The Tarot consists of 78 cards, split into the "Major Arcana" and the "Minor Arcana." The minor arcana are the basis for modern day playing cards, and are divided into four suits. These suits have different names in different decks - and there are many, many different decks available - but in traditional decks they are:

Wands, representing the element of fire

Cups, representing the element of water

Swords, representing the element of air

Pentacles, representing the element of earth

Each suit has ten numbered cards, Ace to Ten, and four "court cards" - which are traditionally King, Queen, Knight and Page - although my deck uses King, Queen, Prince and Princess.

The major arcana consists of 22 cards with descriptive titles - such as "Death", "The Star", "The Hanged Man" and "The Wheel of Fortune".

So...

There are ten numbered cards in each suit - and ten sephirot.

There are 22 major arcana cards - and 22 paths on the Tree of Life.

The numbered cards correspond to each sephira - for example, the five of each suit corresponds to Geburah. This is quite a challenging sephira, representing "severity"- and the fives in tarot tend to have quite harsh messages. The sixes correspond to Tiphareth. This is a very positive and balanced sephira, representing "beauty" - and the sixes tend to have positive balanced messages.

The 22 paths of the tree of life each have a Hebrew letter associated with them, and a major arcana card:

The attributions of the cards to the Tree are not accepted by everyone - some systems swap the Emperor and the Star, for example. This system is the one used by an esoteric organisation called the Golden Dawn. This was a society set up in 1888 as a "magickal fraternity" of men and women, and included Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley among its members. Its literature is well worth reading, and there are a number of references in the bibliography.

There are numerous different sorts of tarot decks available. Generally, these can be split into "traditional" decks and the "mystical" decks.

The best-known traditional deck in England is probably the "Rider-Waite" deck. Aleister Crowley produced his own deck, the Thoth deck, still widely used. The Golden Dawn produced a new deck in the 1980s, called the "Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot". This is the deck that I prefer to use personally, as it has the Qabalistic symbolism embedded in each card. For example, the "Star" card below shows the astrological meaning (Aquarius, both in its imagery and the astrological symbol on the bottom of the card), the Hebrew attribute (Tzaddi, the fish hook), the Tree of Life with its ten sephirot, the number seven (seven stars, seven pointed star on the woman's head) is representative of Venus (the planet associated with sephira number seven, Netzach), represented by the woman on the card.

More modern decks have different symbolism - for example, the Greenwood deck with its pagan imagery, the Mythic Tarot with Greek mythological symbolism, various Arthurian decks and the Osho Zen deck which has completely different suits and even an extra major arcana card.

Use whatever deck you relate to best - you will know when you see the right deck for you.

Tarot is usually seen as a "fortune-telling" method. To me, Tarot is a way of gaining insights into myself, of finding out what lessons I can learn in this lifetime. It is a form of meditation. The following meditation is one I use frequently - I would acknowledge the original source if I knew who it was; I've seen it in various Golden Dawn books, and a similar meditation is described in Mary Greer's "Tarot for Your Self" (see bibliography) and various others. The meditation (often called "scrying") is very powerful, and I find it useful to perform a banishing ritual before and after doing this, and to close my chakras afterwards.

Choose a tarot card from the major arcana. Make sure you are sitting comfortably, where you will not be disturbed for at least half an hour, preferably longer. Breathe in and out gently, focusing on your breath; feel yourself drawing it in through your nostrils, into your lungs, and then breathing out again. When you feel relaxed, look at your chosen tarot card. Observe it closely, looking at the various images on the card. Close your eyes, and hold the picture of the card in your mind's eye. Open your eyes, and see whether you've missed anything.

Once you can picture the tarot card in all its details with your eyes shut, imagine the card growing in size, until it's the size of a small door (the door should be slightly shorter than you).

Now open the door and walk through it. Instead of a static image, you're in a landscape that looks like the depiction on the card. The characters on the card are moving, talking and three-dimensional. Choose a character in this tableau (it doesn't have to be human) and talk to it. Ask it what lessons it has for you, to help you. Notice anything else that you might see in this landscape, any unexpected images that crop up.

Don't get sidetracked - you're talking to one character on the card. If another character wanders on to the scene - particularly if it's a character not on the card - don't talk to it.

After you've talked to your character, turn around and walk through the door back into this reality. Alternatively, walk backwards through the door so that the landscape you've just been in recedes.

Shut the door firmly behind you, and keep your eyes closed. Become aware of the room you're sitting in, background noises and familiar surroundings before you open your eyes. Remain seated for a while, and stay relaxed.

Write down what you experienced, and close your chakras.

If you haven't meditated before, don't start with this one. Try the Friendly Deities meditation or the Climbing the Tree meditation first. Meditation should be a pleasant, positive experience; tarot cards are very powerful tools, and sometimes they will connect you with aspects of your personality that you may not feel comfortable with, and the experience can be frightening. I've described how to close your chakras elsewhere on this site; the purpose of this (even if you don't "believe" in chakras) is to provide a technique for protecting yourself against frightening situations. This may sound silly - but most of us can remember sitting round at night as kids, telling each other ghost stories and scaring the living daylights out of ourselves; we may be grown up now, but it's still possible to scare yourself, often when you least expect it.

Initially, choose a card that looks "friendly" to you; all tarot cards have positive and negative aspects. However, for most of us, cards like Death, the Devil and the Tower probably aren't good candidates for scrying if you've never tried this before.

Finally, don't spend too long in the landscape, and do make sure you come back down to earth afterwards; if the phone or doorbell rings in the middle of your meditation, ignore it. Being dragged out of a mental landscape suddenly can leave you feeling very uneasy for hours, or even days, afterwards.

This Tarot-L Members Webring site owned by Chris Mitchell.

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