Tarot card meanings: what each card says, upright and reversed
You draw a card, look it up on three sites and get three different answers. Reading tarot does not require memorising a book. Start with the situation the card shows, then ask whether that situation is flowing or stuck in the matter you asked about. This page covers upright and reversed cards, the difference between the Major and Minor Arcana, and then lists all 22 Major Arcana in order, each linking to a full reading.
How to read upright and reversed cards
When a card lands facing you the right way up, it is upright. When it lands upside down, it is reversed. Plenty of people see a reversal and brace for bad news. A reversal is closer to "this energy is not moving freely right now". It may be blocked, overdone, or simply not its turn yet.
A practical way to read a reversal is to ask three things:
- Is the card's energy being held back? The Magician reversed often means you have the skills and keep not using them.
- Is the card's energy being overused? The Emperor reversed can point to so much control that people around you are pulling away.
- Is the card asking you to look inward? Some reversals are not about something wrong out there. They say the answer starts with you.
If you would rather not read reversals at all, that works too. Read every card upright and let the fit between card and question tell you how smooth things are. What matters is setting the rule before you draw, not deciding you "don't read reversals" the moment one appears that you dislike.
Major Arcana and Minor Arcana
A standard Rider–Waite deck has 78 cards. Twenty-two of them are the Major Arcana ("arcana" means secrets), which deal with the heavier themes in a life: beginnings, choices, losses and rebuilding. The other 56 are the Minor Arcana, which deal with the specific, day-to-day side of things.
The Minor Arcana come in four suits of fourteen cards each, Ace through Ten plus four court cards (Page, Knight, Queen and King):
- Wands: action, drive, the things you want to make happen. Often about pushing work forward or starting something.
- Cups: feelings, relationships, what is going on inside.
- Swords: thoughts, communication, conflict and hard decisions, and sometimes anxiety.
- Pentacles: money, the body, time and everything practical.
If a spread is full of Major Arcana, the matter is more than a passing issue for you; it marks a turn in a longer stretch of life. If it is mostly Minor Arcana, the answer lives in concrete, practical steps. The Minor Arcana do not have their own pages on this site yet, so the list below covers the Majors.
The 22 Major Arcana in order
The Major Arcana run from 0, The Fool, to 21, The World, and are often read as one long journey from setting out to arriving. Each card below comes with a one-line keyword. Open any of them to see how it reads in love, work and decision questions.
- 0 The Fool: setting out before you have it all figured out.
- 1 The Magician: you already have enough; time to act.
- 2 The High Priestess: you know the answer, you just have not said it yet.
- 3 The Empress: nurture and abundance; things grow in their own time.
- 4 The Emperor: rules, boundaries and responsibility; standing on structure.
- 5 The Hierophant: tradition, teachers and the accepted way of doing things.
- 6 The Lovers: a choice you have to make with your whole heart.
- 7 The Chariot: pulling two opposing forces into one and driving forward.
- 8 Strength: steadying things with gentleness rather than force.
- 9 The Hermit: stepping back to think it through alone.
- 10 Wheel of Fortune: timing is turning, and not all of it is yours to control.
- 11 Justice: cause and effect; what you did comes back.
- 12 The Hanged Man: a pause, and a new angle on the same thing.
- 13 Death: an old way ends so something new has room.
- 14 Temperance: blending, slowing down, finding the right mix.
- 15 The Devil: the attachment or habit you cannot put down.
- 16 The Tower: a sudden collapse that shakes loose what was never solid.
- 17 The Star: hope and slow recovery after the storm.
- 18 The Moon: unclear, uneasy, missing information.
- 19 The Sun: clarity and ease; everything out in the open.
- 20 Judgement: a wake-up call, a reckoning, a fresh start.
- 21 The World: a chapter brought to a full close.
After the meaning, go back to your question
The Tower reads very differently for "Should I quit my job?" than for "Does he still love me?" So once you know what a card means, put it back into the question you asked. Which specific thing in your life does the situation on this card match?
If your question can be answered with yes or no, go straight to yes or no tarot, where the 22 Major Arcana are grouped into leans yes, leans no and not yet. If you are not sure how to phrase your question, start from the questions people ask in hard times and pick the one closest to where you are.
Frequently asked questions
Is a reversed card always bad?
No. A reversal says the card's energy is not flowing right now: it is blocked, overdone, or pointing you inward. Often the reversal is the more useful message, because it names exactly where things are stuck.
Do I need to memorise all 78 cards to start?
No. Knowing the 22 Major Arcana is enough to read most questions. Instead of memorising keywords, ask yourself each time you draw: which part of my life does the situation on this card describe? That sticks far better.
Is one card or three better?
For a quick reminder or a yes or no question, one card is plenty. To see how something ongoing got here and what to do next, three cards (past, present, advice) work better. The LifeOs question desk offers both, and you choose after writing your question.
Why write the question down before drawing?
Writing it down is how you find out what you are actually torn about. LifeOs locks each question once you submit it, and later you can come back and note what happened, so you can compare your read at the time with how things turned out.
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