TAROT CARDS?

The Tarot is a deck of 78 cards. The cards numbered from one to twenty one are called Trumps. These make up the Major Arcana. The card labeled zero is most commonly called The Fool, which some consider to be part of the Major Arcana. If viewed this way, there would then actually be 23 cards in the Major Arcana. The remaining 56 cards referred to as the Minor Arcana are divided into four suits. Each suit contains numbered cards one through ten as well as four cards representing people. The four people cards found in each of suits are called the court cards. These four court cards are often called the page; knight; queen and king. The four suits which make up the 56 cards of the Minor Arcana are often labeled cups; swords; pentacles and wands. In this description of the Tarot deck I use the terms 'often' and 'commonly', because there are many Tarot decks which sometimes choose to use different terms to describe the cards in the Major Arcana; the court cards and the four suits as well. Later I'll be discussing the known origins of Tarot; it's uses; types of decks and more.

The Magician pictured above is number one in the Major Arcana. As you can see, his four tools are the wand; cup; sword and pentacle. These four suits correspond to the four elements of earth (pentacles); air (swords); fire (wands) and water (cups). Again, some deck designers have presented these correspondences differently; particularly by switching fire and air. Here you would find the swords referring to fire and the wands referring to air. This correspondence is not one I choose to use when reading the Tarot.