All 78 Tarot Cards — Full List, Meanings & Order | Tarotos
This is the full tarot deck — all 78 cards, grouped the way the deck itself is built, with a page for every single one. Use it to look up a card you just drew, to learn the deck properly from the beginning, or to check what a card means when it turns up reversed.
Below the guide you'll find every card listed in traditional order: the 22 Major Arcana from The Fool through The World, then the four suits, each running Ace to Ten before the four court cards. Nothing here is hidden behind a paywall or a reading — click any name and you get the full meaning.
What the tarot deck actually is
A standard tarot deck holds 78 cards, split into two families. The 22 Major Arcana carry the big themes of a life — beginnings, love, upheaval, endings, renewal. The 56 Minor Arcana are divided into four suits of 14 cards each, and they describe the ordinary texture of days: a conversation, a paycheque, an argument, a decision you keep postponing.
That structure is old, and it is more practical than mystical. It came out of a 15th-century Italian card game, and only much later did readers begin using the deck for reflection. Knowing the shape of the deck is the single fastest way to get better at reading it, because once you recognise which family and which suit a card belongs to, you already know roughly what part of life it is talking about — before you remember a word of its specific meaning.
One thing worth saying plainly: the cards do not decide anything. They give you a fixed set of images to think against, which is why the same card can land completely differently on two different questions. What follows is how each part of the deck tends to behave.
The Major Arcana: the 22 cards that carry weight
The Major Arcana are the named, numbered cards — The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, and so on through The World. They have no suit, and they are usually read as the theme of a reading rather than a detail inside it. When several turn up at once, the question is rarely about this week; it is about a chapter.
They carry more weight for a simple reason: they describe conditions you are inside rather than choices you are making. A Three of Pentacles is about a piece of work. The Wheel of Fortune is about the fact that your circumstances are turning and your grip on them is looser than you thought. That is a different order of information, and it usually deserves more of your attention in the spread.
Read in sequence, the Major Arcana also tell a recognisable story — the untested beginner at zero, the encounters that shape them, the collapse and the reassembly, and finally a completed cycle at twenty-one. You do not need to believe in that arc to use it, but it does explain why cards like The Tower and Death sit where they do, and why neither of them is the disaster their imagery suggests.
The Minor Arcana and the four suits
The 56 Minor Arcana cards cover the practical, day-to-day layer of a reading. Each suit governs a distinct area of life, and learning those four territories is worth more than memorising individual cards.
Cups are feeling: love, friendship, grief, intuition, and everything you carry emotionally rather than logically. Pentacles are the material world: money, work, home, health, and slow tangible progress. Swords are mind: thought, truth, conflict, communication, anxiety, and the clarity that comes after it. Wands are drive: energy, ambition, creativity, momentum, and the risk of burning through it too fast.
Within each suit, the numbers move from potential to completion. Aces are pure beginnings, still unformed. The middle numbers show the work — Threes tend to involve other people, Fives bring friction, Sevens ask you to hold your position. Tens are the end of that suit's arc, for better or worse: Ten of Cups is emotional fullness, Ten of Swords is a mental low already bottomed out. Once you see that rhythm, a card you have never studied is still partly readable.
The court cards: Page, Knight, Queen, King
Each suit ends with four court cards, and they are the ones most people find hardest. That is because they can be read three different ways, and the right reading depends on the question.
As people, they describe someone in your situation — the Knight of Cups as a romantic, expressive person, the Queen of Pentacles as someone steady and providing. As energies, they describe how you are behaving rather than who is involved: acting like the King of Swords means deciding with your head and holding a boundary. As stages, they track maturity within the suit — the Page is curious and inexperienced, the Knight commits hard and sometimes recklessly, the Queen holds the quality inwardly and with care, the King holds it outwardly, with authority.
A useful habit: if your question is about another person, read the court card as a person. If it is about your own conduct, read it as energy. If you are asking about progress or timing, read it as a stage. Most confusion around these sixteen cards comes from applying the wrong one of those three.
Numbering and order: how the 78 cards are sequenced
The Major Arcana run from 0 to 21: The Fool (0), 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 (21). Some decks swap Strength and Justice at eight and eleven; both orderings are traditional and neither changes what the cards mean.
