Major Arcana: The Secrets of Tarot

The Major Arcana

The Major Arcana consists of 22 cards whose symbols are completely different from the images on playing cards. While these cards are unnumbered in the oldest known deck, the Visconti Tarot, 21 of them have been numbered since the forerunners of the Tarot de Marseille in the 16th century. The Fool card traditionally either bears no number or is marked with zero, and in rare cases with the number 22.

The Fool in the decks

In a few decks, the Fool card is also placed between or after the other cards of the Major Arcana and numbered accordingly. In the tradition of Papus, Eliphas Levi and A. E. Waite, it is placed as zero between cards XX and XXI.

Spiritual interpretation

In the 19th century, Oswald Wirth gave these 22 cards the meaning of «stages of initiation», and Elisabeth Haich later described them in her Tarot book as «22 universal stages of consciousness».

Modern classification

This category includes the decks based on the Waite Tarot (Arthur Edward Waite).