Astrology and Tarot

The familiar tarot-and-astrology links are not ancient. Most come from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth century, the same tradition that shaped the Rider-Waite-Smith and Thoth decks. It is one influential system, learned and internally consistent, rather than the only or the original way to read the cards.

In this system each major arcana card answers to a planet or a zodiac sign. The Empress takes Venus, The Emperor takes Aries, The Moon takes Pisces, The Wheel of Fortune takes Jupiter. The pairing is meant to rhyme: the sign or planet and the card share a temperament, so one illuminates the other.

The minor suits map to the four elements, and through them to the zodiac's elemental groupings: Wands to Fire, Cups to Water, Swords to Air, Pentacles to Earth. The court cards and numbered minors are then assigned to specific decans, the ten-degree slices of the zodiac, which is where the system gets genuinely intricate.

If you read astrology, the correspondences are a rich extra layer: a card can be coloured by the sign it carries. If you do not, you lose nothing essential by leaving them aside. Every card page here lists its traditional astrological attribution for those who want it, presented as tradition rather than fact.