Tarot Fundamentals Review

A Brief History of Tarot

Tarot cards originated in northern Italy in the early 15th century as playing cards for card games, not as divination tools. The earliest surviving tarot cards, the Visconti-Sforza decks (circa 1450), were luxury items commissioned by the ruling families of Milan and decorated by skilled artists. They included the standard four-suit playing card deck (which had arrived in Europe from the Islamic world in the 14th century) plus an additional set of allegorical trump cards featuring figures from medieval Catholic iconography: the Pope, Emperor, Empress, Death, Judgment, and others.

For approximately three centuries, tarot cards (called tarocchi in Italian, tarock in German) were used primarily for games popular across Europe. The connection to occultism and divination developed gradually from the 18th century onward. Antoine Court de Gebelin, an 18th-century French occultist, published a famous (and historically inaccurate) claim in 1781 that tarot cards were derived from the ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth, an unfounded theory that nevertheless sparked enormous interest in tarot as an esoteric system. Etteilla (the pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette) became the first professional tarot card reader in Paris around 1791, codifying interpretive meanings for the cards and establishing divination as the primary Western use of tarot.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the most influential esoteric organization in the English-speaking world, incorporated tarot deeply into its initiatory curriculum. The Golden Dawn connected tarot to the Qabalah (specifically the Tree of Life, which they mapped to the 22 Major Arcana and four suits), astrology, and Hermetic philosophy, creating the richly layered symbolic system that underlies most serious tarot study today. Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, both Golden Dawn members, created the Rider-Waite-Smith deck within this tradition.

Arthur Edward Waite and the Rider-Waite-Smith Deck

Arthur Edward Waite (1857 to 1942) was one of the most prolific and influential figures in the Western esoteric tradition. A member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Waite was also a serious scholar of Qabalah, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and the broader history of Western occultism. His published works include over 40 books on esoteric topics, making him one of the primary transmitters of Western esoteric knowledge to early 20th-century readers.

Waite designed the Rider-Waite-Smith deck in 1909 with the specific intention of creating a divination tool that encoded the Golden Dawn's esoteric knowledge in visual form. He collaborated with artist Pamela Colman Smith (1878 to 1951), a fellow Golden Dawn member and an accomplished artist who had designed stage sets and illustrated books before this project. Smith's contribution is now recognized as foundational: it was her artistic vision that translated Waite's esoteric specifications into the resonant, iconic imagery that makes the deck so universally recognizable and usable.

The deck's most significant innovation was the illustration of all 56 Minor Arcana cards with narrative scenes. Previous tarot decks (including the Marseille tradition that preceded it) illustrated the Minor Arcana with abstract arrangements of suit symbols (pips) without human figures or story. Smith added specific pictorial narratives to every Minor Arcana card, making intuitive reading dramatically more accessible. A reader looking at the Three of Swords (three swords piercing a heart against a stormy sky) does not need to know the formal meaning to receive the emotional impact of heartbreak and grief that the image conveys.

Waite's companion book, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), provides his original interpretive framework for the deck. Written with the deliberate obscurantism common to esoteric literature of the period (Waite reveals some meanings while concealing others he considered too advanced for general publication), the book rewards careful reading despite its Victorian academic style. It remains the primary source for understanding the deck as Waite intended it to be used.

Eden Gray: Making Tarot Accessible

Eden Gray (1901 to 1999) was an American tarot teacher and author whose three books on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck played a central role in bringing tarot into the mainstream of Western spiritual culture during the 1960s and 1970s. Before Gray, tarot instruction was largely confined to occult societies and specialized esoteric literature characterized by deliberate complexity and exclusivity. Gray wrote accessibly and without pretension, treating tarot as a learnable interpretive skill rather than an initiate's secret.

The Tarot Revealed (1960) was Gray's first book, providing a complete introduction to all 78 cards in accessible language. Mastering the Tarot (1971) is her most enduring contribution, introducing the Fool's Journey narrative framework and providing clear, practical guidance for building reading competence. A Complete Guide to the Tarot (1972) expanded her earlier work for a broader audience. Together, these books are estimated to have sold several million copies and are credited with introducing tarot to an entire generation of Western seekers.

