What cards are in a tarot card deck?

Question

i know theres 22 something && 56 minors, but i wanna know the cards as in jokers, chariot, && such.

thx.

Answer 1

Hello Sid

22 Major Arcana & 56 Minor Arcana.

There is no Joker, but there is a Fool.

To tell you all about the tarot would be a mamouth task!

Join our forum & you can ask what you need about your study of the tarot as & when questions arise, I also run a tarot course for those who wish it. Link below.

Sadhara

Answer 2

First answer is basically correct -- except that The Fool is also one of the Major Arcana cards.

Answer 3

Well, this can depend greatly on the pack. When tarot was first created in the mid 15th century, the pattern was not fixed, though it did settle fairly quickly. However, there is still a great deal of variation.

Where there is little variation is in the four regular suits. These are found in both Latin suits (being cups, coins, batons, and swords) and in French suits (being hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades). Each suit consists of 10 pip cards and four court cards: King, Queen, Cavalier, and Valet. However, many tarot packs have a reduced number of pip cards!

The Marseilles pattern (itself quite a late pattern) is the one with which most people are familiar. There are 21 trumps (the invention of tarot marked the invention of trumps in card games!):

Le Bateleur (Juggler)

La Papesse (Female Pope)

L'Imperatrice (Empress)

L'Empereur (Emperor)

Le Pape (Pope)

L'Amoureux (Lovers or Love)

Le Chariot (Chariot)

La Justice (Justice)

L'Hermite (The Hermit or originally, Father Time)

La Roue de Fortune (The Wheel of Fortune)

La Force (Strength)

Le Pendu (Hanged Man or, originally, The Traitor)

Death

Temperance

Le Diable (Devil)

La Maison Dieu (The Tower, or perhaps The Devil's House)

L'Etoile (Star)

La Lune (Moon)

Le Soleil (Sun)

Le Jugement (Judgement or The Angel)

Le Mond (The World)

It is worth noting that the ranking has also varied. In Italy, the Angel, although still numbered 20, outranks the World.

The Fool was not originally one of the trump cards - functioning instead as a kind of wild card. It is still used this way in Italy, Sicily, Switzerland, and France. However, most other countries have come to employ it as the highest trump.

The Besancon pattern replaces the Female Pope and the Pope with the gods Juno and Jupiter. These trumps are still used today in the Swiss 1JJ pack, which is used to play Troccas and Troggu.

The Tarocco Siciliano features some more variations. These cards have 21 trumps but only 20 are numbered, with the highest being Giove. The lowest, unnumbered trump is The Beggar. Also found in this pack is the Ship - only otherwise found in the Minchiate...

Minchiate was a Florentine game played with a tarot pack expanded to have 40 trumps and a total of 97 cards! The extra trumps feature more virtues, elements, and signs of the zodiac. It was once very popular and spread beyond Italy all the way to the Americas - we have records showing it being played in New Orleans during the 19th century.

Finally we come to my own favourite, the Tarocco Bolognese. This pack is regional to Bologna and used to be called the Tarocchino, due to its reduced size. The first and most obvious difference is that the Female Pope, the Empress, the Emperor, and the Pope have all been replaced by four equally ranking trumps called the Four Moors. On all packs, two of the Moors share the same design. This pack is used to play a few games but the best and best known is ottocento - a game of great skill!

You can find examples of all these cards, along with rules for the games they are played with at these sites:

http://www.tarocchino.com

http://www.pagat.com

Answer 4

There are 21 Major Arcana (numbered 1 to 21) and there are 56 Minor Arcana (2-10, Page, Knight, Queen, King, Ace) in four suits (cups, wands, pentacles or coins, swords).  The last card is The Fool, for a total of 78 cards in the deck.

The Rider-Waite tarot deck (most popular deck in the US) is detailed in this Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider-Waite...

If you are looking for games to play with a tarot deck, then I would suggest this resource:

http://www.pagat.com/tarot/