The Tarot Entry

So, I am a writer. And this is meant to be a writing blog. But for the moment I can't think of a single writing-based thing to blog about, however, I do know a few other things that might be beneficial and this is one of those things that drives me bat-shit whenever I see handled poorly in fiction.

Tarot Cards: the staple method of divining information. Want to make a character appear mysterious and magical? Slap a deck into their hands and have them say a few cryptic words, right?

Except a lot of people decide to write a psychic reading and don't bother doing any research on how the Tarot actually works.

Have I made this post sound relevant yet?

Oh, good.

Tarot Basics:

There are 22 major arcana and 56 minor arcana. That means 78 cards in a Tarot deck.

The Major Arcana are the ones that are most typically used in tarot readings in fiction. These are cards like "The Fool", "Death" and "The Wheel of Fortune". Suffice to say some of them just sound ominous enough that when you sprinkle it in it makes everything all arcane and creepy. Foreshadowing!

Except contrary to popular belief, people that read tarot cards are not just a bunch of charlatans that make things up as they go along. The cards have real meanings and not all of them are what they appear to be at a glance.

The Minor Arcana are broken up into suits. Those suits are as follows:

Cups
Rods (or Staffs or Wands)
Swords
Coins (or Pentacles)

There are 14 cards in each suit, for those of you who, like me, are too lazy to do basic division while reading a blog entry but would still wonder if they didn't already know. From now on, rather than mention the alternate names for the suits, I'm just going to refer to them as the ones I called them first, respectively.

Minor Arcana: The Suits

They're not used nearly enough, totally underrated, but each suit has its own meaning that can help a person remember what the numbered (1-10) and court (Page, Knight, Queen and King) cards mean. I'm just going to give a quick cheat-sheet style peek at the suits here:

Cups - Water - Summer - Emotions and good things. Cups could also represent alcohol.
Rods - Fire - Autumn - Mental endeavors and creativity.
Swords - Air - Winter - Sharp logic and cruelty, often without good connotations.
Coins - Earth - Spring - Business endeavors, money, practical and materialistic things.

There are also certain meanings for the numbers, and much of the time the trick is in taking the meaning of the number and just matching it to the suit it belongs to, and while each card has its own set of meanings and suggestions, for writing a tarot reading that should be enough.

Aces - Beginnings, origins.
Twos - Duality, balance and imbalance.
Threes - Stability, trinity, skill
Fours - Staying the course, waiting
Fives - Disruption, entrapment
Sixes - Departure, a journey beginning or ending
Sevens - Waiting and not waiting.
Eights - Movement, travel
Nines - Almost completion
Tens - Completion
Page - A young woman or girl
Knight - A young man or boy
Queen - An older woman
King - An older man

Major Arcana

Now, when the majority of the cards in a spread are major arcana, as they often are in fiction, it means the querant likely cannot change the outcome of the situation. That can make for some really boring fiction, at times, and these cards are the most often to be read wrong.

0 - The Fool - The beginning of a journey, bliss

I - The Magician - Creation, bringing together of things, magic

II - The High Priestess - Knowledge, wisdom

III - The Empress - Motherhood, fertility, women in authority

IV - The Emperor - Fatherhood, men in authority

V - The Heirophant - Tradition, marriage

VI - The Lovers - Could be literal lovers, is more often a choice to be made

VII - The Chariot - Being pulled in two directions, chaos, travel

VIII - Strength - Most often strength through gentleness, quiet power

IX - The Hermit - Wandering, seeking something.

X - The Wheel of Fortune - Chance

XI - Justice - Balance, getting what you deserve . Exactly what it says on the tin.

XII - The Hanged Man - Lack of mobility, boredom, stagnancy

XIII - Death - NOT LITERAL DEATH. Rebirth, new beginnings, reincarnation.

XIV - Temperance - Balance, zen, watering down of things

XV - The Devil - Being stuck, bound to something, trapped

XVI - The Tower - Disaster, everything falling apart

XVII - The Star - Inspiration

XVIII - The Moon - Night, things hidden, secrets

XIX - The Sun - Day, truths, joy

XX - Judgement - Culmination, karma

XXI - The World - Everything

There are a lot of other nuances, but this is the very basic of the basics. If you don't know about tarot and want to write a tarot scene, you could quick reference this and get it past most tarot readers as long as you don't embellish too much.

I'm not saying don't write without doing the research, do that at your own peril. I'm saying if you do people will notice. AKA me. I will notice. Quit that.

Fortune Favors,
Megan R. Miller