The 22 main tarot cards are the Major Arcana: The Fool (0), The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement and The World (21). They carry the biggest themes and turning points of a life.
These are the 22 cards that do the heavy lifting. The rest of the deck handles the small print of daily life; the Majors deal in the big stuff: beginnings and endings, love and loss, the slow and unglamorous work of becoming who you are. They are also the cards you already recognise, from The Lovers to Death, which is the most misunderstood card in the deck and almost never means what you are dreading.
This is a plain guide to tarot card meanings in the Major Arcana: where the cards come from, what each one means upright and reversed, and how to read them without working yourself into a state. You do not have to believe the cards predict anything to get something out of them. Their real use is quieter, and we will get to that.
What Are the Major Arcana?
A tarot deck holds 78 cards, split into 56 Minor Arcana and 22 Major Arcana. The Minor Arcana work a lot like an ordinary pack of playing cards and cover the everyday. The Major Arcana, also called the trump cards, are the 22 that carry the deeper stuff.
They run from 0, The Fool, through to 21, The World, and read in order they tell a story. Modern teachers like Brigit Esselmont of Biddy Tarot describe the Majors as the major life lessons and turning points a reading can point to: the cards you stop on when they turn up.
A Brief History of the Tarot
Tarot is younger than most people assume, and it did not start out mystical at all. The cards began as a 15th-century game in northern Italy, commissioned by wealthy families like the Visconti of Milan. The fortune-telling came centuries later, from the late 1700s, when the cards were taken up for cartomancy.
The deck most of us picture today is the Rider-Waite-Smith, the 1909 deck conceived by Arthur Edward Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. Smith's expressive artwork made the cards readable at a glance, and the deck went on to become the most widely used in the world, with the Whitney Museum estimating around one hundred million copies in circulation. Waite's own companion book, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, is still in print as a public-domain text.
"The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs," Arthur Edward Waite wrote in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1911, and that idea still shapes how the Major Arcana are read today.
The Fool's Journey
The most popular way to make sense of the Major Arcana is as The Fool's Journey. The Fool, numbered zero, is the wide-eyed innocent setting off into the world with no idea what he is in for. Each card that follows is someone he meets or a lesson he learns, until he arrives, in one piece, at The World. It is a map of a life, hard stages included. The tarot writer Rachel Pollack made this reading famous in her classic Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, still one of the best books for going deeper.
The 22 Major Arcana Cards and Their Meanings
Here is each card in order, with its core upright meaning and a short note on the reversed (upside-down) reading. Treat these as starting points, not gospel: a card's meaning always bends to the question and the company it keeps. Select any card to read its full guide, upright and reversed, in love and career, with its astrology and crystals.
0 · The Fool
New beginnings, innocence, a leap of faith. Reversed: recklessness, hesitation, fear of the unknown.
1 · The Magician
Manifestation, willpower, having the tools you need. Reversed: untapped potential, manipulation, self-doubt.
2 · The High Priestess
Intuition, mystery, the inner voice. Reversed: secrets, or a disconnect from your own knowing.
3 · The Empress
Abundance, nurturing, creativity, the natural world. Reversed: creative block, or neglecting your own care.
4 · The Emperor
Structure, authority, stability. Reversed: control, rigidity, or a lack of discipline.
5 · The Hierophant
Tradition, learning, spiritual guidance. Reversed: questioning convention, finding your own path.
6 · The Lovers
Love, union, and meaningful choices aligned with your values. Reversed: disharmony, imbalance, second-guessing.
7 · The Chariot
Determination, focus, victory through willpower. Reversed: feeling scattered or out of control.
8 · Strength
Courage, patience, gentle inner strength. Reversed: self-doubt, low energy, forcing things.
9 · The Hermit
Introspection, solitude, seeking inner guidance. Reversed: isolation, or avoiding the quiet you need.
10 · Wheel of Fortune
Cycles, change, a turning point. Reversed: resistance to change, or a run of bad luck.
11 · Justice
Fairness, truth, cause and effect, accountability. Reversed: unfairness, avoidance, dishonesty.
