What Is the Major Arcana?
The Major Arcana is a sequence of 22 Tarot cards numbered from 0 to 21. Unlike the Minor Arcana, these cards do not belong to a suit. Each has its own number, name and symbolic image, including The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, Death, The Tower, The Sun and The World.
The word arcana is the plural of the Latin arcanum, meaning a secret or mystery. Historically, these cards were the trump cards of the Tarot deck. In modern Tarot, they are interpreted as the deck's primary symbolic principles: the powers, conditions and stages of development through which human experience is organized.
A Major Arcana card does not necessarily predict a dramatic external event. It may identify the central force operating within a situation, an internal transformation, an unavoidable decision or a lesson that has consequences beyond the immediate moment.
The 22 Major Arcana Cards
The Major Arcana is a sequence of 22 unsuited Tarot cards numbered from 0 to 21. Each card has its own number, name and symbolic image. In the Rider - Waite - Smith tradition, the sequence contains the following cards:
Magician
High Priestess
Empress
Emperor
Hierophant
Lovers
Chariot
Strength
Hermit
Wheel of Fortune
Justice
Hanged Man
Death
Temperance
Devil
Tower
Star
Moon
Sun
Judgement
World
Fool
Some Tarot traditions exchange the numerical positions of Strength and Justice, but the Rider - Waite - Smith system places Strength at VIII and Justice at XI.
The Major Arcana as a Sequence
The cards can be read individually, but their order also forms a meaningful progression. The Fool stands outside the numbered sequence as pure possibility. The Magician through The Chariot describe the formation of identity and the development of the power to act within the world.
Strength through Temperance move inward. These cards concern self-command, reflection, consequence, surrender, transformation and the restoration of balance. They show that personal power must be refined rather than merely asserted.
The Devil through The Moon confront attachment, illusion, fear and structures that can no longer remain intact. The Sun, Judgement and The World bring illumination, awakening and integration. The sequence ends when experience has been consciously understood and incorporated into a complete form.
This progression is often called The Fool's Journey. It is not a single fixed story, but an interpretive framework for understanding the Major Arcana as stages of experience rather than as isolated images.
Major Arcana and Minor Arcana
The Major Arcana establishes the principal force or meaning within a reading. The Minor Arcana describes how that force appears through actions, relationships, thoughts, emotions, conflicts and material circumstances.
For example, a Major Arcana card may identify transformation as the central issue, while surrounding Minor Arcana cards show where the transformation is taking place and how the people involved are responding to it. The distinction is not that Major Arcana cards are always "more important," but that they operate at a broader structural level.
The 56 Minor Arcana cards are divided into four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. Together, the Major and Minor Arcana form the complete 78-card Tarot deck.
Major Arcana Cards in a Tarot Reading
When one Major Arcana card appears in a reading, it often identifies the central principle shaping the question. Several Major Arcana cards may indicate that the situation involves major decisions, long-term consequences or forces that cannot be understood only through everyday circumstances.
The meaning of a card still depends upon its position, the question being asked and its relationship to the surrounding cards. The Empress may describe creation, fertility or material abundance in one reading and an influential person or governing principle in another. Death may indicate an ending, release or irreversible transition rather than physical death.
Major Arcana cards should therefore be read as active symbolic structures, not as isolated keywords. Their images show how a force operates, what stage it has reached and what it requires from the person encountering it.
Upright and Reversed Major Arcana Meanings
An upright Major Arcana card generally expresses its principle directly. Its energy is available, visible or actively shaping events. This does not mean that every upright card is favorable. The Tower upright may still indicate disruption, while The Devil may expose attachment, compulsion or loss of freedom.
A reversed card does not simply mean the opposite of its upright meaning. Reversal may show that the principle is blocked, delayed, internalized, resisted, distorted or used incorrectly. The reversed Magician, for example, may indicate unused ability and lack of confidence, or it may reveal manipulation and the deliberate misuse of skill.
The surrounding cards help determine which expression applies. Reversals add direction and condition to a card's central principle; they do not erase that principle.
Symbols and Correspondences in the Major Arcana
Every Major Arcana image contains a structured combination of numbers, colors, gestures, objects, natural elements and geometric forms. These details are not merely decorative. They establish relationships between the visible scene and the principle represented by the card.
Many Tarot traditions also connect the Major Arcana with numerology, astrology, Hebrew letters, alchemy and the Tree of Life. These systems can reveal additional relationships, but the assigned correspondences differ between Tarot schools. The image, number and position of the card should therefore remain the foundation of interpretation.