All 78 tarot card meanings

How to use these pages

Every card on this site has its own page, written for beginners. Each one starts with the card's keywords at a glance, then looks closely at what Pamela Colman Smith painted for the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909. After that come the upright and reversed meanings, what the card can say about love, work and spirituality, how it reads as past, present, future or advice, an affirmation, journal prompts and a short history of the card.

You do not need to read a page from top to bottom. If you have just drawn a card, start with the keywords and the picture. Look at the card in your hands first, then compare it with the page. What you notice yourself is the part you will remember.

I read the picture first and treat old lists of meanings as history. Where a meaning comes from later occult tradition or from modern reading habits, the page says so with a small label, so you always know what is old and what is new.

If your deck looks different

These pages follow the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which is the base of most beginner decks today. If you use another deck, match cards by name. The Tower is still the Tower. A few names change from deck to deck: Pentacles can be Coins or Disks, and Wands can be Batons, Rods or Staves. In the Tarot de Marseille and the Thoth deck, Strength and Justice swap numbers, so read by the card's title.

Learning the cards without memorizing them

You do not need to learn 78 meanings by heart before you start reading. Most readers learn the cards one at a time, through use. Here is a gentle way to begin.

1. Draw one card a day. Shuffle, draw a single card and write one sentence about what you see before you open its page.
2. Compare in the evening. Read the card's page and notice what matches your sentence and what is new.
3. Learn the patterns. Once you know the four suits and the ten numbers, you can make sense of most Minor Arcana cards even before you look them up.
4. Look back after a week. Reread your notes. The cards you have met in your own life will stay with you far better than any list.

Upright and reversed

Every card page gives an upright and a reversed meaning. You do not have to use reversals. Many readers never do, and starting with the 78 upright meanings is a good plan. If you want to try them, read Reversed tarot cards: should you read them? first, and decide before you shuffle how you will read a card that lands upside down.

No card is a curse

Death, the Devil, the Tower and the Ten of Swords look frightening, and beginners often worry when they appear. Each one has a useful message about change, attachment, honesty or the end of a hard stretch. Tarot cannot predict a death or diagnose an illness. If a reading leaves you worried about your health, safety or money, talk to a professional. There is more about this in tarot ethics.

Keep learning

The free Tarot for Beginners course walks you through the whole deck in short lessons. My book The Novice's Guide to Tarot has the full entry for every card in one place, with affirmations and tips.

Sources

• A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910).
• Pamela Colman Smith and A. E. Waite, the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot (London: Rider, 1909).