12 · The Hanged Man
A pause, surrender, seeing things from a new angle. Reversed: stalling, resistance, needless delay.
13 · Death
Endings and transformation, very rarely literal. The close of one chapter so another can begin. Reversed: resisting an ending, stagnation.
14 · Temperance
Balance, moderation, patience, blending opposites. Reversed: excess, imbalance, impatience.
15 · The Devil
Attachment, habit, materialism, the things that bind us. Reversed: release, reclaiming your power.
16 · The Tower
Sudden change, upheaval, a revelation that clears the ground. Reversed: averting disaster, fear of change.
17 · The Star
Hope, renewal, healing, quiet faith after hardship. Reversed: discouragement, lost faith.
18 · The Moon
Intuition, dreams, uncertainty, the unconscious. Reversed: confusion lifting, releasing fear.
19 · The Sun
Joy, vitality, success, clarity. Reversed: a temporary cloud over otherwise good things.
20 · Judgement
Reflection, awakening, a moment of reckoning and renewal. Reversed: self-doubt, ignoring a call.
21 · The World
Completion, wholeness, fulfilment, a journey come full circle. Reversed: loose ends, almost-but-not-quite.
The Minor Arcana and the Four Suits
The 22 Major Arcana are only half the story. The other 56 cards are the Minor Arcana, divided into four suits that map the texture of everyday life: Wands (fire, action and passion), Cups (water, emotion and relationships), Swords (air, thought and conflict) and Pentacles (earth, money and the material world). Each suit runs from Ace to Ten and adds four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen and King. Where the Major Arcana mark life's big chapters, the Minor Arcana handle the daily detail. For the full picture, read our guide to the Minor Arcana and their meanings.
How to Read the Major Arcana
When a Major Arcana card turns up in a spread, give it weight: it points to a central theme, not a passing detail. Several Majors in one reading suggest a significant chapter is underway. As a beginner you can read the cards upright only; plenty of experienced readers add reversals later, once the upright meanings feel familiar. Above all, notice your own reaction to a card, because that reaction is often where the real reading begins. As the tarot educator Brigit Esselmont puts it, "Tarot is a direct line to the subconscious."
Do Tarot Cards Predict the Future?
Short version: no. There is no scientific evidence that tarot can foretell events, and a reading works best when you treat it as a mirror rather than a crystal ball. Researchers describe tarot's value as a way to gain a new perspective on a situation, not to reveal hidden facts.
Used that way, tarot becomes a tool for reflection: a structured prompt that makes you name what you already suspect and look at a choice more clearly. That is genuinely useful, and you can get all of it without needing the cards to be magic. Pulling a single card during a quiet ritual, such as a new moon evening, is an easy way to begin.
Where to Begin
Start with the Major Arcana, one card at a time. Draw a single card each morning and watch how its theme turns up over the day. It is the easiest way to learn the deck. When you are ready, a guide like Rachel Pollack's will take you further, and the rest of the library is here whenever you want it.
Keep Exploring
- the history of tarot
- Pamela Colman Smith, the artist behind the cards
- tarot and astrology
- how to read tarot cards
- the free Tarot Path course
Frequently asked questions
The Major Arcana are the 22 trump cards of a 78-card tarot deck, running from 0 (The Fool) to 21 (The World). They represent the big themes and turning points of a life, while the 56 Minor Arcana deal with everyday matters.
There are 22 Major Arcana cards, numbered 0 through 21. The Fool is card 0, and The World is card 21.
The Fool's Journey is a popular way to understand the Major Arcana as a single story. The Fool, card 0, sets out into the world, and each card that follows is a person he meets or a lesson he learns, until he arrives whole at The World.
No. Many readers start with upright meanings only and add reversals once the cards feel familiar. Reading upright first is a perfectly good way to learn.
The Death card is very rarely literal. It usually signals transformation: the ending of one chapter so that another can begin. Reversed, it can suggest resisting a change that is already underway.
There is no scientific evidence that tarot foretells events. A reading works best as a mirror rather than a crystal ball, helping you gain a fresh perspective on a situation and name what you already feel.
