Seventy-eight cards, two groups
The Major Arcana: 22 cards, numbered 0 to 21. No suit. These are the big archetypal themes: The Fool, The Tower, Death, The World. When they appear, the reading is about something structural rather than situational.
The Minor Arcana: 56 cards in four suits of fourteen. Ace through Ten, then Page, Knight, Queen, King. These cover ordinary life: the week, the argument, the job, the money.
The four suits
| Suit | Element | Domain |
|---|---|---|
| Wands | Fire | Will, drive, creativity, enterprise |
| Cups | Water | Emotion, relationship, intuition |
| Swords | Air | Mind, truth, conflict, communication |
| Pentacles | Earth | Work, money, body, home |
Older decks call Pentacles Coins or Discs, and some call Wands Batons or Staves. Same cards.
Why the structure matters
Because it means you are not memorising seventy-eight unrelated things. You are learning:
- 22 archetypes
- 4 elemental domains
- 10 numerical stages
- 4 court ranks
A card you have never seen is decodable from its parts. The Five of Cups is water (emotion) at five (loss, disruption), grief. The Eight of Pentacles is earth (work) at eight (repetition, mastery), practice. That reasoning is correct roughly eighty percent of the time, which is enough to read confidently long before you have memorised anything.
Major or minor?
A spread full of majors is describing forces largely outside your control. A spread full of minors is describing a situation you are actively steering. That single observation is worth more than most individual card meanings.
