Major Arcana
Card Structure
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The 22 trump cards of the tarot deck, numbered 0-XXI.
The Major Arcana (Latin: 'greater secrets') comprises 22 cards depicting archetypal figures and forces: The Fool (0) through The World (XXI). In the Golden Dawn system, each Major Arcana card corresponds to a Hebrew letter, a path on the Tree of Life, and an astrological attribution. In game play, these are the trump cards that outrank the suited cards.
Significance
The Major Arcana is the most symbolically dense layer of the deck. In structural reading, the proportion of Major to Minor Arcana cards in a spread signals whether archetypal forces (many trumps) or personal agency (few trumps) dominate the situation.