Major Arcana
The twenty-two trumps in four decks. Choose a deck, then follow each card through its image, divinatory reading and place in the Hermetic correspondences.
A Marseille-pattern pack of the Besançon type, printed in Paris by Lequart before 1890 and once owned by Paul Marteau. It is a card game before it is anything else: the trumps carry titles, the suit cards carry only their signs.
This deck publishes no meanings, and none are supplied for it here. Marseille packs were printed for play, and the divinatory readings attached to them by Etteilla and his successors came later and from outside — presenting those as this deck's own would date them a century too early.
Printed before 1890 and long out of copyright. Digitised by the Bibliothèque nationale de France from the Paul Marteau collection and released as public domain. The plates on Wikimedia Commons ↗
Major Arcana · Trumps
The great images of the pack, later joined to the twenty-two Hebrew-letter paths of the Hermetic Tree.
- 0 Le Mat The Fool in the Rider–Waite–Smith A traveller steps lightly at the world's edge, carrying little and looking upward. The Fool brings openness, nerve and the freedom to begin, with the old warning that trust can slip into heedlessness.
- I Le Bateleur The Magician in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Magician raises one hand and points the other toward the earth. With the four suit emblems laid out before him, he turns intention into action and gives an imagined thing a worldly form.
- II Junon The High Priestess in the Rider–Waite–Smith The High Priestess sits before the veil, quiet and watchful. Her wisdom comes by patience, intuition and reflection; what she guards is approached slowly and is never wholly displayed at once.
- III L'Impératrice The Empress in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Empress belongs to fertile ground, ripening grain and the life of the body. She is creativity tended until it bears fruit: abundance, nurture and the slow work of bringing something into being.
- IIII L'Empereur The Emperor in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Emperor gives will a throne, a law and a lasting structure. He can be the power that protects and orders a realm, or the same power hardened into control.
- V Jupiter The Hierophant in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Hierophant keeps and transmits a received teaching. He speaks of initiation, shared doctrine and guidance within a tradition, along with the authority—and the limits—of those who guard its forms.
- VI L'Amoureux The Lovers in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Lovers bring attraction into the presence of choice. In the Rider–Waite–Smith card, the pair's union is blessed but consequential: desire becomes a bond, and the bond asks something of both people.
- VII Le Chariot The Chariot in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Chariot moves because contrary powers have been brought under one direction. Its victory comes through discipline and coordination; without them, momentum scatters into conflict.
- XI La Force Strength in the Rider–Waite–Smith Strength meets the lion without violence. Courage here is patient, intimate mastery: instinct and passion are guided into accord, not crushed into silence.
- VIIII L'Hermite The Hermit in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Hermit withdraws long enough for experience to ripen into wisdom. His solitude is not empty; the lantern he carries can light both his own next step and the road for those below.
- X La Roue de Fortune Wheel of Fortune in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Wheel turns through ascent, decline and return, carrying lives with it. Circumstances change beyond any one person's command, though the unmoving centre hints at an order within the turning.
- VIII La Justice Justice in the Rider–Waite–Smith Justice holds the sword and scales: judgment joined to proportion. The card asks what is due, what follows from an action, and whether the matter is being weighed without favour or distortion.
- XII Le Pendu The Hanged Man in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Hanged Man is held between one movement and the next. Turned upside down, apparent defeat becomes another sightline; patience and sacrifice open an understanding ordinary progress could not reach.
- XIII XIII Death in the Rider–Waite–Smith Death closes a form whose time has passed. It speaks first of endings, release and the hard passage by which one stage gives way to another—not of a literal death foretold.
- XIIII Temperance Temperance pours one current into another until both can share a vessel. Its balance is living and deliberate: adjustment, reconciliation and the patient making of a workable whole.
- XV Le Diable The Devil in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Devil shows appetite and fixation hardened into bondage. In the Rider–Waite–Smith image the chains hang loose, suggesting a captivity sustained partly by the belief that no other choice remains.
- XVI La Maison Dieu The Tower in the Rider–Waite–Smith Lightning opens the Tower in an instant. The fall is frightening, but it reveals the weakness already built into the structure and ends what could no longer stand.
- XVII L'Étoile The Star in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Star follows the ruin of the Tower with clear water and open sky. It brings hope, renewal and the quiet restoration that begins when inspiration is allowed to flow into life.
- XVIII La Lune The Moon in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Moon lights a road that cannot yet be seen clearly. Instinct, fear and imagination move through its half-light, where the traveller must notice projections without claiming to know everything hidden ahead.
- XVIIII Le Soleil The Sun in the Rider–Waite–Smith The Sun brings the world back into direct light. Warmth, vitality and plain sight return after the Moon's uncertainty, making confidence and renewed life possible.
- XX Le Jugement Judgement in the Rider–Waite–Smith At the trumpet of Judgement, the whole person is called to rise and answer. Reckoning and renewal arrive together; what has been learned now asks for a decision.
- XXI Le Monde The World in the Rider–Waite–Smith The World gathers the long journey into a whole. Completion here is full and living: the pattern can be seen at last, even as its closing circle becomes the threshold of another beginning.
