, inspiration, stubborn strength, toil, endurance, persistence, teaching, help from superiors, patience, organization, peace, goodness of heart, occult force voluntarily invoked.
VI The Lovers-(Gemini) Openness to inspiration, intuition, intelligence, childishness, attraction, beauty, love. Ill dignified: Self-contradiction, instability, indecision, union in shallow degree with others, superficiality.
VII The Chariot-(Cancer)Triumph, victory, hope, obedience, faithfulness, health, success though sometimes not enduring, authority under authority. Ill dignified: Violence in maintaining traditional ideas, lust of destruction.
VIII Adjustment-(Libra) Justice, balance, adjustment, suspension of action pending decision, may refer to lawsuits, trials, marriages, treaties, etc.
IX The Hermit-(Virgo) Illumination from within, divine inspiration, wisdom, prudence, circumspection, retirement from participation in current events.
X Fortune-(Jupiter) Change of fortune, generally good. Destiny.
XI Lust-(Leo) Courage, strength, energy, use of magickal power, control of life force, great love affair, resort to magick.
XII The Hanged Man-(Water) Redemption through sacrifice, enforced sacrifice, suffering. Ill dignified: Punishment, loss, defeat, failure, death.
XIII Death-(Scorpio) Transformation, change voluntary or involuntary, perhaps sudden and unexpected change, apparent death or destruction that is illusory when viewed from a higher perspective.
XIV Art-(Sagittarius) Combination of forces, realization, action based on accurate calculation, economy, management, success after elaborate maneuvers, the way of escape.
XV The Devil-(Capricorn) Blind impulse, irresistibly strong and unscrupulous person, ambition, temptation, obsession, secret plan about to be executed, hard work, endurance, aching discontent, materialism, fate.
XVI The Tower-(Mars) Quarrel, combat, danger, ruin, destruction of plans, ambition, courage, sudden death, escape from prison and all it implies.
XVII The Star-(Aquarius) Hope, unexpected help, charity of vision, spiritual insight. Ill dignified: Error of judgment, dreaminess, disappointment.
XVIII The Moon-(Pisces) Illusion, deception, bewilderment, hysteria, madness, dreaminess, falsehood, voluntary change, brink of change, dignity.
XIX The Sun-(The Sun) Glory, gain, riches, triumph, pleasure, frankness, truth, shamelessness, manifestation, recovery from sickness, sometimes sudden death. Ill dignified: Arrogance, vanity.
XX The Aeon-(Fire) Final decision concerning the past, new current for the future, always represents taking a definite step.
XXI The Universe-(Saturn, Earth) The essence of the question itself, synthesis, the end of the matter, delay, opposition, inertia perseverance, patience, the crystallization of the whole matter involved.
The remaining 56 cards are divided into 4 groups: Cups, which represent water, Pentacles/Disks – Earth, Wands/Rods – Air, and Swords/Spears – Fire. These last two may be switched depending on your deck. Terms to know: when a card is ill dignified the surrounding cards show a negative effect, when a card is well dignified the surrounding cards show a positive effect.
Wands/Rods
Knight: Represents the fiery part of fire. A man with the qualities of activity, generosity, impetuosity, pride, and swiftness. Ill dignified: An evil-minded, cruel, bigoted, and brutal man.
Queen: Represents the water part of fire. A woman of adaptability, persistent energy, calm authority, with great power to attract, generous but impatient of opposition. Ill dignified: A woman who is stupid, obstinate, revengeful, domineering, quick to take offense without good cause.
Prince: Represents the airy part of fire. A young man swift and strong, impulsive, violent, just, noble, and generous with a sense of humor. Ill dignified: Proud, intolerant, cruel, and prejudiced youth who may be a coward.
Princess: Represents the earthy part of fire. A young woman individualistic, brilliant and daring with a great energy, sudden and violent in love or anger, enthusiastic. Ill dignified: Superficial, theatrical, shallow, false, cruel, unreliable, faithless, domineering woman.
Ace: Root of fire. Energy, strength, force, solar-phallic outburst of flame. Vigor, natural force as opposed to invoked force.
Two: Energy initiating a current of force. Harmony of rule and justice. Influence over another. Boldness, courage, fierceness. Ill dignified: Restlessness, turbulence, obstinacy.
Three: Established strength, success after struggle, pride and arrogance, realization of hope, nobility. Ill dignified: Conceit.
Four: Perfected work, settlement, completion after much labor, rest, subtlety, cleverness, conclusions from previous knowledge, Ill dignified: Unreliability from over anxiousness and hurriedness of action.
Five: Quarreling, fighting, competition, cruelty, violence, lust and desire. May be prodigality or generosity according to dignity.
