The Major Arcana are the heart of the tarot deck. Twenty-two cards. Twenty-two moments in the journey every human being takes, from the first fearless step into the unknown all the way to the hard-won wholeness of The World.
I have been reading these cards since I was a child. I picked them up in Glastonbury, long before I understood what I was holding. Decades later, after thousands of readings, in London, on the phone, in Covent Garden with strangers stopping to see what the cards might say, I still find something new in them. That is the nature of the Major Arcana. They do not run out.
My fascination began even earlier, in the flickering dark of childhood Saturday afternoons. Dr Terror's House of Horrors. Solitaire, the impossibly fabulous clairvoyant being seduced by Bond in Live and Let Die. The hypnotic spinning tarot cards in the titles of Tales of the Unexpected. The tarot worked its way deeper and deeper into my psyche before I had the language for what it was doing.
Then Madame Tamar, the famous West Country mystic, told me that tarot would play a huge part in my life, even though she herself used ordinary playing cards as her oracle. Madame Tamar had told my mother all about me before I was born. When I finally met her, my fascination became an obsession. It never stopped.
When one of these cards appears in your reading, pay attention. The Minor Arcana deals in the texture of daily life, the small decisions, the passing moods, the practical concerns. The Major Arcana speaks to something larger. A turning point. A lesson the soul keeps returning to until it is learned. A force moving through your life whether you acknowledge it or not.
The Fool's Journey, One Card at a Time
The 22 cards tell a single story. The Fool, numbered zero, standing at the edge of the cliff, begins it. He carries everything he needs and knows almost nothing yet. What follows is the full arc of human experience: teachers, trials, gifts, losses, transformations and finally, completion.
Read the cards in order and you will recognise yourself somewhere in the sequence. Most of us are living two or three of these cards at once. The Fool's Journey is not a linear progression, it is a spiral. We return to The Tower and The Hermit and The Lovers throughout our lives, but we return to them differently each time, with more of ourselves intact.
Each card page on this site carries the card's Golden Dawn esoteric title, its Hebrew letter, its astrological correspondence, and, most importantly, what it has meant in real readings with real people over many years of practice.
The Major Arcana, Complete
What Are the Cards Saying About Your Journey Right Now?
Reading the Major Arcana is one thing. Hearing how they speak to your specific situation, your relationships, your crossroads, your next move, is another entirely.
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