Introduction to Tarot

Tusk 1°, White Oak Coven/Acorn Grove

When we think of the Path of Power of Divination (which is assigned to the period between Yule
and Imbolc on the Wheel of the Year), one of the first things that probably comes to mind is the
pack of cards known as the Tarot. This set of symbols has been an integral part of the Western
Occult tradition for hundreds of years and its popularity only seems to increase. In this class we
will touch on what the Tarot is and where it came from, and explore some of the symbolism that
undergirds it. You will come away from this class with the tools you need to explore the Tarot
more deeply as part of your Wiccan education.

What is the Tarot?

Tarot falls under a class of divination methods known as “cartomancy”; as the name might
suggest, cartomancy is the method of divining messages by randomly drawing cards from a
deck. Cartomancy can be done with any sort of cards that have a symbol set on them, and by
far the most popular set of symbols for this method of divination is the Tarot. This particular set
of symbols seems to have been developed around the mid 1400s in Italy, not long after the idea
of playing cards in general came to Europe in the late 1300s. By around 1750 we start finding
evidence of these cards being used for divination and ever since then the Tarot has been
deeply embedded in what we’ve come to inherit as the Western Occult tradition.

How is the Tarot organized?

The part of the Tarot symbols that were particularly innovative in the 1400s consisted of a set of
cards the Italians called “trionfi”, or triumphs. Each of these cards illustrated a moral lesson or
religious archetype. In English we tend to call these cards “trump cards” or “trumps”. A modern
Tarot deck contains 22 trump cards (actually numbered zero to twenty-one), each with a picture
that tells a specific story, along with 56 pip cards in four suits. Each suit has cards numbered
Ace through Ten along with four “court” or face cards. The court cards are most traditionally
named the Page, the Knight, the Queen, and the King, though sometimes you’ll see the Page
renamed “Princess” and the Knight renamed “Prince”, often to more intentionally balance the
genders of the Court.

You’ll often hear the term “Major Arcana” used to describe the trump cards as a group, and the
term “Minor Arcana” for the cards in the four suits. “Arcana” means “secrets”, hinting that each
of the symbols on these cards has hidden knowledge backing it up that the educated can learn
and access.

The Minor Arcana is divided into the suits of Wands, Swords, Cups, and Pentacles (which are
also sometimes depicted as Coins or Disks.) These suits eventually evolved into the
American-style playing card suits as clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds. The suits are
elemental and follow the same symbolism as they do on the Blue Star altar: the wands are a
symbol of the element of Fire, the swords are Air, cups embody Water, and pentacles represent
Earth.

How do I learn the Tarot symbolism?

The first thing to remember is that while memorizing 78 of anything is not a trivial undertaking,
there are still only 78 cards in the Tarot and this is not an unconquerable number! You don’t
have to learn them all at once; while eventually it’s most useful to be able to approach the cards
with only the knowledge in your mind, there’s no shame in needing a reference book at hand!
I’ve included a short list of some of my favorite Tarot books in Appendix IV.

The best way to learn the cards, and the Major Arcana in particular, is to spend some time with
each one. Look at the pictures and think about what the images make you feel, what they
represent to you. Read the keywords I’ve provided in Appendix I, or see what the Little White
Book that came with your Tarot deck says about the card. Examine the card to see why those
interpretations might fit the image on your card. Do those interpretations make sense to you?
You can try doing visualization exercises—imagine that you are stepping into the card as if it
were a gateway, and take a look around, imagining what you might see in the card and beyond
its borders. Can you have a conversation with the people or beings in the card? What might
they say if you talked to them?

I personally find that coming up with a keyword or a few keywords for each card helps as a
memory aid. The keywords that you find most meaningful will be the most useful to you—as
with every form of divination, your own interpretation of each symbol matters more in your
readings than the “official” definition, although it’s unwise to completely ignore the shared
personal gnosis that occultists have developed over the centuries!

For the Minor Arcana, it is useful to develop a keyword or keywords for each card, but you will
be best served early on if you develop a good understanding of how the combination of the
element that the card represents and the number of the card combines to create the meaning
behind the card. While the standard for most decks nowadays is for each of the cards of the
Minor Arcana to have its own picture to convey the symbolism of the card, many older decks
were much more akin to our modern playing cards, with no pictures and just a display of the
appropriate number of wands, swords, disks or cups. For these decks, it was essential to have
a good understanding of the numerology and elemental attribution of each card!

