78 cards of pure magic an overview of the Tarot cards - Part II

Pleasure of Tarot

So, how did you get on? You may be wondering why I asked you to do that exercise before telling you anything!

There is a method to my madness!! I wanted you to start by focusing on what you ‘saw’ or ‘felt’ from each card before giving you any information, so that later on in the course you can check back to this exercise and see how close or indeed how far off your initial, intuitive, gut reactions were to each card.

You would have instinctively used your own words to describe what you saw and felt, and that is very important. Whether you got the meanings ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is not important at this stage.

I will ask you to come back and check this exercise later in the course, and when you do, you can use a highlighter or underline with a pen the cards and definitions where you were quite accurate in your interpretation.

Ask yourself what card or cards were you really drawn to? What was it about that card or cards that fascinated you? Make a note of this too.

What I will do now is give you some basic facts about the classic Tarot deck, this is by no means ALL the information about it, but enough for you to be getting on with at this moment in time.

The classic 78 card Tarot Deck:

The classic tarot deck has 78 cards. There are many variations to decks in both number, card and suit names, and design.

These facts will help you to understand your deck more clearly and as you become more experienced you may want to experiment with other types of deck.

There are 2 main parts to a deck:

The Major Arcana which consists of 22 cards
The Minor Arcana which consists of 56 cards

The word ‘Arcana’ is taken from Latin and means ‘secret’. An individual card can be referred to as an ‘Arcanum’.