How to Learn Tarot Card Meanings

How do you learn tarot card meanings?

You learn tarot card meanings not by memorising 78 cards one at a time but by learning the structure of the deck and reading each card inside it: the suit names an area of life, the number a stage, the court card an attitude. Combine those three and look at the picture, and you can work out most of the 56 Minor Arcana meanings on your own. The 22 Major Arcana are learned like the stops of a story.

The trouble with memorising is that it fades. A list line saying “Five of Wands: competition” does not tell you why the card means competition, and a few days later it is gone. Someone who knows that Wands are drive and action and Fives are strain will look at the figures swinging their staves at each other and never forget the meaning, because they built it themselves.

The suits cover these areas:

Suit	Area	Element (traditional)
Cups	feelings, relationships, intuition	water
Pentacles	work, money, the body, the material world	earth
Swords	thoughts, words, conflict	air
Wands	drive, creativity, action	fire

The numbers trace a path as well: the Ace is a seed, the Two balance and exchange, the Three growth and building together, the Four structure and pause, the Five strain and loss, the Six transition and harmony, the Seven a test of patience, the Eight movement and skill, the Nine ripening and a threshold, the Ten the end of a cycle. The numbered cards are that path walked through each suit.

How to learn the meanings without rote: eight steps

1. Learn the suits as areas

In the first week, learn only what the four suits are about. Lay a few cards from each suit side by side and notice the shared mood: water and faces in the Cups, grey skies and tension in the Swords, gardens and work in the Pentacles, sprouting staves and movement in the Wands. That mood is the suit’s area.

2. Learn the numbers as a path

Then learn the themes from Ace to Ten. Lay one suit’s ten cards in order and tell the story out loud. In the Cups you see a path from a feeling being born (Ace of Cups) to family happiness (Ten of Cups); the same path is walked in other areas by the other suits.

3. Combine suit and number

When you read a card, build the formula first: the suit’s area plus the number’s theme. Swords (mind) plus Four (pause) means a mind at rest, and the Four of Swords describes exactly that: rest after a hard stretch. The formula does not always give the whole card, but it gives you a solid starting point.

4. Check the formula against the picture

Once the formula is built, look at the picture and complete the meaning. The image adds what the formula misses: the Four of Pentacles shows a figure clutching coins tightly, so “structure and security” becomes, with the picture, a fear of losing what you hold.

5. Read court cards as rank plus suit

Court cards follow a formula too: the Page is curiosity and a first step, the Knight movement and pursuit, the Queen a mature, inward authority, the King outward responsibility. Combine rank and suit: the Knight of Swords is a fast mind galloping after an idea.

6. Learn the Major Arcana as a story

Learn the 22 Majors not one by one but as the stops of the story called the Fool’s Journey. The Fool sets out, finds his tools with the Magician, meets intuition with the High Priestess and abundance with the Empress. When the cards belong to one story, each grows out of the last and they become far easier to remember.

7. Use the astrological links as a clue

Traditionally, each Major Arcana card is paired with a planet, a sign or an element: the Magician with Mercury, the Emperor with Aries. If you know some astrology, these tarot and astrology correspondences open the card from familiar ground: Mercury’s communication and skill meet the tools on the Magician’s table.

8. Write your own sentence for each card

You know a card’s meaning when you can say it in your own sentence. Write one sentence per card in your journal and update it every time you draw the card. The book meaning is the start; your sentence is what the card means for you.

Example: building the Eight of Cups yourself

The formula. Cups are feelings and relationships; Eight is movement and moving on. The formula: an emotional move, leaving something behind for the sake of the heart.

The picture. In the Rider–Waite–Smith image, a cloaked figure walks away under a moon, leaving eight cups stacked behind; there is a gap in the stack, as if something were missing. The path climbs towards rocky hills.

Putting them together. Formula and picture say the same thing: walking away from something you invested in because it no longer fills you. The gap in the stack hints at why: everything looks in place, but something essential is missing. The moon suggests the leaving happens quietly, perhaps at night, perhaps without explanation.

The check. Now open the Eight of Cups page: walking away from something that no longer feeds you to search for deeper meaning, the courage to leave behind what you worked for. The meaning you built and the one on the page are almost the same. The difference is that you now know it from the card itself, not from a list.

Your own sentence. Write in your journal: “Eight of Cups: I leave what looks complete because something essential is missing.” The next time you draw it, hold that sentence up against the day.

Mistakes beginners make when learning meanings

• Learning each card as one keyword. One word shrinks a card. Every card has a theme, a shadow and a piece of advice.
• Reading the book before looking at the picture. The book meaning grows out of the image. Look first, then read.
• Memorising reversed meanings as a separate list. Reversals derive from the upright meaning: delay, turning inward, imbalance. Know the upright well and you know the reversal.
• Learning the Majors like the Minors, one by one. The Major Arcana is a story; learned in order, it is far easier to remember.
• Ignoring your own experience. If a card keeps matching something specific in your life, note it. Traditional meaning and personal match complete each other.

Making the meanings stick

The best way to make meanings stick is to live with one card a day. Draw your card in the morning, build the formula, look at the picture and write your own sentence; in the evening, note how the day resembled it. In a month you meet about thirty cards this way, and you meet them properly.

When your deck is not to hand, open the Daily Tarot Card in the Larisa app: when the card is revealed, build the suit-and-number formula and look at the picture before reading the interpretation, then write your sentence. After that, read the interpretation and compare.

The first steps of this practice are in tarot for beginners, and the daily habit in tarot card of the day. Once you know the cards singly, move on to reading them together in tarot card combinations. To see how the four Aces open each suit, the page on Aces in tarot is a good review.