As I said before, the elemental correspondences in the Minor Arcana are quite intuitive for Blue
Star witches: Swords are Air, Wands are Fire, Cups are Water, and Pentacles/Disks are Earth.
The numerological correspondences are likewise relatively universal in the Western Occult
systems and apply not only to Tarot but to sacred geometry and other places where numbers
appear. I’ve included some keywords for each of the numbers in Appendix II but research into
western numerology will also prove useful for Tarot, because it’s one of the places where those
interpretations are most applicable.
How do I read the Tarot?

For divination purposes, most often you will interact with the Tarot in the form of “spreads”, or
layouts of cards that have specific meanings applied to a given position in the spread. There are
traditional spreads that have many years of use behind them, or you can develop your own. It’s
often useful to develop a question that you want to answer first, even if that question is just
“What do I need to know about my present situation?” More specific questions will lead to more
specific understandings, though, so you might think about using the SMART framework when
developing your questions: a question that incorporates elements of Specificity, Measurability,
Achievability, Relevance and which is Time-based will give much more actionable guidance
than a vague question.

The simplest Tarot spread is just a single-card draw: just draw one card and see what message
you can divine from the symbols found thereon. For more complex understandings, however,
it’s often best to examine several cards; when you do this you will often consider each card in
isolation, and then examine how they relate to the cards around them.

A three-card draw is a simple and common spread that many people find to be useful. This
spread is useful for getting an overview of your current situation, and is usually performed by
simply laying out three cards in a row. The leftmost card can be considered “the past”: what are
the factors that have contributed to my current situation? The center card is “the present”: what
do I need to know about what’s currently going on that may not be immediately apparent to me?
The rightmost card is “the future”: if I don’t change any of my current actions, what’s the likeliest
outcome of the current situation? Taking what the cards tell you into account may suggest ways
to change that outcome if it’s not what you’d like it to be! The cards don’t determine your fate—
as witches, we’re all trying to be in control of our own situations as much as we can be. The
cards can tell us what the likeliest outcome of our current trajectory will be, but we’re always
able to make choices that will influence our futures.

Another classic and somewhat more complex spread is the Celtic Cross spread:

This spread is an excellent way

to get an overview of your
present situation with or without
a specific question. There are
many variations of this spread so
if you’re interested in using it you
can find many versions online
with tons of suggestions for how
to interpret it. This diagram
presents a bare-bones version
but is a great place to start if you
want to try practicing with a more
detailed spread.
A Tarot spread doesn’t have to be well-established or traditional to be useful. In fact, as an
example for this class, I’ll use a format that has just been developed in the last part of the year
2020: the meme layout. I think this is actually very helpful because it demonstrates clearly to
people in our current culture how layouts work and might give you ideas of ways to develop your
own spreads. I give you the following layout:

You may laugh, but essentially even traditional Tarot spreads are a form of meme in framework
form.

In the original picture, the Boyfriend is distracted

by the Other Girl to the dismay of his Girlfriend. In
meme form, these individuals are abstracted into
representations of other things, be they social
forces, the preoccupations of daily life, or, as in
this example, competing economic systems and
philosophies:

How can we use this as a Tarot layout? We would draw three cards for this spread and place
them, probably face down, on the positions labeled 1, 2 and 3 above. For me, a logical reading
order would probably start by reading card number 3 in this spread, to find out what it is that’s
currently attracting my attention. In this case I probably know what’s currently on my mind, if
I’ve been paying any attention to my inner life and thoughts, but sometimes the Tarot can help
you find insight into details of even your own thought processes that you hadn’t been aware of.
Next I would turn my attention to card #2, which represents the things that my current
obsessions are distracting me from. What am I not paying sufficient attention to in my situation?
What am I missing? Finally I would turn to card #3 to find out what effect the previous two items
are having on my current situation. What insight can I draw from the symbol I find there? Are
there any adjustments to my current actions or patterns of attention that might make my life
better or easier, or help me avoid tension or a blowup with the people in my life?

When reading, there are a few overall things to take into account in your spread. First: what
does the elemental balance suggest? Are there an overwhelming number of Wands? Maybe
this spread is trying to tell you something about Fire energy; take that into consideration as you
interpret the overall spread. How about the numbers? Are there a bunch of fives in the
reading? Maybe there’s a conflict that you need to be paying attention to in regards to your
question.

Make a note of where the Major Arcana cards appear; often these cards show up when there
are dynamic forces at play or when things are in motion. Minor Arcana cards often represent
static forces at play in our lives and situations that are more established. While the Minor
Arcana cards are still significant, they can be seen as sort of the pins in the pinball machine that
the Major Arcana cards are bouncing off of. Like any aspect of our lives, the static forces are
often ultimately in our control, but they may take more effort to change, and will have a less
obvious impact on our lives than the moving, dynamic forces represented by the Major Arcana
cards.

