Tarot Cards

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The King of Coins Dotti deck
The King of Coins
Dotti deck

Contents

[edit] About Tarot Cards in general

Tarot cards are usually printed on cardboard stock, rather than the plastics used for many ordinary playing cards. Most tarot card publishers now use a specialist card stock that has an inner layer of carbon, this helps to protect the card against bends and tears.

Most decks usually have a common back, though some very early cards appear to have had various back images

[edit] The Cards and Their Meanings

The following is a list of cards in a typical tarot deck (although there is some variation within some decks) with links to discussions of the cards and their meanings.

[edit] Trumps

Below follows a list of the Trumps (also called Atouts or the Major Arcana) of the tarot. Numbering and titles on very early decks did not appear, though these became standardized to the following within a couple of centuries. Despite this, variations do occur amongst decks, and the twentieth century has seen a preponderance of decks that interchanges VIII Justice with XI Fortitude (or Strength).

[edit] Court cards and Pip cards

These, forming the other four suits in addition to the above trumps, are at times referred to as [[Court cards|Minor Arcana]. In the list below, we have used the English translations of the oldest names for the suits. For Court Cards we have used Knights and Valets, but they are sometimes also referred to as Cavaliers and Pages or Princes and Princesses respectively.


[edit] Batons

also at times called Wands, Sceptres, Rods, or Staves

[edit] Cups

also called Chalices or Vessels


[edit] Coins

also called Deniers, Pentacles, or Disks

[edit] Swords

also called Epees or Daggers

[edit] Extra Cards

[edit] Blank Cards

Blank cards will appear in some decks because a deck is typically printed on a sheet large enough for eighty cards. However, there are usually only 78 cards in a deck, so publishers will often use one of the extra cards for some sort of information or advertising, and at times leave the other blank.

Some readers have chosen to use the blank card in their readings. They have given it various meanings, one of them being that the future is a blank canvas.

A side benefit of the blank card is that it can be used to replace a lost or badly damaged card from the deck. Some indivuals prefer to include a blank card within the deck when using tarot for readings, or adding on the blank a design of one's own choice.

[edit] Addition of Various Cards

Some decks have added various trump cards, such as the Italian Minchiate pattern. The manner in which these have been added varies from deck to deck. Examples include claims that previously 'lost' cards now complete the deck, or various designs were made for the same card and included in the set, or simply that an (or more than one) additional card exemplifies some essential quality of the deck in question.

As a living tradition, some have seen the addition of cards as exemplifying this, whilst others see in the same action a diminished understanding of that same living tradition.

[edit] External Links

Websites with pictures of cards from a wide variety of decks:

  • Inana's list on Trionfi.com - lists decks with further image links.
  • Tarot.com features images of all 78 cards from about 60 different decks.
  • Aeclectic.net features even more decks, but only presents a handful of card images from each.
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