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Major Arcana
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In occult practices, the Major Arcana are the
trump cards of a tarot pack.[1] There are
usually 22 such cards in a standard 78-card
pack. They are typically numbered from 0 to
21.
The Major Arcana cards
redesigned by Roberto Viesi.
Prior to the 17th century, the trumps were
simply part of a special card deck used for
gaming and gambling.[2] There may have been
allegorical and cultural significance attached to
them, but beyond that, the trumps originally
had little mystical or magical import.[2] When
decks are used for card games (Tarot card
games), these cards serve as permanent
trumps and are distinguished from the
remaining cards, the suit cards, which are
known by occultists as the Minor Arcana.[3]
The terms "Major" and "Minor Arcana" are
used in the occult, and divinatory applications
of the deck as in practising Esoteric Tarot and
originate with Jean-Baptiste Pitois (1811–1877),
writing under the name Paul Christian.[4]
Michael Dummett writes that the Major Arcana
originally had simple allegorical or esoteric
meaning, mostly originating in elite ideology in
the Italian courts of the 15th century when it
was invented.[2] The occult significance began
to emerge in the 18th century when Antoine
Court de Gébelin, a Swiss clergyman and
Freemason, published Le Monde Primitif. The
construction of the occult and divinatory
significance of the tarot, and the Major and
Minor Arcana, continued on from there.[5] For
example, Court de Gébelin argued for the
Egyptian, kabbalistic, and divine significance of
the tarot trumps; Etteilla created a method of
divination using tarot; Éliphas Lévi worked to
break away from the Egyptian nature of the
divinatory tarot, bringing it back to the tarot de
Marseilles, creating a "tortuous" kabbalastic
correspondence, and even suggested that the
Major Arcana represent stages of life.[4] The
Marquis Stanislas de Guaita established the
Major Arcana as an initiatory sequence to be
used to establish a path of spiritual ascension
and evolution.[2] Late in the 20th century, Sallie
Nichols, a Jungian psychologist, wrote up the
tarot as having deep psychological and
archetypal significance, even encoding the
entire process of Jungian individuation into the
tarot trumps.[6] These various interpretations
of the Major Arcana developed in stages, all of
which continue to exert significant influence on
practitioners' explanations of the Major Arcana
to this day.
List of the Major Arcana …
Each Major Arcanum depicts a scene, mostly
featuring a person or several people, with many
symbolic elements. In many decks, each has a
number (usually in Roman numerals) and a
name, though not all decks have both, and
some have only a picture. Every tarot deck is
different and carries a different connotation
with the art, however most symbolism remains
the same. The earliest decks bore unnamed
and unnumbered pictures on the Majors
(probably because a great many of the people
using them at the time were illiterate), and the
order of cards was not standardized.[7]
Strength is traditionally the eleventh card and
Justice the eighth, but the influential Rider–
Waite–Smith deck switched the position of
these two cards in order to make them a better
fit with the astrological correspondences
worked out by the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, under which the eighth card is
associated with Leo and the eleventh with
Libra.[citation needed] Today many decks use this
numbering, particularly in the English-speaking
world. Both placements are considered valid.
Number Card
0 The Fool
1 The Magician
2 The High Priestess
3 The Empress
4 The Emperor
5 The Hierophant
6 The Lovers
7 The Chariot
8 Justice † or Strength ‡
9 The Hermit
10 Wheel of Fortune
11 Strength † or Justice ‡
12 The Hanged Man
13 Death
14 Temperance
15 The Devil
16 The Tower
17 The Star
18 The Moon
19 The Sun
20 Judgement
21 The World
† Traditionally
‡ In Rider–Waite tarot deck
Esotericism
Fortune telling
References in popular
media
See also
Notes
External links
Last edited 11 hours ago by RMCD bot
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