Major Arcana Tarot Meanings: Spiritual Insights into the 22 Archetypes

The Major Arcana are the 22 unsuited cards in the Tarot deck, forming its spiritual backbone. Each one is a powerful archetype, mapping out a journey of self-awareness and transformation. Together, they reflect the deeper forces at play in our lives—our soul lessons, turning points, and spiritual awakenings. While the Minor Arcana speak to our everyday experiences, the Major Arcana illuminate the significant, life-shaping themes that guide us toward greater meaning and understanding.

THE FOOL

Taking a leap into the unknown

  • Initiates a new beginning, with huge potential for anything to happen

  • Leaping into new phase without careful planning

  • Being in the moment, free from anything that weighs you down

  • Euphoric, optimistic, free

  • Looking outwards into the new

  • Road less travelled, no longer conforms

  • Listening to our inner self when those around us are too practical

THE MAGICIAN

Inspiration to start something new – striking ideas into action

  • Success is derived from consciousness of the power available to everyone –to act is to direct your strength, through the will, to take you to the places you want it to go.

  • Symbolising the idea of manifestation, making something real out of all possibilities in life

  • Maintaining your goal – will power unified towards a goal!

  • Large magical vocabulary

  • Wizard and conjurer

THE HIGH PRIESTESS

Possibility yet to be realised

  • Passivity allows the unconscious to emerge. Only through withdrawal from outer involvement can we allow the inner voice of vision and psychic forces to speak to us

  • Meditative

  • Allowing the unconscious mind to communicate

  • Inner truth

  • Secretive card, the unknown or veiled

  • Unknown forces at work

  • Psychic forces

THE EMPRESS

Motherhood, love, gentleness and mercy

  • Symbolises the idea of nature

  • Productivity and growth

  • Fertility

  • Harvest, abundance

  • Sensuality

  • Pure emotion

  • Passion rather than ideas

  • Satisfaction and understanding through the emotions

THE EMPEROR

Fatherhood, a figure of severity

  • The law must be obeyed to maintain order and the ‘system’

  • Drive and determination to achieve supportive structure for the greater good of society

  • Rules and laws of society, both good and bad, and the power that enforces them

  • Measurement over emotion

  • Losing touch with our passions, the world becomes cold and barren

  • Institutionalised power and control for good or for bad

  • Disciplined thought

THE HIEROPHANT

Initiation into a doctrine

  • A catalyst for self-enquiry leading to enlightenment and liberation (secret doctrine, self-awareness and enlightenment)

  • Initiation where the individual becomes united with the universe

  • Intellectual tradition of a person’s particular society and their education in that tradition

  • Wisdom in a particular tradition

  • Education in traditional practices

  • Initiation into a church, occult or order in society

  • A code of rules and beliefs accepted on faith

  • Teaching, teacher, guru, preacher - someone who provides guidance

  • Conforming to society’s ideas and rules

THE LOVERS 

Power to discern and make independent choices

  • Breaking away from the parental restraints and living life independently from this

  • Raising our sense through passion and desire = sexual passion allows us to transcend isolation for a moment

  • Physical passions were seen as dangerous to society and had to be controlled = tarot seeks to bring this about to unite our duality

  • Relationships, often loving and intimate

  • An important relationship with the potential of marriage or long term union

  • In unity with someone we are given a glimpse of the greater meaning and deeper significance of life = giving up part of the ego control that isolates us from people and life

THE CHARIOT

Channelling the will to accomplish a result

  • Triumphant and Victorious

  • Chariot looms larger than the city behind it – his will is more powerful than the rules of society

  • Asserting the ego

  • Control over direction, asserting direction

  • Sexual energy of the libido

  • Mature adult, successful in life, admired by others, confident and content with himself and able to control feelings, and above all, direct the will

STRENGTH

Transforming desire into spiritual energy

  • Strength from within, experiencing life passionately but peacefully, without being controlled or carried away by passion

  • Finding strength to begin or continue a difficult project, despite fear and emotional strain

  • Natural forces that the rationale mind must overcome

  • Facing life and difficult problems or times of change with hope and eagerness

  • Confronting feelings and desires long hidden from our conscious thoughts

  • Balance between animal and human

THE HERMIT

Withdrawal from the outer world

  • Awakening the inner self

  • Signifies a teacher who will show us how to begin this process, and will help us find our way

