Major and Minor Arcana
A Tarot deck is generally comprised of 78 cards. These cards are split into what we call the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. ‘Arcana’ means secret, or hidden. So they are the big and small secrets.
The big secrets, or Major Arcana, have wonderfully evocative names like The Magician, The High Priestess, the Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man. There are 22 of them and each one of them is matched up with a Hebrew letter (there are 22 of those too) and an astrological symbol.
The small secrets, or Minor Arcana are in 4 suites, just like a deck of playing cards. The suites are Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. They start from Ace (1) and go up to 10 and then we have the Page, Knight, Queen and King. These 4 cards are called ‘Court Cards’ or ‘people cards’. There are 56 Minor Arcana cards.
