Have you by chance been inside a gypsy tent in a carnival or fair? Chances are, you might have walked in one because the individual inside could presumably foretell your destiny.
Usually, the diviner, generally a middle-aged lady dressed in gypsy attire, uses cards with unusual pictures in order to tell you of your own destiny. These cards are usually called tarot cards.
A full set of tarot cards consists of 78 cards. The cards are then divided into 2 distinct sections.
1) The Major Arcana or deeper secrets. Generally, recognized as trump cards, these are twenty-one cards minusut suits. These cards are known by their titles: The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, and The World. There is a 22nd card called The Fool. Its value is equivalent to nil.
2) The Minor Arcana or smaller mysteries. These consist of 56 cards, sometimes known as pips. Minor arcane consist of 4 suits of 14 cards each: ten numbered cards and 4 court cards. The page, knight, queen and king comprise the court cards in each of the four tarot suits. Conventional Italian suits of tarot are swords, batons, coins and cups. Contemporary tarots somewhat change the titles of the suits; the batons suit is referred to as wands, rods, and also staves, and the coins suit is frequently referred to as pentacles or disks.
Many styles, designs and patterns of tarots emerged since they were introduced. The common and most key design is known as Tarot de Marseilles. Studied by Court de Gebelin, the patterns of the Marseilles demonstrate his Le Monde primtif. This standard was also made favourite in the 20th century by Payl Marteau. Another common type of tarot is the Swiss Tarot. Here, the High Priestess and the Heirophant cards are substituted with Juno and Jupiter, respectively. The Minichate in Florence is another variation.
This edition employs a pack of 96 cards instead than the usual 78. The additional cards incorporate astrological symbols as well as the 4 basic elements of the earth fire, water, air, along with earth. Another influential tarot deck which is popular in English-speaking countries is the Rider-Waite pack. The deck s imagery, created by artist Pamela Colma-Smith just after the instruction of Religious mystic Arthur Edward Waite, is complicated and loaded with occult metaphors, especially the trump cards.
A important factor that sets the Rider-Waite deck from the Marseilles-style packs is that the scenes in the numeric cards illustrate divinatory meanings derived from traditional cartomantic divinatory meanings and also from all those acquired by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.look4articles.com/images/rss.jpg "XML Feed For RSS")