Each of the four suits then runs the same fourteen-card sequence: Ace, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Page, Knight, Queen, King. Four suits of fourteen gives 56, plus 22 Majors, which is where the total of 78 comes from.
You will see the suits listed in different orders depending on the deck or the book — Wands first is common in older sources, Cups first in others. There is no correct sequence for the suits, only conventions. The card list further down this page follows Major Arcana, then Cups, Pentacles, Swords and Wands, with each suit in numerical order.
How to actually use a card library
The most common use is the simplest: you drew a card, you don't know it, you look it up. Find the name below, open the page, and read the upright meaning first. Then check the love, career, money or feelings section that matches the question you actually asked — a card means something quite specific in a work question and something else entirely in a question about an ex.
For reversals, resist the instinct to flip the meaning into its opposite. A reversed card usually shows the same energy blocked, delayed, turned inward, or overdone. Reversed Strength is not weakness so much as force applied where patience was needed. If you are new, it is completely valid to read every card upright until the deck feels familiar, then add reversals later.
And remember that no card is read alone. Surrounding cards change the emphasis: the Three of Swords next to the Ten of Swords reads as one long ending, while the same card next to The Star reads as grief that is already healing. If a spread feels contradictory, that contradiction is usually the answer — it is telling you two true things are happening at once. When you want a full interpretation rather than a definition, start a reading and the cards get read in context, against your specific question.
All 78 tarot cards in order
Major Arcana (22 cards)
The numbered, unsuited cards from The Fool (0) to The World (21) — life themes, turning points and the overall shape of a situation.
Suit of Cups (14 cards)
Emotion, love, friendship, intuition and grief. Ace through Ten, then Page, Knight, Queen and King of Cups.
Suit of Pentacles (14 cards)
Money, work, home, body and steady material progress. Ace through Ten, then the four Pentacles court cards.
Suit of Swords (14 cards)
Thought, truth, conflict, communication and mental strain — including the cards people fear most, and shouldn't.
Suit of Wands (14 cards)
Energy, ambition, creativity and momentum: what you want badly enough to move for, and what it costs.
Frequently asked questions about the tarot deck
How many cards are in a tarot deck?
78. That is 22 Major Arcana cards, numbered 0 to 21, plus 56 Minor Arcana cards — four suits of 14, each running Ace through Ten followed by Page, Knight, Queen and King.
What is the difference between the Major and Minor Arcana?
The 22 Major Arcana describe the theme you are inside: turning points, chapters, conditions you did not fully choose. The 56 Minor Arcana describe the everyday detail — a conversation, a payment, a piece of work, a decision. Majors usually set the story of a reading; Minors fill in how it is actually playing out.
What order do the tarot cards go in?
The Major Arcana run The Fool (0), 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, The World (21). Each suit then runs Ace to Ten, then Page, Knight, Queen, King. Some decks swap Strength and Justice; both are traditional.
What are the four tarot suits and what do they mean?
Cups cover emotion, love and intuition. Pentacles cover money, work, home and health. Swords cover thought, truth, conflict and communication. Wands cover energy, ambition and creative drive. Identifying the suit tells you which part of life a card is speaking about before you recall its specific meaning.
Do I need to memorise all 78 tarot cards?
No, and almost no reader learned them by memorising. Learn the four suit territories and the number rhythm — Aces begin, Fives bring friction, Tens complete — and most cards become partly readable on sight. Look up the rest as you go; that is what a card library is for.
What do the court cards mean?
Page, Knight, Queen and King can each be read as a person in your situation, as the energy you are currently bringing, or as a stage of maturity within that suit. Pages are curious and inexperienced, Knights commit hard and sometimes recklessly, Queens hold the suit's quality inwardly, Kings hold it outwardly with authority. Which reading applies depends on your question.
What does a reversed tarot card mean?
Usually the same energy blocked, delayed, turned inward or taken too far — not a straight opposite. Reversed cards often point to where you are resisting something or working through it rather than acting on it. If you are learning, reading every card upright at first is a perfectly legitimate approach.
Can I look up a card without doing a full reading?
Yes. Every one of the 78 cards below has its own free page with upright and reversed meanings plus love, career, money and feelings interpretations — whether you drew it here, in your own deck, or somewhere else entirely.