Unity Tarot Lesson 2

The Major Arcana in more detail

With the most commonly used The Original Rider Waite Tarot Deck

In lesson one, I talked about how the tarot card deck is composed of a set of 22 Major Arcana cards and a set of 4 Minor Arcana suits comprising of 14 cards in each suit. I will be leaving the Minor card suits though until a later post in the blog. Just to recap. The 22 Major Arcana cards can be split into three sections. I will not go into details of each card at this point but just give a flavor of the each of the three sections in the Major Arcana

Cards 0-7. Can represent our early life, Youth or beginning or a new project. For example
The Magician can represent our genetics the building blocks of our physical being, or the first flash of an idea for a new project. The High Priestess can be seen as our subconscious, our past history and how it connects us to the greater unseen worlds.
The Empress may be our mother or the fertility of the world that helped create us or the coming together of a new idea or project
The Hierophant may be our teacher outside of the family and the Emperor is the society we are born into, the rules or our father figure.
As we move from being children to teenagers or move on from learning to personally experiencing our life or projects, the Lovers card and the Chariot card can show our move to adulthood towards, mastery of the learnings we will face.

Card 8-14 Can represent our mastery of difficult life lessons
Show us learning harder life lessons. We learn that our original idea of life is that bit more complex than when we first stepped out of our parental home or learning phase as in the Chariot card number 7. We had high ideals and what we think then as a clear vision of life ahead. What we don’t know is the experiences we have to face ahead of us. We try to find balance and become more experienced as we pass along life’s learnings.

Card 15-21 Represent the journey to wisdom and maturity. The older we get and more experienced we are and the more depth we see in life. We learn we have to face our demons and some dramatic shake up’s as the world and society change around us. We learn to be accepting, flexible and forgiving. We also learn from our experiences how to mentor others along the way and even may become the Hierophant, card 5, the great teacher of others, or the Emperor card 4 the maker of society’s structures rules and laws.

How do the cards work together?

A Tarot reader will ask you a question, shuffle the cards and then lay the cards out in what is called a spread. There are many spreads. The spread, the card reader uses is like a frame work for the chosen cards and question. Each position on the spread has a meaning. The cards meaning and the position on the spread will come together with the other cards chosen to form the story. The question, cards, and spreads can give uncountable options to the outcome of a reading.

The reading you receive from a Tarot card reader is only an option open to you. It is always your choice of the actions you take in life. Tarot can though offer you other options and ideas you may

not have considered.