78 Cards · Major & Minor Arcana
Consult the Cards
Hold a single question in mind. The deck answers the question you actually asked, not the one you said aloud.
Choose a Spread
In short
Draw the full 78-card tarot deck across nine spreads — Celtic Cross, Lovers' Mirror, Shadow Work and more — with upright and reversed readings.
- Read the picture before you recall the keyword. Smith's illustrations carry the meaning; the book is a second opinion.
- Do not re-draw for a better answer. Ask a different question instead.
- Reversals are optional. Some readers use them for blocked or internalised energy; others read them as intensity. Pick one and be consistent.
- Write the reading down before events unfold. Accuracy is only measurable in advance.
78
Cards in the deck
22
Major Arcana
1909
Rider–Waite–Smith
9
Spreads offered here
Tarot begins as a card game. The earliest surviving decks — the hand-painted Visconti-Sforza cards of fifteenth-century Milan — were made for trick-taking play, with the trumps serving as a permanent suit of triumphs. Divinatory use is documented from the eighteenth century, when Antoine Court de Gébelin claimed an Egyptian origin the cards never had.
The deck most people picture was drawn by Pamela Colman Smith in 1909 to Arthur Waite's brief, and its innovation was scenic pip cards: every one of the fifty-six minors got a picture rather than an arrangement of suit symbols. That single decision made the deck readable by eye and is why it still dominates a century later.
Questions Readers Ask
How many cards are in a tarot deck?
Seventy-eight: twenty-two Major Arcana and fifty-six Minor Arcana across four suits of fourteen cards each.
What is the difference between tarot and oracle cards?
Tarot has a fixed seventy-eight-card structure with centuries of shared meaning. Oracle decks have no fixed structure and mean whatever their creator defines.
How often should I read for myself?
Once daily for a single card is sustainable. Full spreads more than weekly on the same question tend to blur rather than clarify.