Six: Energy in balanced manifestation, love, gain and success, triumph after strife. Ill dignified: Insolence and pride.
Seven: Energy feels itself at last grasp, struggles, possible victory, obstacles, and difficulties yet courage to meet them. Victory in small things. Ill dignified: Quarreling.
Eight: Speech, light, electricity, energy of high velocity, activity, approach to goal, letter o message, rapidity, boldness, freedom. Ill dignified: Too much force applied to suddenly. A flash in the pan.
Nine: Power, heath, success after opposition and strife, tremendous force, recovery from sickness, victory after apprehension and fear, Illustrates the aphorism that "Change is stability."
Ten: Force detached from spiritual sources, fire in its most destructive aspect, cruelty and malice, selfishness and lying, repression, slander, and ill will. Can be self-sacrificing and generosity if particularly well dignified.
Cups
Knight: Represents the fiery part of water. A man who is graceful dilettante, amiable in a passive way, quick to respond to attraction and easily enthusiastic, exceedingly sensitive but with little depth of character. Ill dignified: Sensual and idle man, untruthful, prone to melancholy and drug abuse.
Queen: Represents the watery part of water. A woman who reflects the nature of the observer, dreamy, tranquil, poetic, imaginative, kind yet not willing to take much trouble for another. She is much affected by surrounding influences, therefore more dependent than most other cards on good or ill dignity.
Prince: Represents the airy part of water. A young man whose characteristics are subtlety, secret, violence, and craft; and artist whose come surface masks intense passion, caring intensely for power and wisdom, ruthless in his own aims. Ill dignified: Intensely evil and merciless man with overweening ambition.
Princess: Represents the earthy part of water. A young woman infinitely gracious, all sweetness, voluptuousness, gentleness, kindness, romantic and dreaming. Ill dignified: Indolent, selfish and luxurious woman.
Ace: Root powers of water. Fertility, productiveness, beauty, pleasure and happiness.
Two: Harmony of male and female interpreted in the broadest sense, perfect and placid harmony radiation intense joy and ecstasy. Pleasure, warm friendship, mirth. Ill dignified: Indolent, selfish and luxurious woman.
Three: Spiritual basis of fertility, plenty, hospitality, pleasure, sensuality, passive success, love, kindness, bounty, the good things of life, while they are to be enjoyed are transient and therefore cannot be relied on.
Four: Weakness, abandonment to desire, pleasure mixed with anxiety, blended success and pleasure possibly approaching their end. Injustice, the seeds of decay in the fruits of pleasure.
Five: End of pleasure, disturbance when least expected, misfortune, disappointment in love, unkindness from friends, loss of friendship, treachery, ill will, sadness, vain regret.
Six: Well being, harmony of natural forces without effort or strain, ease, satisfaction, happiness, success, fulfillment of sexual will, beginning of steady increase (but beginning only). Ill dignified: Vanity, presumptuousness and thanklessness.
Seven: Delusion, illusory success, drug addiction, intoxication, guilt lying, deceit, promises unfulfilled, lust, fornication, dissipation in love and friendship, vanity.
Eight: Abandoned success, decline of interest in anything, temporary success but without further result, instability, misery and repining journeying from place to place, may mean leaving material success for something higher.
Nine: Complete success, pleasure and happiness, physical well being, happiness almost perfect but perhaps temporary. Ill dignified: Danger of vanity, self-praise, conceit, and over indulgence.
Ten: pursuit of pleasure crowned with perfect success but incomplete, matter arranged and settled as wished, last success, peacemaking and generosity. Ill dignified: Dissipation, debauchery, pity, waste, and stagnation.
Swords
Knight: Represents the fiery part of air. A man active, skillful and clever, fierce, delicate, and courageous but often unreflective. Ill dignified: A man incapable of decision, deceitful, tyrannical, and crafty.
Queen: Represents the watery part of air. A graceful woman, intensely perceptive, a keen observer, subtle interpreter, an intense individualist, confident, gracious and just. Ill dignified: Cruel, sly, deceitful, and unreliable woman. Superficial attractiveness makes her all the more dangerous.
Prince: Represents the airy part of air. A young man, purely intellectual, full of ideas and designs, domineering, intensely clever but unstable of purpose, with an elusive and elastic mind supporting various and contradictory opinions. He slays as fast as he creates. Ill dignified: Harsh, malicious, plotting, unreliable man, a fanatic.
Princess: Represents the earthy part of air, A young woman, stern and revengeful, with destructive logic, firm and aggressive, with great practical wisdom and subtlety, dexterous in management of practical affairs. Ill dignified: A woman filled with low cunning and frivolousness.