Gray's most influential pedagogical contribution is the Fool's Journey: the framework of reading the 22 Major Arcana as a sequential narrative following the Fool (card 0) through encounters with each succeeding archetype. The Fool begins as pure potential and innocence, encounters the structures of the social world (Magician, High Priestess, Empress, Emperor, Hierophant), navigates the developmental challenges of midlife (the Wheel of Fortune, Justice, the Hanged Man, Death), undergoes the trials of transformation (Temperance, the Devil, the Tower, the Star, the Moon), and achieves integration (the Sun, Judgement, the World). This narrative structure makes the Major Arcana learnable as a coherent system rather than as 22 disconnected images with arbitrary meanings.

Rachel Pollack and the Psychological Depth of Tarot

Rachel Pollack (1945 to 2023) was an American author, tarot teacher, and scholar whose two-volume work 78 Degrees of Wisdom (1980 and 1983, combined in a single volume edition in 1997) is widely considered the most comprehensive and intellectually serious tarot text available in English. Pollack brought to tarot study the analytical frameworks of Jungian psychology, comparative mythology, feminist spirituality, and traditional Qabalah, producing analyses of each card that remain unsurpassed in their depth and utility for the serious student.

Pollack's approach departed from both the occultist tradition (which treated tarot meanings as fixed esoteric secrets) and the popular divination tradition (which reduced cards to simple fortune-telling formulas). She understood tarot as a living symbolic language capable of mediating between the conscious and unconscious mind, facilitating the kind of self-examination that Jung described as the individuation process. For Pollack, a reading is not a prediction but a conversation between the reader's unconscious and the collective symbolic heritage encoded in the deck's images.

On the Fool: Pollack writes in 78 Degrees of Wisdom: "The Fool is not a negative figure. He is pure spirit, pure potential, about to enter the world of experience. His number is zero, which is not emptiness but fullness before form, the pregnant void from which all creation springs. When the Fool appears in a reading, he does not signal foolishness but rather a leap of faith, an opening to something new and unknown, the courage to begin again at any age or stage of life." This kind of analysis, combining traditional meaning with Jungian archetypal understanding and original insight, characterizes Pollack's work throughout both volumes.

Pollack was also a champion of diverse and inclusive approaches to tarot, writing extensively about decks that departed from the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition to represent different cultural contexts, identities, and artistic visions. Her later books, including The Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery and Forest of Souls, continued her integration of traditional knowledge with innovative interpretive approaches.

The 22 Major Arcana: Archetypes of the Human Journey

The Major Arcana's 22 cards represent the primary archetypal forces and developmental stages of human experience. They are the cards of significant life events, deep psychological processes, and the larger patterns that shape a life over time. When they appear in readings, they signal themes of greater weight and significance than the day-to-day situations represented by the Minor Arcana.

The Fool (0) represents pure potential, the willingness to begin without guarantee of outcome. The Magician (1) represents the activation of will and the ability to use the tools available. The High Priestess (2) represents hidden knowledge, intuition, and the unconscious. The Empress (3) represents creativity, abundance, and the fertile earth. The Emperor (4) represents structure, authority, and the organizing principle. The Hierophant (5) represents tradition, teaching, and institutional wisdom.

The Lovers (6) represents choice, alignment of values, and deep relationship. The Chariot (7) represents directed will and movement through difficulty. Strength (8) represents the taming of instinct through love rather than force. The Hermit (9) represents solitary inner work and the light of wisdom shared with others. The Wheel of Fortune (10) represents the cyclical nature of experience and the turning of fate. Justice (11) represents cause and effect, fairness, and alignment with truth.

The Hanged Man (12) represents voluntary surrender and the perspective gained through suspension. Death (13) represents inevitable transformation and the ending that makes new beginnings possible. Temperance (14) represents integration, balance, and the art of combining opposites. The Devil (15) represents bondage to material concerns and the illusions that limit freedom. The Tower (16) represents sudden upheaval that destroys what was built on false foundations.

The Star (17) represents hope, renewal, and the quiet restoration after disruption. The Moon (18) represents illusion, the unconscious, and the journey through confusion toward clarity. The Sun (19) represents joy, vitality, clarity, and the full expression of the self. Judgement (20) represents awakening, assessment of past choices, and the call to higher purpose. The World (21) represents completion, integration, and the achievement of wholeness before a new cycle begins.

