The Major Arcana

source: the Rider Waite Smith Deck

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• The Lovers 💕

  Meaning: Attraction, love, beauty, trials overcome.

  Reverse Meaning: Failure, foolish designs. Another account speaks of marriage frustrated and contrarieties of all kinds.

• The Chariot 🚕

  Meaning: Succour, providence also war, triumph, presumption, vengeance, trouble.

  Reverse Meaning: Riot, quarrel, dispute, litigation, defeat.

• Fortitude 💪

  Meaning: Power, energy, action, courage, magnanimity; also complete success and honours.

  Reverse Meaning: Despotism, abuse if power, weakness, discord, sometimes even disgrace.

• The Hermit 😶

  Meaning: Prudence, circumspection; also and especially treason, dissimulation, roguery, corruption.

  Reverse Meaning: Concealment, disguise, policy, fear, unreasoned caution.

• Wheel Of Fortune 🍀

  Meaning: Destiny, fortune, success, elevation, luck, felicity.

  Reverse Meaning: Increase, abundance, superfluity.

• 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.

• The Hanged Man 🙃

  Meaning: Wisdom, circumspection, discernment, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy.

  Reverse Meaning: Selfishness, the crowd, body politic.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• The Tower 🗼

  Meaning: Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin.

  Reverse Meaning: Oppression, imprisonment, tyranny.

• The Star ⭐️

  Meaning: Loss, theft, privation, abandonment, rising.

  Reverse Meaning: Arrogance, haughtiness, impotence.

• The Moon 🌝

  Meaning: Hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, occult forces, error.

  Reverse Meaning: Instability, inconstancy, silence, lesser degrees of deception and error.

• The Sun ☀️

  Meaning: Material happiness, fortunate marriage, contentment.

  Reverse Meaning: Less Material happiness, less fortunate marriage, less contentment.

• The Last Judgment 👨‍⚖️

  Meaning: Change of position, renewal, outcome.

  Reverse Meaning: Weakness, pusillanimity, simplicity, deliberation, decision, sentence.

• The Fool 🤪

  Meaning: Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, betrayal.

  Reverse Meaning: Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.

• The World 🌎

  Meaning: Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place.

  Reverse Meaning: Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence.