MAJOR ARCANA 

The Major Arcana are the unsuited cards of the Tarot deck.  In total there are 22 Major Arcana cards that form the basis for the Tarot deck.  Each of the Major Arcana cards is an archetype and collectively the cards represent a path of spiritual self-awareness, reflecting various stages of life as we search for greater meaning and understanding.  Generally speaking, Major Arcana cards reflect the more significant aspects of our human nature, whereas the Minor Arcana cards reflect our day to day life experiences.  


THE FOOL

  • Taking a leap into the unknown with a great sense of freedom

  • Initiates a new beginning, with huge potential for anything to happen

  • Leaping into new phase without careful planning

  • Being in the moment, free from anything that weighs you down

  • Euphoric, optimistic, free

  • Looking outwards into the new

  • Road less travelled, no longer conforms

  • Listening to our inner self when those around us are too practical


THE MAGICIAN

  • Inspiration to start something new – striking ideas into action

  • Success is derived from consciousness of the power available to everyone –to act is to direct your strength, through the will, to take you to the places you want it to go.

  • Symbolising the idea of manifestation, making something real out of all possibilities in life

  • Maintaining your goal – will power unified towards a goal!

  • Large magical vocabulary

  • Wizard and conjurer


THE HIGH PRIESTESS

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  • Possibility yet to be realised

  • Passivity allows the unconscious to emerge. Only through withdrawal from outer involvement can we allow the inner voice of vision and psychic forces to speak to us

  • Meditative

  • Allowing the unconscious mind to communicate

  • Inner truth

  • Secretive card, the unknown or veiled

  • Unknown forces at work

  • Psychic forces


THE EMPRESS

  • Represents motherhood, love, gentleness and mercy

  • Symbolise the idea of nature

  • Productivity and growth

  • Fertility

  • Harvest, abundance

  • Sensuality

  • Pure emotion

  • Passion rather than ideas

  • Satisfaction and understanding through the emotions


THE EMPEROR

  • A figure of severity, the law must be obeyed to maintain order and the ‘system’ = The Father

  • Drive and determination to achieve supportive structure for the greater good of society

  • Rules and lawsof society, both good and bad, and the power that enforces them = rationale

  • Measurement over emotion

  • Losing touch with our passions, the world becomes cold and barren

  • Institutionalised power and control for good or for bad

  • Disciplined thought


THE HIEROPHANT

  • Initiation into a secret doctrine, secret orders and lodges = a catalyst for self-enquiry leading to enlightenment and liberation (secret doctrine, self-awareness and enlightenment)

  • Initiation where the individual becomes united with the universe

  • Intellectual tradition of a person’s particular society and their education in that tradition

  • Wisdom in a particular tradition

  • Education in traditional practises

  • Initiation into a church, occult or order in society with a set of beliefs that must be learnt before gaining entrance

  • A code of rules and beliefs accepted on faith

  • Teaching, teacher, guru, preacher = someone who provides guidance – all great mystics have been anchored in firm traditional practices

  • Conformity to society’s ideas and rules

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THE LOVERS 

  • Power to discern and make independent choices

  • Breaking away from the parental restraints and living life independently from this

  • Raising our sense through passion and desire = sexual passion allows us to transcend isolation for a moment

  • Physical passions were seen as dangerous to society and had to be controlled = tarot seeks to bring this about to unite our duality

  • Relationships, often loving and intimate

  • An important relationship with the potential of marriage or long term union

  • In unity with someone we are given a glimpse of the greater meaning and deeper significance of life = giving up part of the ego control that isolates us from people and life


THE CHARIOT

  • Successful use in channelling the will to accomplish a result

  • Triumphant and Victorious

  • Chariot looms larger than the city behind it – his will is more powerful than the rules of society

  • Asserting the ego

  • Control over direction, asserting direction

  • Sexual energy of the libido

  • Mature adult, successful in life, admired by others, confident and content with himself and able to control feelings, and above all, direct the will


STRENGTH

  • Transforming desire into spiritual energy

  • Strength from within, experiencing life passionately but peacefully, without being controlled or carried away by passion

  • Finding strength to begin or continue a difficult project, despite fear and emotional strain

  • Natural forces that the rationale mind must overcome

  • Facing life and difficult problems or times of change with hope and eagerness

  • Confronting feelings and desires long hidden from our conscious thoughts

  • Balance between animal and human


THE HERMIT

  • Withdrawal from the outer world for the purpose of activating the unconscious mind, awakening the inner self

  • Signifies a teacher who will show us how to begin this process, and will help us find our way

  • Giver of wisdom to the knight on a spiritual quest

  • Therapist, guru, spiritual, inner spiritual guide or occult teacher

  • Looking back at what you have, or of your experiences and place in the world

  • Holding on to thoughts and experiences for reflection

  • Card symbolises old man = maturity and knowledge of what really matters in a person’s life

