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The most popular, and often copied deck, is the Rider Tarot. The Rider cards were designed in 1910 by Arthur Edward Waite. Pamela Coleman Smith was the artist, and Rider was the publisher. The card descriptions and interpretations in this book are based on the Rider Tarot. When you are ready to purchase a Tarot deck, look at the many different types that are available. New card packs are sealed in a plastic wrapping. Ask the store proprietor if there are sample cards or a catalog that you can look at. Examine the pictures carefully, and be aware of what they communicate to you. Before selecting a deck, hold it and feel it with your sense of intuition. Choose a set of cards that you are attracted to and that has meaning for you. It is important that you feel comfortable with the deck. There are two parts to the Tarot: the major arcana and the minor arcana. The word arcana is the plural of arcanum, which is defined as a secret or a mystery. It is derived from the Latin word arcanus, meaning closed or hidden. The Tarot is a mystery because it takes skill to unlock the messages that it conveys. There are 78 cards in the deck. The major arcana consist of 22 cards, and the minor arcana consist of 56 cards. There are four suits to the minor arcana: swords, wands, cups, and pentacles. And each one of the four suits consists of ten number cards and four court cards. Empowerment is the ability to take care of oneself. It is the capacity to be balanced and strong in body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Empowerment is inner strength. It encompasses self-confidence without arrogance. True empowerment is power with and not power over. The Tarot is an ancient pictorial text consisting of 78 cards that are each card filled with meaning. The cards are used as a tool for self-awareness and personal growth, helping you to better understand yourself as well as others and situations around you. An oracle is a source of wise counsel or prophesy. The Tarot is a useful oracle for helping you to solve the problems of life. This set of cards depicts all levels of human existence in the mental, spiritual, emotional, physical, and karmic realms. By consulting the cards, you can discover what path you are on in each of those areas. With this knowledge, you can make choices about whether to continue on the same path, or to change your course and begin to take a different route. Being able to have choices and make decisions is empowering. The images displayed on the cards are not to be understood literally. They must be interpreted. Each card consists of various symbols and archetypes. A symbol is a meaningful representation of either an abstract concept or a concrete object. An archetype is a significant model or pattern that is universal to the human psyche. Archetypes are represented with symbols. Symbols and archetypes are the language of the unconscious mind. They are the language that our nightly dreams are made of. Each one of the cards has both positive and negative qualities. There are no completely good or completely bad cards in the Tarot. For example, if a card depicts anger, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes we need to be angry. It is the way in which our anger is expressed that determines whether it is for the better or for the worse. A card that appears negative can also be viewed as an opportunity for learning and growth. We do not need be afraid of them. When these cards show up in our readings, they are telling us that it is necessary to make some kind of a change somewhere. Being brave enough to make a useful change is empowering. Only a single dimension of the whole is depicted on each card. No person or situation displays the attribute of only one card. Everything is multi-dimensional. Remembering that there can be more than one or two sides to anything helps to give us options. The cards represent spiritual cycles. Throughout our lives we continually go through many kinds of cycles. We experience our own personal cycles as well as the cycles of who and what is around us. In each of our lives, the lessons that we learn occur in cycles. When we do not grasp the lesson, it circles back around to us again in a similar form. It spins like a broken record. This is what is occurring when we find ourselves asking, "Why is this happening to me again?" However, when we do grasp the lesson, it spirals upward and becomes a foundation for our continued growth. We become skilled at knowing how to deal with the familiar circumstances that come up. It becomes empowering to recognize and understand situations that were previously confronted. Of course, there will always be new challenges to look forward to. The Tarot can be healing when we use the cards with a clear mind and a rational outlook. They hold great wisdom that can be accessed when we are ready. They can guide us to improve our lives and to live in balance with ourselves and with the Universe. The cards can show us what areas of our lives need attention. Because there are five parts to the deck, we can look at how we are doing physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and karmically. The major cards are the ones that tell us what is going on karmically. They show us the greater energies that are operating in our lives at any particular time. We become empowered when we accept these energies and figure out how to work with them. The minor cards consist of four suits: swords, wands, cups, and pentacles. Swords symbolize the mental plane, wands represent the spiritual plane, cups stand for emotions, and pentacles signify material aspects. Too many of one suit in a full reading signifies too much of that type of energy. Too few of a suit indicates too little of that energy. Knowing how to balance these energies in our lives is empowering. |
The origin of the Tarot cards is unknown, although there is much speculation. They probably evolved from playing cards that were created during the middle ages. The earliest know deck is the Visconti-Sforza tarrocchi pack, which is hand-painted and dates from the fifteenth century. Tarrocchi is an Italian word for a type of card game.
