Glossary

Majors, also called the Major Arcana, are the twenty-two named trump cards in a tarot deck. They run from zero, the Fool, to twenty-one, the World, and they tend to come up when something foundational is at work in a reading. Birth, death, falling in love, the long crisis. Major weather.

Minors, or the Minor Arcana, are the other fifty-six cards, split into four suits of fourteen. They describe the texture of ordinary life — the small worry, the meal shared, the work going well or badly. Most of any reading is minors. Most of any life is, too.

Court cards are the four figure cards in each suit — Page, Knight, Queen, King in most decks. They usually represent either a person in the reader's life, a way of being the reader is moving through, or both at once. Reading court cards well takes longer than reading any other category, because the question of whether the card is a person or a role is rarely obvious on first glance.

Pip cards are the numbered cards in each suit, Ace through Ten. The word comes from the old playing-card vocabulary — a pip is one of the small marks on a regular card. In Marseille and Thoth decks the pips are mostly just suit symbols arranged on the card, no scene. In RWS-descended decks they are fully illustrated, which is what makes those decks easier to learn on.

Reversal, or a reversed card, is a card that lands upside down in a spread. It is not bad. It is a state — the energy of the card turned inward, blocked, hidden, delayed, or asking a different question than the upright version would ask. Some readers use reversals, some do not. Both practices are honest.

Spread is the arrangement of cards on the table for a reading. A spread is usually a set of positions, each with a question attached to it — past, present, future, or what i carry, what is in front of me, what wants to be released. The simplest spreads are three cards. The most famous larger spread is the Celtic Cross, ten cards in a particular shape.

Querent is the person being read for. Some readers use the word, some find it stiff. In writing it is useful for distinguishing the reader from the read, but at a table you would just say, you, or the person across from me, or the friend who came in.

Significator is an older idea — a card chosen at the start of a reading to represent the querent, often a court card matched to their age and temperament. The Golden Dawn used significators heavily. Most modern readers skip them. They are worth knowing as a word so you don't trip over it in old books.

Shadow, in tarot, usually refers to the parts of the self the querent has not yet looked at directly. A shadow card in a spread is the card that names the thing being avoided. The word comes from Jungian psychology and is used loosely.

The Fool's Journey is the way of reading the twenty-two Majors in order, zero through twenty-one, as a single story arc of innocence, encounter, transformation, and return. It is a teaching frame more than a doctrine. It is the easiest way to learn the Majors as a group instead of as twenty-two separate cards.

RWS stands for Rider-Waite-Smith, the deck published in 1909 with art by Pamela Colman Smith on commission to Arthur Edward Waite, printed by the Rider Company. It is the world standard for beginner decks and most modern decks descend from its scene compositions.

Thoth refers to the Thoth tarot, designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Frieda Harris in the 1940s, published in 1969. It is denser and more symbolically packed than the RWS and has its own devoted reading tradition.

Marseille, or the Tarot de Marseille, is the older French printing tradition that solidified in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its Minor cards are unillustrated pips. It is the deck most occult-revival decks descend from structurally, even when their art looks nothing like it.

Pull, in tarot practice, is to draw a single card from the deck, usually for a question or as a card of the day. To pull a card is the most common everyday act of tarot.

Draw is functionally the same word as pull, used a little more formally. Drawing three cards, drawing a card from the top of the deck.

Cut is to split the deck into two or three piles before drawing, as a way of randomizing the order after a shuffle. Some readers cut with their left hand, some let the querent cut, some skip the cut entirely. There is no consensus and no rule.

The Lovers spread is one of many small named spreads — not the same as the Lovers card. A spread named after a card or a theme is just a particular layout someone invented. You can use the named spreads in books. You can also invent your own.

Intention, in tarot, is the question or focus the querent brings to the reading before the cards are drawn. Setting an intention is just naming, out loud or silently, what the reading is for. It is not a magical act. It is a way of focusing attention.

Deck care covers the small practices people use to keep a deck in good condition and personal — wrapping it in cloth, keeping it in a box, not letting others handle it, or, contrary to that whole tradition, letting everyone handle it and trusting the deck to weather its own use. Either approach is fine. The deck is paper.

Deck cleansing is a related practice — running a new or much-used deck through smoke, moonlight, salt, or just a thorough shuffle, with the intention of resetting it. Some readers find it essential. Others find it superstitious. The honest answer is that it is meaningful if it is meaningful to you, and not if it isn't.

Candle work is the small accompanying ritual of lighting a candle during a reading, sometimes choosing a candle color matched to the question. It does not change the cards. It changes the room, which changes the reader, which changes the reading.

Journaling, in a tarot context, is the daily or weekly practice of writing down the cards you pulled and what they brought up. It is the single most useful thing a beginner can do. The deck teaches itself through your own notes over months.

Archetypes are the recurring figures and patterns the tarot images draw on — the Mother, the Lover, the Hermit, the Trickster, the King, the Death. The word comes from Jungian psychology and names the idea that certain patterns of being human show up across cultures and centuries. Tarot images are partly a catalog of those patterns.

A Jungian frame, in tarot writing, means reading the cards through the lens of Carl Jung's ideas — archetypes, shadow, individuation, the collective unconscious. It is one of several theoretical frames. It is not the only one, but it is the most common in serious modern tarot books.

Divination is the broader category tarot belongs to — the practice of seeking insight, guidance, or knowledge through a symbolic system. It is an old word. It includes runes, the I Ching, scrying, augury, and many others. In Dylan's hands, and in most modern reflective practices, divination means description of the present rather than prediction of the future.

Fortune-telling is the more loaded word, and the reason it is fraught is that it implies prediction — the cards as a mechanism for knowing what will happen. Most working readers find this framing inaccurate and a little embarrassing. The cards are better at describing the shape of where you are now than at predicting where you will be. The future is yours to make, in part, by the choices you make after the reading. The cards do not take that away from you.