The full tarot deck contains 78 cards. Twenty-two Major Arcana describing the large forces and archetypal themes that shape human experience. Fifty-six Minor Arcana organized across four suits - Cups, Wands, Swords, Pentacles - each tracking a different domain of daily life. Every draw pulls from that complete pool. Nothing is excluded.
The 78 Cards and What They Cover
The Major Arcana cards are the ones with names: the Fool, the Magician, the High Priestess, the Empress, the Emperor, the Hierophant, the Lovers, the Chariot, Strength, the Hermit, the Wheel of Fortune, Justice, the Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, the Devil, the Tower, the Star, the Moon, the Sun, Judgment, the World. When these cards appear in a draw, they are pointing to something beyond the immediate practical question - a larger pattern, a threshold, a fundamental shift.
The Minor Arcana manage the specific. Cups (Ace through Ten, plus Page, Knight, Queen, King) cover emotional life: love, relationships, intuition, grief, joy. Wands cover creative energy, ambition, movement, conflict that comes from vitality. Swords cover the mind: thought, communication, truth-telling, mental pain, clarity under pressure. Pentacles cover material reality: work, money, health, the physical world, what we build over time.
How to Choose Your Spread Size
A single card - the three-card draw - and larger layouts each serve different purposes.
One card answers a direct question or sets the lens for a day. Three cards carry the most versatile structure in tarot: past/present/future, situation/action/outcome, mind/body/spirit - the same three positions can be loaded with different meanings for different questions, which is why the three-card pull is the format most practiced readers return to most often.
Five cards allow for a more dimensional reading: you can map a situation, its cause, the obstacle, available resources, and the likely outcome - all in one draw. Seven or more cards produce full narrative readings where the cards can contradict and qualify each other across multiple positions.
Reading the Cards Together
Single-card draws are read on their own terms. Multi-card draws require you to read the pattern first. Before interpreting any individual card, look at the overall composition: how many Major Arcana appeared? Which suits dominate? Are the numbered cards high (completion, mastery, endings) or low (beginnings, potential, early development)?
A three-card draw where all three cards are swords is telling you something about a situation that is primarily mental or communicative - words are the issue, or clarity is what is needed, or a conflict involving sharp speech. The individual cards then specify what kind of sword energy is at work.
The draw is free, uses the full 78-card deck, and gives a reading instantly - choose your spread size and pull your cards now.
