🃏 The Rider Waite Tarot explained: what each card means and how to get started

If you've ever looked up information about Tarot, you've almost certainly come across its images: a woman crowned with stars, a man hanging upside down by one foot, a fool walking toward the edge of a cliff. Those illustrations belong to the Rider Waite Tarot — the most famous and most widely used deck in the world.

In this article, we'll tell you what it is, why it became the universal reference for Tarot, and how you can start learning the meanings of its cards today.

🃏 Explore the meaning of all 78 cards in our Tarot calculator

📖 What is the Rider Waite Tarot?

It was created in 1909 by occultist Arthur Edward Waite and illustrator Pamela Colman Smith, and published by the Rider company — hence the name. It was the first deck to include illustrated scenes on every single card, including the minor arcana, which in earlier decks were simply repeated symbols without figures or scenes.

That detail changed everything. For the first time, anyone could look at a card and read something in it — without years of prior study. The images told stories. And that made it the starting point for almost everything that came after.

🗂️ How is the deck organized?

The Rider Waite Tarot has 78 cards divided into two main groups:

22 Major Arcana (numbered 0 to 21): they represent universal energies and archetypes. These are the most recognizable cards and carry the most weight in a reading.
56 Minor Arcana: divided into 4 suits — Cups, Swords, Wands and Pentacles — which speak to the everyday situations of life.

🌱 Where to begin? The Major Arcana

If you're just starting out, here's some good news: you don't need to learn all 78 cards at once. Many Tarot practitioners work only with the 22 Major Arcana at first — and some do so permanently. Both approaches are valid. What matters is listening to your intuition: it will guide you when and how to expand your practice.

The Major Arcana represent the great forces and stages of life. Here you'll find a brief description of each one — just a first glimpse. Each card has much deeper layers of meaning that reveal themselves over time, through practice and your own intuition.

0 — The Fool

Keywords: beginnings, freedom, spontaneity, leap of faith.
The starting point of every journey. The Fool carries the pure energy of beginnings — fearless and unconditioned. An invitation to take the first step even when you don't know exactly where it leads.

I — The Magician

Keywords: willpower, skill, manifestation, action.
All the tools are on the table — and he knows how to use them. The Magician is the card of turning intention into reality. It signals that you have the resources; you just need to activate them.

II — The High Priestess

Keywords: intuition, mystery, inner wisdom, patience.
The guardian of hidden knowledge. The High Priestess invites you to listen to the inner voice before acting. What you're looking for is already within you.

III — The Empress

Keywords: abundance, fertility, nature, creativity, nurturing.
Maternal and creative energy. The Empress speaks of flourishing, of projects ripening, of the capacity to nurture and be nurtured.

IV — The Emperor

Keywords: structure, authority, stability, leadership.
The builder of systems. The Emperor brings order, discipline and long-term vision. The card of someone who knows how to build something lasting.

V — The Hierophant

Keywords: tradition, teaching, organized spirituality, convention.
The bridge between the divine and the human. Represents institutions, teachers and traditions that pass wisdom from generation to generation.

VI — The Lovers

Keywords: love, choice, values, union, alignment.
Not just a romantic card — it's the card of conscious choice. The Lovers appear when a decision must be made from the deepest values.

VII — The Chariot

Keywords: determination, control, victory, focus, forward motion.
Movement with purpose. The Chariot appears when it's time to align opposing forces and move forward with determination toward the goal.

VIII — Strength

Keywords: courage, patience, compassion, inner strength.
Not the strength of muscle, but of the heart. Strength speaks of mastering impulses with love, not fear. The calm that succeeds where aggression fails.

IX — The Hermit

Keywords: introspection, solitude, inner guidance, seeking.
The wise one who walks alone with his lantern. The Hermit invites you to withdraw from external noise and find clarity within.

X — Wheel of Fortune

Keywords: cycles, change, destiny, opportunity, timing.
Everything changes. The Wheel reminds us that cycles are part of life — what goes up comes down, and what comes down rises again. Timing matters as much as action.

XI — Justice

Keywords: balance, truth, cause and effect, accountability.
Every action has consequences. Justice invites you to act with integrity and take responsibility for your own decisions.

XII — The Hanged Man

Keywords: pause, new perspective, surrender, conscious sacrifice.
Stillness as a choice. The Hanged Man invites you to release control and see the situation from a different angle. Sometimes the best action is no action.

XIII — Death

Keywords: transformation, end of cycle, inevitable change, renewal.
The most misunderstood card in Tarot. Death doesn't speak of literal death but of deep transformation: what ends to make room for something new.

XIV — Temperance

Keywords: balance, moderation, integration, patience, flow.
The art of masterful blending. Temperance speaks of finding the middle ground, integrating opposites and moving forward with calm and precision.

XV — The Devil

Keywords: attachment, illusion, limiting patterns, shadow, materialism.
What keeps us bound. The Devil points to chains we believe are unbreakable — but which we can actually release. The first liberation is seeing the attachment.

XVI — The Tower

Keywords: rupture, revelation, liberating chaos, collapse of the false.
What was built on false foundations falls. The Tower is disruptive but honest: it destroys what didn't serve to make space for something more true.

XVII — The Star

Keywords: hope, renewal, faith, inspiration, healing.
The calm after the storm. The Star brings genuine hope — not illusion, but the quiet certainty that something better is on its way.

XVIII — The Moon

Keywords: illusion, fears, the unconscious, dreams, confusion.
The deep waters of the unconscious. The Moon speaks of what's in the shadows: fears, unprocessed emotions, messages that arrive in dreams.

XIX — The Sun

Keywords: joy, vitality, clarity, success, celebration.
One of the most luminous cards in the deck. The Sun brings clarity, energy and the genuine satisfaction of being on the right path.

XX — Judgment

Keywords: calling, awakening, redemption, evaluation, rebirth.
The moment of the call. Judgment speaks of hearing an inner voice summoning you to something greater — and having the courage to answer.

XXI — The World

Keywords: wholeness, integration, completed cycle, achievement, totality.
The end of the journey — and the beginning of the next. The World is the card of full realization: everything fell into place, the cycle is complete, and there's something to celebrate.

🃏 Explore the full meaning of each card — including all 56 Minor Arcana — in our calculator

🂠 What about the Minor Arcana?

The 56 Minor Arcana are divided into 4 suits, each with its own energy:

Cups — the emotional world: love, relationships, intuition, dreams.
Swords — the mental world: thought, conflict, communication, decisions.
Wands — the world of action: energy, creativity, ambition, projects.
Pentacles — the material world: money, work, the body, stability.

Each suit has 14 cards: Ace through 10, plus four court cards (Page, Knight, Queen and King). They're more concrete and situational than the Major Arcana — they speak to what's happening in everyday life.

🌿 How to start your practice

There's no single right way. Here are some ideas for beginning:

Start with just the Major Arcana. Twenty-two cards with a lot of depth. Getting comfortable with them is already a significant achievement — and many practitioners work this way for life.
Draw one card per day. Look at it, read its meaning, and notice if anything resonates with how your day unfolds.
Trust your intuition. Before reading the meaning, ask yourself: what do I see in the image? What do I feel? Your first response is usually the most honest one.
Use our calculator. You can explore the meaning of any card whenever you want — in three languages.

"You don't learn Tarot by studying it — you learn it by living it. One card a day, one question at a time."

🃏 Start now: explore any Rider Waite Tarot card in our calculator — free