I know what you’re thinking, Tarot cards are just silly superstitious games similar to reading your horoscope or playing with a Ouija board. But these playing cards are much more than that. Tarot cards were first introduced to the world in the 1400s but they were not used for divination until much later, during the 18th century (“Tarot”, n.d., para. 1). Divination is basically any practice of trying to see the future or find out the answer to something unknown, usually through the supernatural.
Today the tarot is used primarily for divination, but some countries use the tarot deck to play card games.
In most decks there are 78 cards, 22 are the Major Arcana, called the trump suit where you will find the magician, the fool, the devil, wheel of fortune, and other similar individualistic cards. Next is the Minor Arcana, consisting of 56 cards, four different suits, usually wands, coins, cups and swords, but this can change, for example wands can often be interchangeable with batons, rods, or staves, and coins can be called pentacles or disks. Each suit has 14 cards, numbered from ace to 10 and four court cards (page, knight, queen, and king).
“Playing” with tarot cards usually means you are a bit more open to something more spiritual surrounding our everyday lives.
Unfortunately, tarot cards do not change the future but they can help you figure out your next course of action or explain what will happen next. Tarot involves intuition and those who read the cards have to determine their meaning on their own. Tarot cards often help you to hear what you truly feel and what you truly want, so they can be helpful in figuring out important decisions in life.
So you may be wondering, why you should get a tarot reading or buy your own deck of cards. It’s simple really, tarot cards act as a guide to certain questions about yourself that even the most introspective person can find hard to answer. The cards do not reveal the future, or are even clear in what they mean but they can help you ascertain which path to take when it comes to those tricky decisions.
If you don’t believe, that’s fine to, but just remember all those little things in life we can’t explain. Tarot cards are fun in some ways, but sometimes the truth they spout is a lot more sobering than you might anticipate.
“Tarot.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web. 26 Jan. 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot