Tarot card meanings: all 78 cards, how to read them, spreads and a yes/no reading

What is tarot?

Tarot is a deck of 78 illustrated cards that began as a fifteenth-century Italian card game (tarocchi) and became, from the late eighteenth century onward, a tool for divination and, more recently, for reflection, journaling and therapy-adjacent self-inquiry. The deck most people picture is the Rider-Waite-Smith, published in 1909 with illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite; its images, the child on the white horse of The Sun, the lightning-struck Tower, the three cups raised in celebration, are the visual vocabulary of nearly every modern deck.

A tarot reading is not a prediction machine. The cards do not know the future; they offer images, and the reader (you, a friend, a professional) interprets those images in relation to a question. The value is in the interpretation: a well-run reading forces you to say out loud what you hope, what you fear and what you already know. That is why tarot pairs naturally with astrology on this site. A birth chart describes your patterns; a spread shows you which pattern is active today.

Major Arcana vs Minor Arcana

The deck has two halves. The 22 Major Arcana (from The Fool, numbered 0, to The World, numbered 21) represent the big archetypal themes: beginnings, love, crisis, faith, renewal, completion. When several Major cards appear in a spread, the reading is about something that matters. The 56 Minor Arcana are four suits of fourteen cards each, Ace through Ten plus four court cards (Page, Knight, Queen, King), and they describe everyday situations, moods, tasks and people. A spread full of Minor cards is about the texture of a week rather than the direction of a life.

Tarot Major Arcana meanings at a glance

Every one of the 22 Major Arcana in order, with its core upright meaning. The Sun has a full guide; the rest are summarised here.

The four suits of the Minor Arcana

Each suit maps to an element, an area of life and, in the Golden Dawn system, three zodiac signs.

• Wands (fire): Aries, Leo, Sagittarius. Energy, ambition, creativity, passion, work as a calling. Wands cards are about what you are driven to do.
• Cups (water): Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces. Emotion, relationships, intuition, love and grief. Cups cards are about how you feel and whom you feel it for.
• Swords (air): Gemini, Libra, Aquarius. Thought, conflict, truth, communication and anxiety. Swords are the hardest suit; they cut both ways.
• Pentacles (earth): Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn. Money, work, the body, home and practical results. Pentacles are about what you can hold.

Within each suit, the numbers tell a story that echoes numerology: Ace begins, Two chooses or pairs, Three grows, Four stabilises, Five disrupts, Six harmonises, Seven tests, Eight works, Nine nears completion, Ten completes. The court cards are people or roles: the Page learns, the Knight acts, the Queen embodies, the King governs. If you know the numerology of 1 to 9, you already know half the Minor Arcana.

Court cards: who is who

The sixteen court cards confuse more beginners than the rest of the deck combined, because they can be a person, a role you are playing, or an approach the situation needs. A quick key: Pages are students and messengers, the beginning of a suit's energy (a Page of Cups is a crush or a creative idea; a Page of Pentacles is a new course or job application). Knights are the energy in motion, sometimes too much of it (the Knight of Swords charges in; the Knight of Pentacles plods and delivers). Queens embody the suit inwardly and relationally (the Queen of Wands is confident warmth; the Queen of Swords is clear-eyed honesty). Kings govern the suit outwardly (the King of Cups is emotional maturity; the King of Pentacles is material security). When a court card appears, ask first whether it is you, then whether it is someone else, then whether it is advice.

Upright and reversed

Most readers use reversals: a card drawn upside down. A reversed card is usually the same energy blocked, delayed, excessive or turned inward. The Sun reversed is not misery; it is joy behind a cloud or optimism that needs a reality check. Some readers skip reversals entirely and read the card's shadow from context. Neither approach is wrong. Beginners often find it easier to start without reversals and add them once the upright meanings are familiar.

How to do a tarot reading

The steps below take about ten minutes and work for a single card or a full spread. The single most important one is the first: a vague question gets a vague reading.

Learning the meanings without memorising 156 definitions

You do not need to memorise 78 upright and 78 reversed meanings. Learn three systems and you can read any card. First, the element of the suit tells you the domain: fire for drive, water for feeling, air for thought, earth for the material. Second, the number tells you the stage, using the same 1-to-10 story as numerology. Put them together and the Five of Cups reads itself: disruption (five) in the emotional domain (cups), which is grief, loss, dwelling on what spilled. Third, for the Major Arcana, learn the Fool's journey: the sequence from 0 to 21 as one life story, from innocence through the lessons of the Magician and High Priestess, the tests of the Tower and the Devil, to the integration of the World. Once the sequence is in your head, each card's meaning is its place in the story. Then spend a week pulling one card a day and writing a sentence about it, and the pictures will start to speak before the book does.

Choosing a first deck

The Rider-Waite-Smith deck (or one of its many close relatives) is the right first deck for almost everyone, because every Minor Arcana card is fully illustrated and most guides, including this one, describe its images. The Thoth deck, designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris, is beautiful, dense with astrological symbolism and better as a second deck. Marseille-style decks use unillustrated pip cards for the Minors, which suits readers who like to work from number and suit alone. Whatever you choose, pick one whose art you actually want to look at; you will be spending a lot of time with it.

Tarot spreads worth learning

A one-card draw is the best daily practice: one card, one question, one line in a journal. The yes/no reading is a one-card method with its own rules for which cards say yes, no or maybe. A three-card spread is the workhorse; assign the positions before you draw (past, present, future; situation, obstacle, advice; you, them, the relationship). The Celtic Cross, ten cards covering the situation, the crossing influence, the root, the recent past, the possible outcome, the near future, your attitude, the environment, hopes and fears, and the outcome, is the classic full reading and takes twenty minutes done well. Relationship spreads place cards for each person and the connection between them; if you want the astrological version of that, a synastry reading compares two birth charts directly.

Tarot and astrology: how the two fit

Tarot inherited its astrological correspondences from the Golden Dawn in the 1890s, and they are consistent enough to be useful. Each Major Arcana card is linked to a planet or a sign (The Sun to the Sun, The Moon to Pisces, The Emperor to Aries, Death to Scorpio), each suit to an element, and each numbered Minor card to a decan, a ten-degree slice of a sign. That means a reading can be cross-checked against a chart. If you keep drawing The Tower during a Mars transit to your Sun, or The Hermit while Saturn crosses your Ascendant, the two systems are describing the same season in different pictures. The Cosmic Simulator shows the transits; your own deck shows the story. Readers who know their birth chart often keep a "birth card" (the Major Arcana that matches their Sun sign or life path number) as a personal signature.

Ethics of reading tarot

A few rules keep tarot useful and kind. Read for yourself first; you are the only person whose consent is guaranteed. Do not read about third parties who have not asked ("what is my ex thinking?") except as a reflection on your own feelings. Never use a reading to make medical, legal or financial decisions; use it to clarify what you feel about those decisions and then consult a professional. Do not read when you are frightened; fear makes every card The Tower. And avoid readers, human or app, who use the cards to sell you fear or a cure. Tarot's proper job is to make you more honest with yourself, not more dependent on the deck.

Where AstraLink fits

The app does not shuffle cards. It does the thing a good reading is for: it takes a real question about a real date, reads it against your natal chart and the current sky, and returns clear, specific guidance through the AI Advisor. Many of our users pull a card in the morning and check the advisor for the timing; the card gives the image, the chart gives the reason. Start with the free birth chart to see the map the advisor works from.