The Major Arcana

It starts with the Fool, card zero, stepping off a cliff with a small bundle over his shoulder and a little white dog at his heels. It ends with the World, card 21, a dancer inside a wreath, complete. Everything in between is what happens on the way: the teachers you meet, the loves, the tests, the losses, the long nights and the light that comes after them.

I think of it as the soul's curriculum. We are spiritual beings choosing to be here to have a human experience, and the Major Arcana is a map of the lessons that experience brings.

When a Major turns up in a reading, it tells you which lesson you are in.

The 22 cards

Where a card has had its own Tarot Card of the Week post, its name links to it. A new one is added most Thursdays.

0. The Fool. The leap. A new beginning, taken on trust.

1. The Magician. Everything you need is already on the table. Will, skill and the power to begin.

2. The High Priestess. Intuition, the inner voice, what is known without being told.

3. The Empress. Abundance and nurture. Creativity, the body and the natural world.

4. The Emperor. Structure and authority. The rules and the order that hold things together.

5. The Hierophant. Tradition and teaching. The established way, and belonging to a group.

6. The Lovers. Love, and the choice that comes with it. Choosing in line with your values.

7. The Chariot. Willpower and direction. Holding opposite forces together and moving forward anyway.

8. Strength. Quiet courage. The gentleness that tames what force never could.

9. The Hermit. Withdrawing to look inward. The lamp you carry for yourself.

10. The Wheel of Fortune. Cycles and change. The turn you did not see coming.

11. Justice. Cause and effect, fairness and truth. The consequences of what you chose.

12. The Hanged Man. Surrender and pause. Seeing the same thing from a completely different angle.

13. Death. Endings and transformation. One door closing so that another can open.

14. Temperance. Balance and patience. Blending things that seemed opposed.

15. The Devil. Attachment and habit. The chains we choose, and can lift off.

16. The Tower. Sudden upheaval. What was built on a false foundation comes down.

17. The Star. Hope and healing after the storm.

18. The Moon. Illusion, dreams and the unconscious. The path you walk by feel in the dark.

19. The Sun. Joy, success and clarity. The warmth of being fully yourself.

20. Judgement. Awakening. Hearing a calling and rising to answer it.

21. The World. Completion and wholeness. A cycle finished, and you ready for the next.

Three rows of seven

Take the Fool aside and the other 21 fall naturally into three rows of seven, and each row is a stage of the same life.

The first row, the Magician to the Chariot, is the outer world. Learning who you are among other people: the parents and teachers, the first love, the first real choices, the drive to make something of yourself.

The second row, Strength to Temperance, is the inner work. Courage, solitude, the turns of fate, facing the consequences, surrender, the endings, and finding balance at the far side of all of it. If you have read the Inner Work area of the Library, you will recognise every one of these.

The third row, the Devil to the World, is the bigger picture. Facing your own shadow, having the false things knocked down, then hope, the dark night of the Moon, the Sun, the awakening, and at last the whole.

The Fool walks all three rows. So do you, and more than once. When you finish the World you step off another cliff and start again, a little wiser, which is more or less what I believe reincarnation is for.

The exercise: find where you are standing

Take the 22 Majors out of your deck and lay them out in order: the Fool on its own, then three rows of seven.

Sit with the whole road in front of you for a few minutes. Then ask yourself one question. Which card am I standing on right now?

Do not think too hard about it. Your eye will go somewhere. Notice which card it is, which row it sits in, and which card comes next. That next card is often the lesson already on its way to you.

Write it down and date it. Come back to the layout in six months and ask again. People are nearly always surprised at how far they have moved.

When the Majors fill a spread

One Major in a spread of ten is a signpost. Three or four is a season of real change. A spread that is mostly Majors is telling you that something large is moving in your life, and that the everyday details matter less right now than the direction.

The heavy Majors, Death, the Tower and the Devil, have their own section on the How to Read a Card page. They are a mirror, every one of them.

If you would like the cards read against your own chart, my readings are here.