How many cards are in a tarot deck?

A standard tarot deck has 78 cards. They are divided into the Major Arcana (22 cards) and the Minor Arcana (56 cards). The Minor Arcana is further divided into four suits of 14 cards each: Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles.

What is the difference between the Major and Minor Arcana?

The Major Arcana covers the deep life themes and significant turning points: love that changes everything, major transformation, spiritual calling, and the large forces shaping a person's path. The Minor Arcana covers the everyday details of what is actually happening: feelings, relationship dynamics, work situations, financial decisions, and the practical texture of daily life.

What are the four suits of tarot?

The four suits of the tarot Minor Arcana are Cups (emotions, love, intuition), Wands (passion, creativity, action), Swords (thought, truth, communication), and Pentacles (money, work, material stability). Each suit is associated with one of the four classical elements: Water, Fire, Air, and Earth respectively.

What does a reversed tarot card mean?

A reversed tarot card appears upside down in a reading and indicates that the card's energy is blocked, delayed, internalized, or expressing differently than the upright version. A reversed card does not cancel the card's meaning. It redirects or qualifies it, often pointing to something that is not yet fully expressed or that is working below the surface.

Which tarot cards are the most positive?

The most consistently positive tarot cards include The Sun, The World, The Star, The Ace of Cups, The Nine of Cups, The Ten of Cups, The Ten of Pentacles, The Four of Wands, and The Six of Wands. The Sun is widely considered the most unambiguously positive card in the entire deck.

Can tarot cards predict the future?

Tarot cards do not predict the future in the sense of revealing a fixed outcome. They reflect the current energies, patterns, and potential trajectories in a situation. A skilled reader uses the cards to help someone understand what is most likely given current circumstances, what forces are at work, and what choices are available, which gives the person genuine insight into their path forward.

How do I find a specific tarot card meaning?

Each of the 78 tarot cards has its own dedicated page on The Psychic Line covering upright meaning, reversed meaning, love and career interpretations, yes or no answers, and spread positions. Browse by suit using the Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles suit pages, or go directly to the Major Arcana or Minor Arcana overview pages.

What is a tarot spread?

A tarot spread is a layout in which cards are placed in specific positions, each position representing a different aspect of the question being asked. Common spreads include the three-card spread (past, present, future), the Celtic Cross (a ten-card spread covering a situation from multiple angles), and the single-card draw for a direct yes or no answer.

Tarot Card Meanings: The Complete Guide to All 78 Cards

A standard tarot deck has 78 cards. Each one carries a meaning, and each meaning shifts depending on where the card falls in a spread, what cards surround it, and what question is being asked. This section of The Psychic Line covers every card in the deck, organized by suit, with full explanations of upright and reversed meanings, love and career interpretations, yes or no answers, and guidance for every spread position.

Whether you are learning tarot for the first time or looking to deepen your understanding of a specific card, this is the place to start. If you want a personal reading from one of our experienced advisors, our tarot card reading service has been available since 1991. Call us at 1-800-966-2294.

How the Tarot Deck Is Organized

The 78 tarot cards are divided into two sections: the Major Arcana, which covers the deep life themes and turning points, and the Minor Arcana, which covers the everyday details of what is actually happening in a person's life.

The Major Arcana contains 22 cards numbered 0 through 21, from The Fool at the beginning of the journey to The World at its completion. These are the cards that deal with the significant forces shaping a person's life: love that changes everything, loss that teaches something irreplaceable, a calling that will not be ignored, a transformation that is already underway. When Major Arcana cards appear in a reading, what is happening matters at a deeper level than everyday circumstances.

The Minor Arcana contains the remaining 56 cards, divided into four suits of 14 cards each. These cards deal with the details of daily life: how a person is feeling right now, what is happening at work, what the emotional texture of a relationship looks like, what financial decisions are in front of someone and what they look like from the inside. The Minor Arcana answers the questions that live inside the bigger themes the Major Arcana names.

