Posts tagged as:

Major Arcana

Thirteen: Death or Rebirth?

Number thirteen is the sixth prime number, and many cultures find it portentous, if not unfortunate. Its negative associations can be seen as far back as Babylonia and ancient China, when an extra 13th month had to be added every now and again to keep the seasons in line with the solar year. In China [...]

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Twelve: The Sacred Gates

Twelve: 4×3; 6×2; 7+5, 10+2. We should now be able to intuit why the number is so potent when we look at the combinations of these numbers. Twelve is a culmination of the first part of the journey through the Major Arcana: a gateway between the physical world and the unknown. The Hanged Man is [...]

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ELEVEN: Master or Mute?

There is a significant difference of opinion in numerological circles as to the significance of the number 11. Many consider eleven to be an angelic or master number, a number for delving into the mysteries. Others see it as negative, forever caught between ten and twelve. The association of eleven with negativity may have emerged [...]

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Origins of the Tarot – Dai Léon (Frog Books)

Dai Léon’s Origins of the Tarot is a massive tome, the subtitle of which is ‘Cosmic Ordering and Principles of Immortality’. It is an academic book, and the reader may occasionally find the text confusing. Léon seems to wind round and round looking at the same issues from a different perspective each time. It [...]

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Tarot Archetypes

If you’ve heard the term, but never understood it, you aren’t alone!
Although archetypes are fundamental to the way our minds work, they’re not that easy to explain. Carl Jung, who coined the term, didn’t make it particularly clear either. He said they are preformed patterns in the psyche, based on instinct – i.e. very basic, [...]

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Eight: the auspicious number

Eight has been considered an auspicious number from antiquity. It was thought that beyond the seven planets, there was an eighth sphere – that of the stars. As early as Babylonian times, the number was seen as connected to the gods (the god was said to reside on the 8th floor of the ziggurats). In [...]

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Beginnings

If you are trying to learn the Tarot, it’s easy to get flummoxed at the beginning by the sheer volume of cards. Seventy-eight of them – and then there are the reversals and combinations as well. I remember when I was thinking about growing vegetables: I bought a book on how to do so, and [...]

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The Tarot: Myths, Meanings, Value

Welcome to Tarot Card Meanings Online.
Whatever your reason for finding your way here, you’re welcome!
This site began as a straight-forward tarot blog at http://tarotcardmeanings.qarf.com (and thanks to all the great comments posted about the old site), but we ran out of space quite rapidly and decided there was a lot more we wanted to do [...]

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Tarot Card Meanings – The Major Arcana

In our consideration of Tarot Card Meanings, the journey of the Major Arcana is the path of spiritual self-awareness, each card symbolising not only the choices we meet along the way, but also – deeper and wilder – the archetypes that underpin each stage, which can be seen as degrees of initiation. The earliest mystery [...]

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Tarot Card Meanings: The Magician

A sudden conscious awareness of your personal path in life; new initiatives, creative ideas. The directed application of will to manifest an idea or a dream. The ability to tread a difficult path with confidence. Awareness of personal values so that ethical choices can be made. The interrelationship of many different dimensions, and how these [...]

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