While the Majors often represent these dynamic forces and the Minors represent more static
forces, the Court cards (Page/Knight/Queen/King) often represent people or beings in a spread.
Often the Pages are said to represent young women and Knights young men, and Queens are
mature women and Kings are mature men. The elemental associations of the given court card
can align with the individual’s astrological signs or with overall elemental aspects of the people’s
personalities. These cards can also represent approaches that we can take to any given
situation, whether a given situation might need innovative thinking (e.g. Page of Swords), the
tried-and-true actions that have worked in the past (e.g. King of Wands), or a compassionate
use of our material possessions (e.g. Queen of Pentacles).
Appendix I: The Major Arcana (Standard Rider/Waite/Smith)

# Name Some Keywords

0 The Fool Beginnings, spontaneity, faith, apparent folly
1 The Magician Action, conscious awareness, concentration, power
2 The High Priestess Non-action, subconscious awareness, potential, mystery
3 The Empress Motherhood, abundance, senses, nature
4 The Emperor Fatherhood, structure, authority, regulation
5 The Hierophant Education, belief systems, conformity, group identification
6 The Lovers Relationship, sexuality, personal beliefs, values
7 The Chariot Victory, will, self-assertion, hard control
8* Strength Strength, patience, compassion, soft control
9 The Hermit Introspection, searching, guidance, solitude
10 Wheel of Fortune Destiny, turning point, movement, personal vision
11* Justice Justice, responsibility, decision, cause and effect
12 The Hanged Man Letting go, reversal, suspension, sacrifice
13 Death Ending, transition, elimination, inexorable forces
14 Temperance Temperance, balance, health, combination
15 The Devil Bondage, materialism, ignorance, hopelessness
16 The Tower Sudden change, release, downfall, revelation
17 The Star Hope, inspiration, generosity, serenity
18 The Moon Fear, illusion, imagination, bewilderment
19 The Sun Enlightenment, greatness, vitality, assurance
20 Judgement Judgment, rebirth, inner calling, absolution
21 The World Integration, accomplishment, involvement, fulfillment

*Some, mainly older, decks reverse the numbering of Strength and Justice; the
Rider/Waite/Smith deck introduced this numbering to better match up with the Golden Dawn’s
assignments of astrological correspondences to the cards, wherein 8 is assigned to Leo and 11
is assigned to Libra.

Keyword source: learntarot.com

Appendix II: Some Numerology Keywords

Aces: The undistilled power of the element in question;

newness; straightforwardness; seed; root; birth; source

Twos: Choice; balance; decision; duality; pairing; relating

Threes: Blending; synthesis; integration; fruition

Fours: Consolidation; rest; foundation; resolution; complacency

Fives: Destabilization; change; instability; adversity; trials; stress

Sixes: Recombination; union or reunion; trials overcome; reward

Sevens: Challenges; tests; getting things done; taking chances

Eights: Regeneration; adjustment; acknowledging mistakes; organizing; progress

Nines: Limits; strength; prudence; attainment; culmination

Tens: Wholeness; consummation; completion and new beginning; harvest

Appendix III: Some Court Card Keywords

Page: Children; messengers; beginnings; learning; studying; the inner child

Knight: Adventure; action; challenging; seeking and questing; the ego

Queen: Mothering; nurturing; self-mastery; fostering; motivating

King: Fathering; commanding; outer mastery; rules; laws; authority

Keyword source: ​21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card​ by Mary K. Greer

Appendix IV: A Short Tarot Reading List

Rachel Pollack. ​Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness​. Weiser,

2019.

This is probably the best Tarot reference available at present. An absolute gem and
highly recommended.

Mary K. Greer. ​Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey​. Weiser, 2019.

Mary K. Greer is one of my favorite Tarot authors; I found this book highly useful not only
for what it purports to be in the title but for all sorts of Tarot reading.

Mary K. Greer. ​21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card​. Llewellyn, 2020.

A book that breaks down 21 different approaches to take to any given card. Provides a
ton of different activities you can do to increase your relationship with the cards and to
deepen your understanding of the meanings they carry.

Mary K. Greer. ​The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals​. Llewellyn, 2020.

If you choose to incorporate whether a card appears right-side-up or upside-down into

your reading, this book has a ton of advice about what the orientation of a card can
mean beyond simply “the opposite of what it normally means”—which is rarely what a
reversed card actually signifies.

Appendix V: Online Resources

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/

A site with tons of deck reviews, usually with pictures. A great resource if you’re looking
for a deck that really resonates with you.

http://www.learntarot.com

Free basic tarot instruction by Joan Bunning, with lots of suggestions for interpretations.

https://www.biddytarot.com/

Another more modern site with Tarot lessons and information by Australian teacher Brigit
Esselmont.