The Minor Arcana

The Minor Arcana consists of four suits:

Each suit consists of fourteen Tarot cards, including ten numbered cards (Ace through to Ten) and four Court Cards (the Page, Knight, Queen and King). The numbered cards reflect everyday life situations while the Court Cards reflect personality-types or actual people. Combined, the Minor Arcana is said to highlight the more mundane aspects of life and can refer to day-to-day issues that have a temporary or minor influence. They describe the client’s psychological state and the current life focus.

However, the Minor Arcana is not to be simply discounted as unimportant. As Karen Hamaker-Zondag discusses in her book The Way of the Tarot: Jungian Approach for Deeper Insight into the Tarot, the number fourteen often occurs symbolically in the context of religion. The number seven is a sacred number in many different cultures. In its twofold manifestation, seven makes fourteen. Additionally, there are fourteen rungs of the ladder of Osiris (the ladder which joins Heaven and Earth) for it brings together spirituality and everyday life. This suggests that there is something more meaningful in those aspects of our lives we deem ‘ordinary’.

If a reading is predominantly made up of the Minor Arcana Tarot cards, the client is dealing with day-to-day issues which will not necessarily having a lasting influence in their lives. These issues are passing through their lives, presenting the client with an opportunity to learn from these experiences (look to any Major Arcana cards to understand what these lessons are and how they may impact your client’s life in the long-term).

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 31st, 2010 at 5:47 pm and is filed under Minor Arcana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.