A tarot deck has 78 cards. The cards are divided into sections, which makes learning them easier because the section a card is in shapes its meaning. The sections are: Major Arcana (22 cards) Minor Arcana (40 cards) Court Cards (16 cards) This article focuses on the Major Arcana. The Major Arcana cards are usually titled with a Roman Numeral (0 – XXI) and a name (such as The Fool, The Lovers, Death, or The Sun). These cards represent larger themes, milestones or turning points in someone’s life, or events outside the querent’s control (the querent is the person getting the reading). The names themselves (along with the images) help reveal the cards’ meanings.

This month the Llewellyn Tarot blog will feature a series of articles exploring the Fool’s Journey using Rachel Pollack’s Alternate Major Arcana Spread, found HERE. The Fool’s Journey was coined by Eden Gray. The Fool card is said to journey through the Majors in order, gaining spiritual wisdom and learning lessons along the way. As the idea resonated with readers, people began laying out the Majors in certain configurations, like a spread, which influenced the interpretation of the journey. For this month’s study, we will use this configuration based on the spread Rachel developed:   We will place the Fool at the top and the rest of the Majors in order in three

This article was inspired by an idea I learned from Mark McElroy almost a decade ago. It is based on his technique What Would the Majors Do described here: http://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/572 I was thinking about Tarot and Ethics. I was also thinking about how, if you lay the Majors out in three rows of seven (not including the Fool), it shows a version of the Fool’s Journey that many read as: First row: learning the lessons needed to become socialized Second row: questioning those lessons and finding your own way Third row: spiritual growth and self-actualization That idea has been with me through most of my tarot life and consequently I cannot help but think of

Carl Llewellyn Weschcke wrote a lovely foreword to The Llewellyn Tarot Companion. Allow me to quote a bit here: The tarot is the universe hidden in a secret book of cards. The universe is both “out there” and “in here.” As above, so below. The Llewellyn Tarot deck is the result of five years of intense study and creation by this artist, already knowledgeable and well-known for her creation of Legend: The Arthurian Tarot and for her illustrations to the Caseell edition of Le Morte D’Arthur edited by John Matthews. Anna-Marie Ferguson created the Llewellyn Tarot to exemplify the very raison d’etre of Llewellyn as “bringer of light.” Llewellyn is named for Llew Llaw