What Is Tarot?

Tarot is a deck of seventy-eight illustrated cards originally designed for a card game in fifteenth-century Italy, long before anyone used it to look for meaning. Over the following centuries it was gradually reinterpreted as a tool for reflection, storytelling and self-inquiry, and today it’s mostly known in that second role.

The deck splits into two parts. The twenty-two Major Arcana — cards like The Fool, The Tower or The Star — represent big, archetypal themes: turning points, life lessons, forces that feel bigger than any single day. The fifty-six Minor Arcana are closer to daily life, split into four suits (Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles) that each cover a different area — action, emotion, thought and the material world.

There’s no single "correct" way to use tarot. Some people treat it as a structured symbolic language with fixed meanings to memorize; others use it more like a mirror — a set of images that gives shape to whatever is already on their mind. Both approaches are valid, and most people end up somewhere in between.