The 56 Minor Arcana: The Language of Daily Life

The Minor Arcana's 56 cards address the texture of daily life: emotions, thoughts, practical circumstances, and the people who populate our world. Divided into four suits of 14 cards each (Ace through Ten plus four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen, King), the Minor Arcana provides tarot's vocabulary for everyday experience.

Wands correspond to the element of Fire and address creativity, passion, ambition, career, and spiritual drive. Wands represent the spark of inspiration and the energy required to bring ideas into being.

Cups correspond to Water and address emotions, relationships, intuition, the unconscious, and the inner life. Cups represent the feeling dimension of experience and the capacity for deep connection.

Swords correspond to Air and address thought, communication, conflict, truth, and the mental realm. Swords often represent challenges and the clarity (or pain) that comes from truth being spoken or encountered.

Pentacles (also called Coins or Disks in some decks) correspond to Earth and address the physical world: money, body, home, work, material security, and practical concerns. Pentacles represent the grounding of spiritual energy in physical reality.

Common Spreads and How to Use Them

A spread is a layout of cards in which each position has a specific interpretive meaning. Spreads provide structure for readings that prevents both the reader and the querent from being overwhelmed by open-ended interpretation.

Single card draws are the most important practice for beginners: one card drawn each morning as a meditation prompt and focus for the day. Over months of daily draws, students develop an intuitive, embodied relationship with the deck's 78 cards that no amount of reading about them can substitute for. Keep a journal recording each day's card, your initial impression, and what unfolded during the day in relation to that card's themes.

Three-card spreads offer enormous versatility within a simple structure. Common three-card arrangements include: Past-Present-Future; Situation-Action-Outcome; Body-Mind-Spirit; What to Accept-What to Release-What to Embrace; and Problem-Insight-Guidance. Choose the arrangement that fits the question, or create your own based on what you genuinely want to illuminate.

The Celtic Cross (10 cards) is the most widely used complex spread, providing a comprehensive examination of a situation from multiple perspectives. Its positions address the core issue, crossing influences, the foundation, the recent past, possible future, near future, the querent's attitude, external influences, hopes and fears, and final outcome. Most teachers recommend waiting until comfortable with three-card spreads before attempting the Celtic Cross, which requires holding multiple relational interpretations simultaneously.

Developing Your Reading Practice

Learning to read tarot requires balancing two very different skills: the analytical study of traditional card meanings (which requires intellectual engagement with the deck's symbolic system) and the intuitive, receptive quality of genuine reading (which requires setting aside preconceptions and allowing meaning to arise from the specific combination of cards, question, and moment).

Beginning students often make one of two errors: either they become so focused on memorizing traditional meanings that they lose contact with the cards as images that speak directly to the imagination, or they become so attached to intuitive impression that they never build the interpretive fluency that makes readings consistent and reliable across contexts. The experienced reader holds both: deeply familiar with traditional meanings, free to depart from them when the specific reading calls for it.

Reading for others requires additional skills beyond self-reading: the ability to hold presence for someone else's question without projection, the ethical responsibility of not making alarming pronouncements about health, death, or loss without significant sensitivity and appropriate framing, and the humility to acknowledge uncertainty while still providing useful perspective. Many experienced readers recommend years of daily self-reading before offering readings to others professionally.

Crystals and Energy Tools for Tarot Work

Many tarot practitioners integrate crystal work into their reading practice as a way of setting energetic intention, enhancing intuitive receptivity, and maintaining the quality of presence that makes readings most useful.

Clear Quartz placed beside the deck or held before reading amplifies intention and clarity. Amethyst supports the intuitive, third-eye dimension of tarot work and is one of the most commonly used crystals in psychic and divination practices. Labradorite, with its mysterious iridescence, is particularly associated with psychic work and protection of the aura during energy-sensitive practices like tarot. Selenite can be used to cleanse the deck energetically between readings or to clear accumulated energy at the end of a session.

Some practitioners keep a specific crystal on their tarot cloth during readings, others hold a stone in their non-dominant hand while drawing cards to enhance receptive sensitivity, and still others build a small crystal grid around their reading space. Our Tarot and Crystal Reading Collection includes crystals and accessories specifically selected for divination and psychic development practice.

Frequently Asked Questions