Major Arcana Tarot — 22 Card Meanings
Meanings of 22 Major Arcana tarot cards: from The Fool to The World. Detailed interpretation of each card upright and reversed.
The Major Arcana are the 22 leading cards of the Tarot deck, from The Fool numbered 0 to The World numbered 21. They have no suit, and each one speaks not of everyday trifles but of a larger theme: a turn of fate, an inner lesson, a major chapter of life. When such a card appears in a reading, the question almost always touches on something that matters.
How the Major Arcana Differ from the Minor
The easiest way to remember the difference is through grammar. The Major Arcana are the nouns and verbs of your story: they name what the matter is and what is essentially happening. The Minor Arcana are the adjectives and adverbs: they describe how and under what circumstances the theme unfolds.
This has a practical meaning too. A Major card almost always points to something fateful, a lesson or a turn that is not fully in the person's hands. A Minor card describes daily life, where much depends on the querent. So the first and quickest conclusion from any reading is to see how many Major cards it holds.
The Three Stages of the Major Arcana
The 22 cards split neatly into three groups of seven, with The Fool walking through them as a traveller, gathering experience at every stage.
The first seven (I to VII), from The Magician to The Chariot, are the cards of personality and will. Here a person masters the self and the outer world, learning to act, to trust intuition, to bring order, to choose and to hold a direction.
The second seven (VIII to XIV), from Strength to Temperance, are the cards of inner work. Trials and the turn inward begin here, the meeting with one's own depth and with great change, among them Death, which means the end of the old rather than a physical end.
The third seven (XV to XXI), from The Devil to The World, are the cards of greater forces. This is the encounter with what stands above the personal: temptation, the collapse of illusions, hope, and finally the completion of the cycle. After The World the traveller is ready to begin a new round, but as a different person.
For the full step-by-step account of how The Fool walks this path, see the main Tarot guide.
A Major Arcana Card Reversed
A reversed Major card almost never simply means "bad" or "the opposite". More often it is the card's energy blocked, delayed, expressed in excess, or not yet learned as a lesson.
For example, a reversed Tower is an attempt to postpone a change that is already due, while a reversed Sun says the joy is there but dimmed by doubt. With the Major Arcana a reversal is usually gentler than it seems: a pointer to work still to be done, not a verdict.
When a Reading Holds Many Major Arcana
A predominance of Major cards speaks of a period when great forces are at play and less than usual depends on the querent. It is a fateful stretch, important lessons, themes that cannot be sidestepped. The more Major cards, the more serious and lasting what is being asked about.
If instead there are few Major cards or none, the situation is more everyday and manageable, and almost everything is in the person's own hands. So once the cards are laid out, start with a simple count: the ratio of Major to Minor sets the tone for the whole interpretation.
Your Arcana by Date of Birth
There is a simple way to find your teacher card. Add up all the digits of your birth date and keep reducing the sum until you get a number from 1 to 22. The result points to the Major Arcana that describes your main life lesson.
For example, for the date 14.07.1990: 1 + 4 + 0 + 7 + 1 + 9 + 9 + 0 = 31, then 3 + 1 = 4, which is The Emperor. This is not a prediction but a mirror: such a card shows the theme that will return to you in different forms throughout life.