Major Arcana - WikiHQ

thumb|upright=1.35|The Major Arcana in the [[Rider–Waite Tarot deck]]

The Major Arcana are the named cards in a cartomantic tarot pack. There are usually 22 such cards in a standard 78-card pack, typically numbered from 0 to 21 (or 1 to 21, with the Fool numbered as 0). Although the cards correspond to the trump cards of a pack used for playing tarot card games, the term 'Major Arcana' is rarely used by players and is typically associated exclusively with use for divination.

The Major Arcana are complemented by the Minor Arcana—the 56 unnamed cards of the tarot deck, which more directly correspond to the contemporary standard 52-card deck.

History

Prior to the 17th century, tarot cards were solely used for playing games and the Fool and 21 trumps had simple allegorical or esoteric meaning, mostly originating in elite ideology in the Italian courts of the 15th century when it was invented. The occult significance began to emerge in the 18th century, when Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Swiss clergyman and Freemason, published two essays on Tarot in his Le Monde Primitif (The Primeval World), a never-completed encyclopedia. In the first essay, "Du Jeu des Tarots" (The Game of Tarots), Court de Gébelin assigned Egyptian, kabbalistic, and divine significance to 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 Marseille, creating a "tortuous" kabbalistic correspondence, and even suggested that the Major Arcana represent stages of life. Marquis Stanislas de Guaita established the Major Arcana as an initiatory sequence to be used to establish a path of spiritual ascension and evolution. Today many decks use this numbering, particularly in the English-speaking world.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

! No.

! Tarot de Marseille

! Court de Gébelin

! Rider–Waite

! Etteilla

! Paul Christian

! Oswald Wirth

! Golden Dawn

! Book of Thoth (Crowley)

| 0

| The Fool

| Folly

| The Crocodile

| The Fool

| I

| The Juggler

| The Magician ("The Mountebank", "The Thimblerigger")

| The Magician

| Illness, Illness

| The Magus

| The Magician

| The Magus

| II

| The Popess

| The High Priestess

| Etteilla, Female Querent

| The Gate of the Sanctuary (of the occult Sanctuary)

| The Priestess

| The High Priestess

| The Priestess

| III

| The Empress

| The Empress ("Queen")

| The Empress

| Night, Day

| Isis-Urania

| The Empress

| IV

| The Emperor

| The Emperor ("King")

| The Emperor

| Support, Protection

| The Cubic Stone

| The Emperor

| V

| The Pope

| The Hierophant ("High Priest")

| The Hierophant

| Marriage, Union

| The Master of the Mysteries (of the Arcana)

| The Pope

| The Hierophant

| VI

| The Lovers

| Marriage

| The Lovers

| (none)

| The Two Roads

| The Lovers

| VII

| The Chariot

| Osiris Triumphant

| The Chariot

| Dissension

| The Chariot of Osiris

| The Chariot

| VIII

| Justice

| Strength

| Justice, Jurist

| Themis ("The Scales and Blade")

| Justice

| Strength

| Adjustment

| IX

| The Hermit

| The Wise Man ("The Sage", "The Seeker of Truth and Justice")

| The Hermit

| Traitor

| The Veiled Lamp

| The Hermit

| X

| Wheel of Fortune

| Fortune, Increase

| The Sphinx

| The Wheel of Fortune

| XI

| Strength

| Fortitude ("Strength")

| Justice

| Strength, Sovereign

| The Muzzled Lion ("The Tamed Lion")

| The Strength

| Justice

| Lust

| XII

| The Hanged Man

| Prudence

| The Hanged Man

| Prudence, The People

| The Sacrifice

| The Hanged Man

| XIII

| (unnamed)

| Death

| Mortality, Nothingness

| The Skeleton Reaper ("The Reaper", "The Scythe")

| Death

| XIV

| Temperance

| Temperance, Priest

| The Two Urns ("The Genius of the Sun")

| Temperance

| Art

| XV

| The Devil

| Typhon

| The Devil

| Great Force

| Typhon

| The Devil

| XVI

| The House of God

| The Castle of Plutus ("God-House")

| The Tower

| Misery, Prison

| The Beheaded Tower ("The Lightning-Struck Tower")

| The Tower

| The Blasted Tower

| The Tower

| XVII

| The Star

| Osiris, The Dog Star ("Sirius")

| The Star

| Desolation, Air

| The Star of the Magi

| The Star

| XVIII

| The Moon

| Comments, Water

| The Twilight

| The Moon

| XIX

| The Sun

| Enlightenment, Fire

| The Blazing Light

| The Sun

| XX

| Judgement

| Creation ("The Last Judgement")

| Judgement

| The Awakening of the Dead (the Genius of the Dead)

| Judgement

| The Aeon

| XXI

| The World

| The World ("Time")

| The World

| Voyage, Earth

| The Crown of the Magi

| The World

| The Universe

Esotericism

By the 19th century, the Tarot was being claimed as a "Bible of Bibles", an esoteric repository of all the significant truths of creation.

Claims such as those initiated by early Freemasons today found their way into academic discourse. Semetsky, for example, explained that tarot makes it possible to mediate between humanity and the godhead, or between god/spirit/consciousness and profane human existence. Christina Nicholson used the tarot to illustrate the deep wisdom of feminist theology. Santarcangeli wrote of the wisdom of the fool, and Sallie Nichols spoke about the archetypal power of individuation boiling beneath the powerful surface of the tarot archetypes.

Fortune telling

Now popularly associated in English-speaking countries with divination, fortune telling, or cartomancy, Tarot was not invented as a mystical or magical tool of divination, but as an instrument for playing card games with a permanent trump suit. and the creation of a society for tarot cartomancy, the Société littéraire des associés libres des interprètes du livre de Thot. The society subsequently published Dictionnaire synonimique du livre de Thot, a book that "systematically tabulated all the possible meanings which each card could bear, when upright and reversed."

Following Etteilla, tarot cartomancy was moved forward by Marie-Anne Adelaid Lenormand (1768–1830) and others.