Ace: Root powers of air. Invoked force, represents great power for good or evil but invoked. Conquest, whirling force, activity, strength through trouble, as affirmation of justice upholding divine authority may become sword of wrath, punishment and affliction.
Two: Contradictory characteristics in same nature, sacrifice and trouble giving birth to strength, quarrel made up and peace restored, yet tension remaining, pleasure after pain, truth and untruth indecision, actions sometimes selfish, sometimes unselfish.
Three: Melancholy, unhappiness, tears, disruption, sowing of discord and strife, delay, absence, separation, mirth in forbidden pleasures, deceit. Well dignified: singing, faithfulness in promises honesty in money transactions.
Four: Rest from sorrow, peace after war, relaxation of anxiety, refuge from mental chaos, recovery from sickness, change for the better after struggle, authority in the intellectual world, convention, establishment of dogma.
Five: Loss, malice, spite, weakness, slander, failure, anxiety, poverty, dishonor, trouble, grieving after pain, ties, separator of friends, busybody, cruel yet cowardly, evil speaking.
Six: Intelligence that has realized its goal, labor, work, success after anxiety, passage from difficulty, journey by water, Ill dignified: Selfishness, conceit, intellectual pride.
Seven: Unstable effort, vacillation, vain striving against opposition too powerful, partial success by giving up on the brink of winning through lack of energy, fascination with display, journey by land, untrustworthy person.
Eight: Waste of energy in details causing neglect of more important things, lack of persistence, sheer unforeseen bad luck, restriction, great care in some things counterbalanced by equal disorder in others.
Nine: Agony of mind, despair, hopelessness, worry, suffering, loss, illness, malice, pain, burden, oppression, subtlety and craft, lying, shame. Well dignified: Obedience, faithfulness, patience, unselfishness.
Ten: Reason divorced from reality, death, failure, disaster yet not entirely without hope, disruption, idle chatter, clever, eloquent and insolent person, impertinent yet with mirth, spiritually, may herald the end of delusion.
Disks/Pentacles
Knight: Represents the fiery part of earth. A farmer, patient, laborious and clever in material things, perhaps somewhat dull and preoccupied with material affairs. Ill dignified: Avaricious, surly, petty, jealous, grasping man.
Queen: Represents the water part of earth. A woman ambitious in useful directions, affectionate and kind, charming, timid, practical, quiet and domesticated. Ill dignified: Dull, servile, foolish, capricious, prone to debauch and moodiness.
Prince: Represents the airy part of earth. A young man bringing great energy to practical matters, a capable manager and steadfast worker, competent, perhaps considered dull, somewhat resentful of spiritual types, slow to anger but implacable if aroused.
Princess: Represents the earthy part of earth. A young woman beautiful and strong, as if beholding a secret wonder, pregnant with all life, generous, kind, diligent, benevolent, persevering. Ill dignified: Wasteful and prodigal woman at war with her essential dignity.
Ace: Root power of earth. Material gain, power, labor, wealth, contentment, materiality in all senses.
Two: Harmony of change, alternation of gain and loss, weakness and strength, elation and melancholy, varying occupation, wandering, visit to friends, pleasant change, industrious yet unreliable person.
Three: Business, paid employment, commercial transaction, constructive building up, increases of material things, growth, commencement of matters to be established latter. Ill dignified: Selfish, narrow, prejudiced, greedy person seeking impossibilities.
Four: Law and order, gain of money and influences, earthly power but nothing beyond, success, rank, dominion, skill in direction of physical forces. Ill dignified: Prejudice, covetousness, suspicion, lack of originality.
Five: Intense strain with continued inaction, loss of money, profession, monetary anxiety, poverty. Well dignified: Labor, land cultivation, building, intelligence applied to labor.
Six: Success and gain in material things, power, influence, nobility, philanthropy, somewhat dreamy and transitory situation. Ill dignified: Insolence, conceit with wealth, prodigality.
Seven: Labor abandoned, sloth, unprofitable speculation, promises of success unfulfilled, hopes deceived, disappointment, little gain from much labor. Well dignified: Delay but growth, honorable work undertaken for the love of work with no expectation of material gain.
Eight: Intelligence applied to material affairs, agriculture, building, sill, cunning industriousness. Ill dignified: Avariciousness and hoarding, meanness, over-carefulness in small things that expense of the great.
Nine: Good luck attending material affairs, inheritance, great increase of wealth, completion of material gain. Ill dignified: covetousness, theft, knavery.
Ten: Material prosperity and riches, completion of material fortune but nothing beyond final solidification unless this is devotion to creativity, old age. Ill dignified: Slothfulness, may mean partial loss, dullness of mind with acuity and profit in money transactions, heaviness.
