Big Secret and Little Secret
big cat little cat
Tarot is made up of Major and Minor Arcana. Basically, this translates to Big Secret and Little Secret.
Major and Minor Arcana as divisible segments of a deck are not used in any of the founding card games that came to be used for the cartomancy we call Tarot. They emerged as named categories once occultists in the 19th century started describing them as such.
These occultists were, by and large, absolute dickheads. Freemasons or cult leaders writing to cement their power and leadership. Much like many things around this time in history, a certain professionalization was taking place, and categories of knowledge were being parcelled up for various takers, ie, western men. They took from Roma who practiced cartomancy and fortune telling, from Jewish spiritualisms, and from newly revived interest in Ancient Egyptian images. As with most kinds of historical knowledge, whoever wrote the most and kept their writing cool and dry for the longest gets to set the narrative. (See critical archival studies) But cartomancy and other forms of divination have deep roots outside of written history and across the globe. And the symbolisms that found their way into western Tarot, almost incidentally, are a part of this narrative.
The Minor Arcana are sometimes as simple as a normal deck of cards, with symbols of varying numbers from 1 to 10, and then a suite of face cards symbolizing some collection of Page, Knight, King, and Queen. Starting with the Sola Busca deck in 1490, some card makers and artists began illustrating the pip cards with scenes that told stories. These were generally connected to moral tales, astrological symbols and narratives, and even biblical allegories. Unlike the Tarot de Marseilles, the previous standard-bearer for cartomancy starting in the 1700s) with its very simplistic and beautiful Minor Arcana, Pamela Coleman-Smith pulled imagery from the more elaborate Sola Busca. Her work became the absolute epitome, the ertext, the customary deck, almost immediately upon its initial publication in 1909.
Throughout tarot’s 700 year history, meanings shifted and evolved, but the symbolisms many card makers use today seem to generally respond to the symbolisms in the Rider Waite Smith deck. And let’s be real, “only” a hundred years ago is actually pretty close by when it comes to the heavy work of meaning making in a culture.
The division between major and minor arcana is older than the Rider Waite Smith deck, but many older decks only use the 20-22 Major Arcana as trump cards in a game, instead of as symbols of larger cultural and spiritual trends. At this point, though, there are some general interpretations between minor and major arcana that seem to apply across reading traditions:
Minor Arcana
everyday
mundane
practical
routines
habits
interpersonal
sometimes understood as shorter term
relating directly to the life of the querent
specific
individual
Major Arcana
overarching
thematic
grand
ritualistic
supernatural
relating to a generation or a whole community
spiritual
connected
sometimes understood as “life’s work”
But even within these demarcations, there’s space for the mundane within the Major, and the sublime within the Minor. No one card stands alone in a reading, even if it is a one card reading! The symbols that repeat across the cards tie each to the other, across suit or arcana. Messages within the mundane of the Minor Arcana build and tie in to themes within the Major.