  • Signifies transition through techniques of meditation, psychic discipline or analysis that allow hidden parts of the psyche to begin to speak to us


WHEEL OF FORTUNE

  • Vision of a person’s life, the events, who you are, what you’ve made of yourself

  • Ever turning wheel signifies karma, leading you to reincarnate in one body after another = action you take in one life, you build up a certain destiny for yourself in the next

  • Buddha ended his desires and got off the wheel

  • Change of circumstances, unexplainable or out of the blue, the wheel keeps on turning

  • Fate, destiny

  • Gamble, chance

  • A turn for the better

  • The questions of existence = things do not just happen, they are made to happen. The power to shape events, to give life and form and purpose to the universe, belongs to the Holy Ghost, dwelling in the physical world as a presence within the Holy Grail


JUSTICE

  • Seeing, understanding, accepting and learning of the past according to truth

  • Law not does discriminate

  • Free will judged by the past

  • Honesty, fairness, correct actions, legal and other matters, just decision

  • Accepting responsibility for ourselves frees us from the past – like Buddha remembering all his past lives – becoming conscious of this = otherwise we repeat the behaviour constantly


THE HANGED MAN

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  • Surrender

  • An understanding of the bigger spiritual picture

  • Yogic and meditative pose channelling energy away from genitals to the head

  • Spiritual awakening

  • New or different perspective. Upside down posture shows the energy gravitating to the head = higher awareness channelled up from the genitals.

  • Represents artists, writers and psychologists with hints of great truths and simple designs

  • In waiting

  • Limbo

  • The need to make a sacrifice in order for things to change before they can move forward


DEATH

  • Being forced to face circumstances we wish to deny

  • Fear of letting go, facing the reality of what is really happening

  • Extreme steps must be taken to force us to face what we deny – change must happen

  • Ego resists idea of death and therefore keeps us from enjoying life

  • Giving up rigid old ways = life comes at us with enough power this (ego) will collapse

  • Profound change after a difficult transition in our lives

  • Rebirth where we experience new maturity and freedom of energy


TEMPERANCE

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  • Temperance is a card of behaviour, not concepts

  • Temperance = a true and proper response to all situations as they arise

  • Improved health after a crisis, a return to life

  • Air travel

  • Overseas

  • Mastering the ability to go with the flow of life = magical quality of the physical impossibility of the way the cups are arranged

  • Combining spontaneity with knowledge

  • Taking life as it comes, moment by moment


THE DEVIL

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  • Narrow materialistic view of life

  • Unhappiness from the limitations in our lives

  • Inability to see truth

  • Stuck in a situation that you are aren’t happy with = limited or incomplete knowledge

  • Denial of spiritual component

  • A force of illusion and oppression = the main illusion is materialism, we usually think of as an over concern with money, but which more properly means the view that nothing exists beyond the world of the senses

  • Excitement, often sexual

  • Lust


THE TOWER

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  • Shaky ground, unsettled, falling apart, no solid foundation

  • Unsettling dreams, arguments and depression - if denied the unconscious will explode

  • Release of intolerable pressure

  • A flash of enlightenment, particularly where it replaces a limited view of life

  • Inspiration

  • Brilliance

  • Violent upheaval, clearing away some situation that has built up intolerable pressure


THE STAR

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  • Your wishes, dreams and hopes

  • Anything that you project and work towards

  • Wholeness, openness and healing

  • After the storm, peace

  • Inner calm

  • Compares to Temperance, both pour water, have a foot in the water and one on land, and both come after a crisis

  • Individual with high degree of sensitivity and vulnerability = exposed and naked


THE MOON

  • Card of psychic abilities – trusting your instincts

  • Sudden release of unconscious energy

  • Moon’s eerie half-light brings out strange feelings in people and animals

  • A burst of energy which is too great for the dream mechanisms to peacefully assimilate can result in both a nightmare and after waking feeling of the body being charged with wild energy

  • Depression or a dark period = dark night of the soul

  • Full moon = prevalence of disturbed emotions. Moon excites fear and strangeness, just as the Sun relaxes and consoles

  • Card of the imagination


THE SUN

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  • Awareness of eternal truth freeing us from illusion and fear

  • Joy

  • Happiness

  • Success

  • Often points to children

  • Warmth


JUDGEMENT

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  • A push or a call from within, to make some important change

  • Understanding and recognising the need for change

  • Important decisions based on past experiences

  • Responsibility to weigh up everything in order to move forward

  • Big questions need to be asked and thrashed out

  • Crossroads in life where a decision is required on whether to make some great change

  • Cross banner indicates a meeting of opposites

  • A call to rise to a more meaningful existence

  • Card of the past


THE WORLD

  • Success, achievement, satisfaction and fulfilment

  • Feeling unified and at one with your environment and purpose = holistic approach to life

  • Completion

  • Connectedness to your physical and spiritual world

 

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