The Major Arcana
source: the Rider Waite Smith Deck
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The Magician 🎩
Meaning: Skill, diplomacy, address, subtlety; sickness, pain, loss, disaster, snares of enemies; self-confidence, will; the Querent, if male.
Reverse Meaning: Physician, Magus, mental disease, disgrace, disquiet.
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The High Priestess 👩
Meaning: Secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed; the woman who interests the Querent, if male; the Querent herself, if female; silence, tenacity; mystery, wisdom, science.
Reverse Meaning: Passion, moral or physical ardour, conceit, surface knowledge.
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The Empress 👸
Meaning: Fruitfulness, action, initiative, length of days; the unknown, clandestine; also difficulty, doubt, ignorance.
Reverse Meaning: Light, truth, the unravelling of involved matters, public rejoicings; according to another reading, vacillation.
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The Emperor 🤴
Meaning: Stability, power, protection, realization; a great person; aid, reason, conviction; also authority and will.
Reverse Meaning: Benevolence, compassion, credit; also confusion to enemies, obstruction, immaturity.
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The Hierophant 💍
Meaning: Marriage, alliance, captivity, servitude; by another account, mercy and goodness; inspiration; the man to whom the Querent has recourse.
Reverse Meaning: Society, good understanding, concord, overkindness, weakness.
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The Lovers 💕
Meaning: Attraction, love, beauty, trials overcome.
Reverse Meaning: Failure, foolish designs. Another account speaks of marriage frustrated and contrarieties of all kinds.
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The Chariot 🚕
Meaning: Succour, providence also war, triumph, presumption, vengeance, trouble.
Reverse Meaning: Riot, quarrel, dispute, litigation, defeat.
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Fortitude 💪
Meaning: Power, energy, action, courage, magnanimity; also complete success and honours.
Reverse Meaning: Despotism, abuse if power, weakness, discord, sometimes even disgrace.
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The Hermit 😶
Meaning: Prudence, circumspection; also and especially treason, dissimulation, roguery, corruption.
Reverse Meaning: Concealment, disguise, policy, fear, unreasoned caution.
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Wheel Of Fortune 🍀
Meaning: Destiny, fortune, success, elevation, luck, felicity.
Reverse Meaning: Increase, abundance, superfluity.
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Justice ⚖️
Meaning: Equity, rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law.
Reverse Meaning: Law in all its departments, legal complications, bigotry, bias, excessive severity.
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The Hanged Man 🙃
Meaning: Wisdom, circumspection, discernment, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy.
Reverse Meaning: Selfishness, the crowd, body politic.
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Death ☠️
Meaning: End, mortality, destruction, corruption also, for a man, the loss of a benefactor for a woman, many contrarieties; for a maid, failure of marriage projects.
Reverse Meaning: Inertia, sleep, lethargy, petrifaction, somnambulism; hope destroyed.
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Temperance 🥛
Meaning: Economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation.
Reverse Meaning: Things connected with churches, religions, sects, the priesthood, sometimes even the priest who will marry the Querent; also disunion, unfortunate combinations, competing interests.
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The Devil 😈
Meaning: Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil.
Reverse Meaning: Evil fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.
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The Tower 🗼
Meaning: Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin.
Reverse Meaning: Oppression, imprisonment, tyranny.
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The Star ⭐️
Meaning: Loss, theft, privation, abandonment, rising.
Reverse Meaning: Arrogance, haughtiness, impotence.
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The Moon 🌝
Meaning: Hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, occult forces, error.
Reverse Meaning: Instability, inconstancy, silence, lesser degrees of deception and error.
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The Sun ☀️
Meaning: Material happiness, fortunate marriage, contentment.
Reverse Meaning: Less Material happiness, less fortunate marriage, less contentment.
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The Last Judgment 👨⚖️
Meaning: Change of position, renewal, outcome.
Reverse Meaning: Weakness, pusillanimity, simplicity, deliberation, decision, sentence.
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The Fool 🤪
Meaning: Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, betrayal.
Reverse Meaning: Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.
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The World 🌎
Meaning: Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place.
Reverse Meaning: Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence.