How many cards are in a tarot deck?
A standard tarot deck has 78 cards — 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. Below you can pull a free three-card reading from our own original deck, then read what each card means.
The 78 cards, broken down
Every traditional tarot deck splits the same way. The Major Arcana is 22 standalone cards, numbered 0 to 21, covering the big themes — beginnings, change, choices, endings. The Minor Arcana is 56 cards across four suits of 14, covering the everyday: feelings, work, decisions, and the people around you.
That 14-card suit is the one structural difference from ordinary playing cards. A normal deck has 13 cards per suit (Ace through King); tarot adds a Page between the 10 and the court cards, making 14 — then stacks the 22-card Major Arcana on top.
The four suits of the Minor Arcana
Each suit maps to one of the four classical elements and one area of life:
What does the Death card really mean?
Despite the name, the Death card almost never refers to a literal death. In tarot tradition it is the card of transformation — a chapter ending so that a new one can begin. It points to change, release, and moving on: a job you are leaving, a habit you are outgrowing, a version of yourself you are ready to retire.
Card number 13 in the Major Arcana, it is the one people fear pulling and the one experienced readers tend to welcome. When it shows up in our reading above, the prompt asks a single question: what are you ready to let go of so something new can begin?
Where the 78-card deck comes from
Tarot began in 15th-century Europe not as a mystical tool but as a card game — the Italian game of tarocchi, still played today. The deck only became associated with divination centuries later, in 18th-century France. The version almost everyone now pictures is the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, published in 1909 with meanings set out by Arthur Edward Waite and artwork by Pamela Colman Smith. Its fully illustrated cards made the symbolism easy to read, and nearly every modern deck follows its structure: the same 78 cards, the same 22 Majors and four suits of 14.
Our deck above is drawn from scratch — original symbols, original wording — but it follows that same public, traditional structure, so the meanings line up with any standard deck you might buy.
How a three-card reading works
The spread in the widget is the classic Past · Present · Future layout — the most common starting point. You shuffle, pick three cards face-down, and turn them over in order. The first card reflects what shaped the situation, the second where things stand, the third a direction to think about.
Cards can also appear reversed (upside-down), which traditionally softens or inverts the meaning — often pointing inward rather than outward. We treat every card as a prompt to reflect on, not a prediction. The value isn't in the cards knowing your future; it's in giving you a fresh angle to think about what's already on your mind.
Sources & notes
- The 78-card structure (22 Major + 56 Minor Arcana, four suits of 14) is the standard shared by virtually all modern decks.
- Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911) — the public-domain source for the traditional meanings our prompts are written from.
- Historical origin as the game of tarocchi (15th-century Italy); divinatory use developed in 18th-century France.
- Our deck's art and wording are original. Readings here are for reflection and entertainment, not prediction.
Seventy-eight cards, one mirror. The deck doesn't know your future — but laying three cards down is a surprisingly good way to hear what you already think.