Each card on Tarot Nova has a corresponding page. You can find them through the menu, or by clicking on the links following. If you want a specific card, it should be very easy to find. Each tarot card has a detailed and comprehensive page dedicated to each of it’s meaning and associations.
The Major Arcana are where tarot cards differ from regular playing cards. No longer simply a set of four suits, the Major Arcana adds 22 face cards, adding an extra element of complexity to the deck. The cards all have a special meaning, relative to our journey through life. As you come to discover and work with tarot, you may associate your current stage of life with a certain Major Arcana card. Tracking our lives through tarot cards is comparable to the journey The Fool takes through life, as he grows and learns, overcomes obstacles and generally improves to completion, before another cycle begins.
Minor Arcana
The Minor Arcana are relative to playing cards and follow a pattern; fourteen cards starting with an Ace and ending with a King, with 56 total Minor Arcana in all. The Minor Arcana suits are Cups, Wands, Pentacles and Swords; each representing a different aspect of a persons life. Minor Arcana can vary, sometimes including only 12, or as many as 16 cards each, however the most common distribution is 14 per suit. Minor Arcana are aptly named; whereas a Major Arcana card may represent a significant change in somebodies life, the Minor Arcana can be symbolic of the subtle changes and little aspects that can modify each reading.
Cups are representative of emotions, and are largely feminine in nature; as Cups act as a ‘Vessel’. Cups are frequently tied with romance, friendship and other relationships, as well as changes in mood and a shifting of desires. Love, a common reason to perform a tarot card spread, is also well represented when a card for the Cups suit is drawn. Cups are heavily tied to the element Water, and the winding malleable nature of water is used as an apt metaphor for our changing desires. Sometimes, the Suit of Cups is called the Suit of Goblets.
Wands are well known in Magic; the Wand is seen as an extension of the practitioners will. The suit acts similarly, where Wands represent our inspiration, spirituality, ambition and motivated, directed energy. As Cups are to water so Wands are to fire, both full of energy with the potential to either help or destroy. The Suit of Wands is sometimes called the Suit of Staves in selected decks.
Pentacles are commonly associated with magic, especially as it has come to represent a symbol of the Wiccan religion. The Pentacle itself has so many meanings across magical lore, as it is such a simple shape, it can be made to have many associations. In Tarot, the Suit of Pentacles relates to our worldly possessions; wealth and money, and how we can work to achieve the mundane, physical things which we desire. Pentacles, unsurprisingly thereon, are related to the element Earth.
Swords within Tarot represent thought and inner consciousness. Rather than how Cups relate to emotions, Swords relate more to our beliefs, convictions and morals, and how we use our thoughts to make decisions. Swords are tied to the element Wind; Wind can be fast with a definite direction, or slow, gentle and soothing.