Tarot

A Tarot Nouveau deck consists of 56 cards of four suits and 22 emblematic cards called trumps. Each suit consists of fourteen cards: ten pip cards, and four face cards: King, Queen, Knight, and Jack or Knave.

The MajorArcana are the 22 trump cards of the 78-card deck of tarot cards.

Number 0  – The Fool
Number 1  – The Magician
Number 2  – The High Priestess
Number 3  – The Empress
Number 4  – The Emperor
Number 5  – The Hierophant
Number 6  – The Lovers
Number 7  – The Chariot
Number 8  – Justice or Strength
Number 9  – The Hermit
Number 10 – Wheel of Fortune
Number 11 – Strength or Justice
Number 12 – The Hanged Man
Number 13 – Death
Number 14 – Temperance
Number 15 – The Devil
Number 16 – The Tower
Number 17 – The Star
Number 18 – The Moon
Number 19 – The Sun
Number 20 – Judgement
Number 21 – The World

By the 19th century, the Tarot came to be regarded as a »bible of bibles«, an esoteric repository of all the significant truths of creation.

The trend was started by prominent freemason and Protestant cleric Antoine Court de Gébelin who suggested that the Tarot had an ancient Egyptian origin, and mystic divine and kabbalastic significance. A contemporary of his, the Comte de Mellet, added to Court de Gébelin's claims by suggesting that the Tarot was associated with Gypsies and was in fact the imprinted book of Hermes Trismegistus.

The RiderWaite tarot deck (originally published 1910) is one of the most popular tarot decks in use for divination today in the English-speaking world.