HOW MANY CARDS ARE IN A TAROT DECK?
A standard tarot deck has 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. The Minor Arcana divides into four suits — Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles — with 14 cards each: Ace through Ten, plus four court cards (Page, Knight, Queen, King).
How many Major Arcana cards are there?
Twenty-two, numbered 0 to 21 — from the Fool to the World. These are the deck’s named archetypes (Death, the Lovers, the Tower) and they carry the big themes: beginnings, endings, transformation. When several majors appear in one reading, the question usually touches something long-term.
How many cards are in each suit?
Fourteen. Every suit follows the same ladder:
- ✦Ace — the seed of the suit’s energy
- ✦Two through Ten — the story arc, from choice to completion
- ✦Page, Knight, Queen, King — four court cards, often read as people or maturity stages
Do all tarot decks have 78 cards?
The three big traditions — Rider–Waite–Smith, Tarot de Marseille and Thoth — all use 78. Some modern indie decks add a few extra cards or trim the courts, but if you buy a deck described as “tarot,” 78 is the safe assumption. Oracle decks are a different thing entirely: they can have any number of cards and no fixed structure.
Why 78?
History, not numerology. Fifteenth-century Italian card games used a 56-card pack (four suits of 14), and tarocchi added a fifth set of 22 illustrated trump cards on top — 56 + 22 = 78. The divinatory meanings came centuries later; the structure was a card game first.