The 56 Minor Arcana of Tarot — Four Suits That Illuminate Daily Life

There is a consistent flow in the numbers of each suit, from one through ten. The Ace represents that element's pure beginning and seed; the middle numbers represent the process of unfolding, trial, and achievement; and the Ten represents the completion and climax of that journey. For example, if the Ace of Cups is the start of a new love, the Ten of Cups signifies brimming happiness and fulfillment. Even the same number takes on a different meaning depending on the suit.

People often take upright as a good sign and reversed as a bad one, yet the 1909 deck of Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith painted scenes even on the number cards and gave each card its own upright and reversed meaning, and this site follows that approach by setting the direction of meaning card by card. Of the 56 Minor cards, nine point first to something to watch for when upright: Wands 10, Cups 4·5, Swords 3·5·8·9·10 and Pentacles 5. Another eight hold push and pull together when upright: Wands 5·7·9, Cups 7·8, Swords 2·7 and Pentacles 7. Conversely, nine cards mean a release precisely when reversed, so Cups 4·5·7, Swords 3·5·8·9·10 and Pentacles 5 are read, when they come up reversed, as the point where what was stuck starts to loosen. This site's one-line summary and spread overview are set not by the ratio of upright to reversed cards but by adding up these card-by-card directions of meaning, so a spread with many reversed cards does not automatically get a dark reading.

Each suit has four figure cards — the Page, Knight, Queen, and King — making sixteen court cards in all. These often symbolize a particular person, or that person's attitude and disposition. The Page represents learning and news; the Knight, action and drive; the Queen, mature acceptance; and the King, complete authority and command. Multiply the element of the suit by the stage of the figure and sixteen distinct personalities are drawn out.

This site's result screen reads the suit balance only when two or more Minor cards come up, leaving the Major cards out of this count and looking at them separately. If the Three of Cups, the Ace of Cups and the Six of Swords come up, Cups lead with two cards, so the spread is read as one guided by the energy of feelings and relationships. On the other hand, when three suits appear once each, as with the Five of Wands, the Seven of Cups and the Two of Swords, or when two or more suits tie for the lead, the site does not settle on one side and reads it as a flow in which several elements mix evenly. With The Star, the Eight of Pentacles and the Two of Wands, only two Minor cards appear and each of the two suits shows once, so the balance is again even, and the spread is also read as one with a single Major card mixed in. Even counting only spreads where all three cards are Minor cards, one suit leads in 60.4% of them and the balance is even in 39.6%, so it is not unusual for the suits not to gather around one.

In a reading, the Minor cards play the role of telling you the concrete situation. Where the Major Arcana speak of the 'why' and the 'big picture,' the Minor Arcana fill in the 'what' and the 'how.' When several cards are drawn together, seeing which suit stands out and whether the numbers are early or late lets you read even the phase of a situation. Master the Minor Arcana and tarot becomes a practical tool for advice rather than vague symbolism.

Unlike a spread that is shuffled at random, the card of the day is a single card fixed by the date alone, so everyone who opens the site on the same day sees the same card. The date follows the local date of the device you use, so even when it is already the next day in Korea, someone living in another time zone may see the previous day's card. For example, the card for October 7, 2026 is the Two of Pentacles upright, and the card for January 1, 2026 is the Five of Cups reversed. Upright, the Five of Cups dwells on grief, but reversed it signals recovery getting under way, so that New Year's Day card leans toward rising again rather than toward darkness. The same card reads differently in different positions: the card of the day is read only in the single position of "today", while a three-card spread is read through the meanings of the past, present and future positions.

Some think the Minor cards matter less because they are the "small cards", but 81.0% of three-card spreads contain at least two Minor cards, so in practice the Minor Arcana fills most of a reading. It is also common to think that court cards always point to someone else, yet the same card can just as well reflect the attitude of the person asking or the way the matter needs to be handled. Some readers do not use reversals at all, but this site, like the Waite deck, keeps a separate reversed meaning for every card and decides upright or reversed with an even chance each time cards are laid out. Above all, what the Minor cards reflect is not a fixed event but the texture of the choices in your hands now, so the same card is read for a different point once you change the question. That is why, when reading the Minor Arcana, asking which phase you are in by overlaying the area that the suit points to and the stage that the number points to stays useful longer than memorising the meaning of each card.