Beginning with the Cards

Today we move on to the explanations of the cards. There are totally 78 cards in a standard Rider-Waite pack. These 78 cards are further divided into two parts the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. The Arcana word comes from the Arcanum meaning "Secrets" and the major arcana means bigger secrets of life and minor arcana means minor secrets of life.

The tarot cards when shuffled together with the majors and the minors produce a mix and natural blend of energies corresponding to the questions of the querent. A querent is the one who comes to a tarot reader to ask questions.

Tarot cards respond via the universal energies that are connected to us and communicate to us via the sub-conscious mind. The cards then come out accordingly and are read by the reader, the conscious mind has also studied the Tarot and so the messages are easily understood by it.

The Major Arcana begins with the Fool card which obviously we saw in th Fool's journey card. The fool is an unnumbered card which can be actually placed anywhere in the spread. The fool is like the joker card from the normal playing deck that can be placed in any position. The majors are then 21 in number and totalling to 22 with the fool card.

The Minor Arcana is further divided into 4 suits that resemble the 4 suits of the playing cards, but these cards hold deeper meanings about the physical world rather then just numbers. These cards are just numbered in some decks but its always good to have a pictorial representation of minors as well as it makes reading easier.

The four suits are the Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. Wands is a warm fiery suit, Cups is a flowy watery suit, Swords is a sharp analytical suit and pentacles is an earthy materialistic suit.
Each suit has ten numbered cards from Aces to tens and then four court cards unlink the playing cards. Here Page is an addition. The four court cards are the Page, Knights, Queen and Kings, which are usually used as personality pointer cards or significator cards that depict people in the reading in querent's llife or the querent himself.