  • Giver of wisdom to the knight on a spiritual quest

  • Therapist, guru, spiritual, inner spiritual guide or occult teacher

  • Looking back at what you have, or of your experiences and place in the world

  • Holding on to thoughts and experiences for reflection

  • Card symbolises old man = maturity and knowledge of what really matters in a person’s life

  • Signifies transition through techniques of meditation, psychic discipline or analysis that allow hidden parts of the psyche to begin to speak to us

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

The wheel of life

  • Signifies karma and reincarnation, the action you take in one life, you build up a certain destiny for yourself in the next

  • Buddha ended his desires and got off the wheel

  • Change of circumstances, unexplainable or out of the blue, the wheel keeps on turning

  • Fate, destiny

  • Gamble, chance

  • A turn for the better

  • Things do not just happen, they are made to happen

JUSTICE

Understanding the past according to truth

  • Law not does discriminate

  • Free will judged by the past

  • Honesty, fairness, correct actions, legal and other matters, just decision

  • Accepting responsibility for ourselves frees us from the past – like Buddha remembering all his past lives – becoming conscious of this = otherwise we repeat the behaviour constantly

THE HANGED MAN

Surrender or making a sacrafice

  • An understanding of the bigger spiritual picture

  • Yogic and meditative pose channelling energy away from genitals to the head

  • Spiritual awakening

  • New or different perspective. Upside down posture shows the energy gravitating to the head = higher awareness channelled up from the genitals.

  • Represents artists, writers and psychologists with hints of great truths and simple designs

  • In waiting

  • Limbo

  • The need to make a sacrifice in order for things to change before they can move forward

DEATH

Being forced to face circumstances we wish to deny

  • Fear of letting go and facing the reality of what is really happening

  • Extreme steps must be taken to force us to face what we deny – change must happen

  • Ego resists idea of death and keeps us from enjoying life

  • Giving up rigid old ways

  • Profound change after a difficult transition in our lives

  • Rebirth where we experience new maturity and freedom of energy

TEMPERANCE

Temperance.1.jpg

Moderation and balance, finding life’s flow

  • Temperance is a card of behaviour, not concepts

  • A true and proper response to all situations as they arise

  • Improved health after a crisis, a return to life

  • Air travel

  • Overseas travel

  • Combining spontaneity with knowledge

  • Taking life as it comes, moment by moment

THE DEVIL

Stuck in an unhappy situation

  • Limited or incomplete knowledge

  • Narrow materialistic view of life

  • Unhappiness from the limitations in our lives

  • Inability to see truth

  • Denial of spiritual component

  • A force of illusion and oppression

  • Excitement, often sexual

  • Lust

THE TOWER

Violent upheaval

  • Circumstances built on shaky ground

  • Unsettling dreams, arguments and depression

  • Release of intolerable pressure

  • A flash of enlightenment, particularly where it replaces a limited view of life

  • Inspiration

  • Brilliance

  • Clearing away a difficult situation

THE STAR

Your wishes, dreams and hopes

  • Projecting towards the things you want in life

  • Wholeness, openness and healing

  • Calm after the storm

  • Inner calm and peace

  • Compares to Temperance, both pour water, both bring healing after a crisis

  • Individual with high degree of sensitivity and vulnerability

THE MOON

A sudden release of unconscious energy

  • Trusting your instincts

  • Moon’s eerie half-light brings out strange feelings in people and animals

  • A burst of energy too great for the dream mechanisms to peacefully assimilate

  • Depression or a dark period (dark night of the soul)

  • Full moon with a prevalence of disturbed emotions.

  • Moon excites fear and strangeness, just as the Sun relaxes and consoles

  • Card of the imagination

THE SUN

Enlightenment

  • Shedding light onto a situation

  • Joy and happiness

  • Success

  • Often points to children

  • Warmth

JUDGEMENT

A call from within to make an important change

  • Understanding and recognising the need for change

  • Important decisions based on past experiences

  • Responsibility to weigh up everything in order to move forward

  • Big questions need to be asked and thrashed out

  • Crossroads in life where a decision is required on whether to make some great change

  • A call to rise to a more meaningful existence

THE WORLD

Success and fulfillment

  • Feeling unified and at one with your environment and purpose

  • Holism

  • Completion and achievements

  • Connectedness to your physical and spiritual world

  • Sense of satisfaction

 

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