Major Arcana
The Major Arcana are the 22 trump cards of the tarot — from 0 (The Fool) to XXI (The World). They're considered the cards of the great life themes and archetypal stages.
Arcanum is Latin for "secret." A full tarot deck has 78 cards: 22 Major and 56 Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana carry names and numbers — the Magician, the High Priestess, the Tower, the Star and so on — and, in the common reading, form the "Fool's Journey": a symbolic sequence of stages of development from an unmarked setting-out (0, the Fool) to completion (XXI, the World).
In the best-known deck, the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot (1909, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith to Arthur Edward Waite's design), all 22 trumps are fully illustrated; the esoteric tradition of the Golden Dawn additionally assigns them astrological correspondences — planets and zodiac signs. In readings, the Major Arcana are given particular weight: by convention they mark the larger lines, while the Minor Arcana sketch everyday life.
Even the most dramatic trumps — Death, the Tower — are symbolic images of change and upheaval, not predictions of specific events. Tarot is a tool for interpretation and reflection, not an oracle in the literal sense.
How we use this term
Leitstern works with the full 78-card deck after Rider-Waite-Smith, including the Golden Dawn's astrological correspondences; your daily card is deliberately drawn from the 22 Major Arcana.
Read next
Terms that connect directly to this one.