Major and Minor Arcana: Two Levels of the Same Story

A traditional Tarot deck contains 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. Today, the Major Arcana are usually associated with significant life themes and archetypal images, while the Minor Arcana deal more closely with everyday experiences, emotions, relationships, conflicts, and decisions. But this distinction was not part of Tarot from the beginning.

From Trumps to the Major Arcana

In the earliest Italian Tarot decks of the 15th century, there were four regular suits and a separate sequence of illustrated trump cards known as trionfi, or “triumphs.” These cards depicted figures and allegories familiar to Renaissance Europeans: the Emperor, the Lovers, the Wheel of Fortune, Death, Judgement, and others. Their original purpose was practical — they were special cards used as trumps in a game.

The terms Major Arcana and Minor Arcana appeared much later, as Tarot developed into an occult and symbolic system during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Latin word arcanum means “secret” or “mystery.” The former trump cards became the Major Arcana, while the four suits became known as the Minor Arcana.

Major Arcana: The Bigger Themes

The 22 Major Arcana can be understood as images of experiences that go beyond a single everyday event. They deal with themes such as choice, power, growth, solitude, desire, crisis, endings, hope, and transformation.

The Fool, for example, can represent a beginning — stepping into something unknown without knowing exactly where it will lead. The Lovers can be about romantic connection, but also about choice and the alignment of personal values. The Hermit may suggest withdrawing from external noise to search for an answer of your own. Death, despite its dramatic name, is commonly interpreted not as literal death but as the ending of one stage and the transition into another.

This is why a Major Arcana card often shifts the question from “What is happening?” to something deeper:

What kind of process am I going through?

Why Do We Associate the Major Arcana with Archetypes?

Modern psychological interpretations of Tarot have been strongly influenced by Carl Gustav Jung’s ideas about symbols and archetypes. One distinction is important, however: Jung did not create a psychological system for Tarot, nor did he assign specific archetypes to individual Tarot cards.

That connection developed later.

Tarot imagery lends itself naturally to an archetypal reading because it contains themes that repeatedly appear in human stories. The Hero begins a journey. The Wise Old Man searches for truth. A ruler creates order. A person encounters their Shadow. An established world collapses and must be rebuilt.

Through this lens, The Emperor can raise questions about authority, structure, and control. The Devil may bring attention to dependency, temptation, desire, or parts of ourselves we would rather not acknowledge. The Tower can represent a structure — external or internal — that can no longer withstand reality.

The card does not have to provide a single answer. It provides an image with which we can begin a conversation.

Minor Arcana: Where Does the Story Take Place?

The 56 Minor Arcana bring these larger themes back into everyday life. They consist of four suits, numbered cards, and court cards.

In many modern Tarot traditions, Cups are associated with emotions and relationships, Swords with thought, conflict, and decisions, Wands with energy, action, and initiative, and Pentacles with the material world, work, the body, and resources.

If a Major Arcana card points toward a larger theme such as transformation or choice, the Minor Arcana can help reveal where that theme is playing out — in a relationship, at work, in a difficult conversation, in financial decisions, in a new project, or within an internal conflict.

Together, the Cards Create a Story

The relationship between the two groups is what makes Tarot such an interesting visual language.

Imagine The Tower appearing in a spread. On its own, it presents a powerful image of an established structure breaking down. Next to it appears the Three of Swords, often associated with emotional pain or disappointment. Then comes the Eight of Pentacles, a card connected with work, practice, and gradually building something through effort.

Instead of treating them as three separate predictions, we can read them as a sequence:

Something established collapses → the experience hurts → the process of building something new begins.

The cards start to form a narrative.

Tarot as a Tool for Self-Reflection

Tarot does not have to begin with the question, “What will happen to me?”

It can begin with very different questions:

What am I not seeing in this situation?
What am I avoiding?
What is keeping me in place?
What do I need but find difficult to admit?

In this approach, the traditional meaning of the card is only one part of the process. Your reaction to the image matters too.

What did you notice first? Which detail makes you uncomfortable? Which character do you identify with? Which one do you reject? What situation from your own life does the scene remind you of?

The image becomes a prompt rather than an answer.

Tarot Does Not Have to Predict the Future

Used this way, Tarot does not claim to know a person better than they know themselves. Instead, it offers an unusual way to look at thoughts, fears, desires, and contradictions that are already present.

The Major Arcana provide the larger themes — journey, choice, power, love, crisis, solitude, transformation. The Minor Arcana bring those themes into ordinary life.

Sometimes that is enough.

Not to receive a prediction about the future, but to see the present from a different angle — and perhaps ask yourself a question you had not thought to ask before.