The Major Arcana

The 22 Major Arcana cards tell the story of a soul's journey from the open potential of The Fool through every test, transformation, and breakthrough that makes genuine wisdom possible, arriving finally at the wholeness of The World. Each card is an archetype, a universal human experience that anyone can recognize, even if the specific circumstances differ.

Below are all 22 Major Arcana cards. Each links to its full meaning page.

The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World.

For a full introduction to what the Major Arcana means and how these cards work in a reading, visit the Major Arcana overview page.

The Minor Arcana

The 56 Minor Arcana cards are divided into four suits, each connected to one of the four classical elements: Cups (Water), Wands (Fire), Swords (Air), and Pentacles (Earth). Each suit covers its own territory of human experience and contains cards numbered Ace through Ten plus four Court Cards.

For a full introduction to how the Minor Arcana works and what each suit covers, visit the Minor Arcana overview page.

Cups: Emotions, Love, and Intuition

The suit of Cups covers the emotional and relational dimension of life: feelings, love, intuition, relationships, grief, joy, and the interior world that shapes everything else. Cups are associated with Water and appear most often in readings about love, emotional wellbeing, and the heart's honest experience of a situation. The 14 Cups cards run from the Ace of Cups through the King of Cups.

Wands: Passion, Action, and Creativity

The suit of Wands covers passion, desire, creative energy, ambition, and the drive that gets people moving toward what they want. Wands are associated with Fire and appear most often in readings about career, creative work, courage, and the question of whether to pursue something boldly or let it go. The 14 Wands cards run from the Ace of Wands through the King of Wands.

Swords: Thoughts, Truth, and Communication

The suit of Swords covers the mental dimension of life: thoughts, truth, conflict, communication, decisions, and the sometimes uncomfortable experience of seeing things exactly as they are. Swords are associated with Air and appear most often in readings about difficult conversations, major decisions, conflict, and situations where something real needs to be named before anything can move forward. The 14 Swords cards run from the Ace of Swords through the King of Swords.

Pentacles: Money, Work, and Stability

The suit of Pentacles covers the material dimension of life: finances, career, practical work, physical health, home, and the long-term results of effort applied consistently over time. Pentacles are associated with Earth and appear most often in readings about financial decisions, career development, and the practical foundations of a person's daily life. The 14 Pentacles cards run from the Ace of Pentacles through the King of Pentacles.

Tarot Yes or No Readings

One of the most common uses of tarot is answering direct yes or no questions. Not all cards are equally clear on this: some cards are among the strongest yes answers in the entire deck, others lean toward no or caution, and some depend heavily on context and surrounding cards. Our tarot yes or no guide covers how yes or no readings work and lists every Major Arcana card's yes or no meaning, with the Minor Arcana suits covered in detail.

How to Use These Card Pages

Every card page on this site follows the same structure so you can find what you need quickly, whether you are looking up a card you drew in a reading or researching a specific card in depth.

Each page covers the card's core upright meaning, its reversed meaning, its meaning in love and relationship readings, its meaning in career and financial readings, its yes or no answer, and its meaning in each spread position: past, present, and future. Each page also includes a set of frequently asked questions with structured schema markup, which means these pages are designed to appear directly in search results and AI-generated answers when someone asks about that specific card.

The pages are built for both beginners who want a clear, plain-language explanation and for people who already know tarot and want a deeper, more nuanced take on a card they are sitting with.

Getting a Professional Tarot Reading

These pages are a resource for learning and reference. What a tarot reading actually provides is something different: a skilled reader working with the specific cards that appeared in a spread designed around your question, bringing years of experience and genuine intuition to what those cards mean for your specific situation right now.

Our tarot readers at The Psychic Line have been doing this work since 1991. Every reading comes with our 5 Minute Guarantee. If you are not satisfied in the first five minutes, we will find you another reader at no charge. We are available Monday through Friday 10 AM to Midnight Eastern, and Saturday and Sunday Noon to Midnight Eastern.

Call us at 1-800-966-2294 to speak with a reader today.