Instructions for the three row layout:

Take the 22 cards of the Major Arcana, separate The Fool, and arrange them in sequential order in three rows of seven. Place cards 1 through 7 in the top row, cards 8 through 14 in the second row underneath, and cards 15 through 21 in the third row. You should now have three rows of seven with each of the first row’s cards lining up with two cards below them.

For example: on the leftmost column you’ll see cards I, VIII, and XV—The Magician, Strength, and The Devil—lining up vertically. In the second column you’ll see II, IX, and XVI—The High Priestess, The Hermit, The Tower.

Once you’ve arranged the Major Arcana like this, imagine each row as a level of progression in your psychological or spiritual growth. See them as domains of experience. Starting from the top row followed by the two rows beneath it we can interpret the cards as: the material, the psychological, and the spiritual. Or some see it as: conscious mind, unconscious, and super-conscious.

Using this framework of three rows of seven, we have in the first row, in ascending order: The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot. These represent aspects of the conscious mind or progress on the material plane.

The second row: Strength, The Hermit, The Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, and Temperance. These represent aspects of the unconscious or progress in deeper psychological growth.

In the third row: The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, and The World. These represent aspects of the soul or one’s spiritual progress.

This is one popular way to understand the Major Arcana but there are yet other useful frameworks with which to view this series of 22 cards. Some Tarot practitioners see the progression of the Major Arcana as the embodiment of a hero’s journey with The Fool representing the hero and ending with The World, a symbol of completion. And still others use the theories of Dr. Carl Jung to posit that the 22 sequential cards depict the psychological process of individuation.

All of these are equally valid ways of framing the cards. Very much like a spiritual practice, religion, ideology, or philosophy gives one a framework with which to make sense out of the complexity of life. These frameworks help make sense out of the complexity of The Tarot.

The Visconti-Sforza Tarot is the oldest surviving deck of Tarot cards. Throughout the Visconti-Sforza cards, there are unexplained symbols on the fabrics, shields, and hats of the figures depicted. For example: The Emperor’s crown includes a black eagle, the Empresses gown includes a repeating motif of three interlocking circles, and the King of Sword’s shield depicts a haloed lion. What are these symbols? Do they have esoteric significance?

Tarot scholar, Stuart R. Kaplan, argues these are heraldic devices—they are symbols which functioned as visual signatures of certain noble families. In Kaplan’s book, The Encyclopedia of Tarot, he writes this about the heraldic devices shown on The Empress card:

“She wears a gold crown over a head scarf that drapes softly across her shoulders. In her left hand is a shield—possibly just decorative or her husband’s jousting shield. It is emblazoned with the black eagle of the Emperor Wenceslas, a device the Viscontis and later the Sforzas adopted. The heraldic device of three interlaced diamond rings is repeated on her royal robe; the rings symbolize eternity, and the diamonds, invincibility.”

But why would the Visconti and Sforza families adopt the black eagle of the German King Wenceslas? In the late 1300’s, Giangaleazzo Visconti purchased the royal title of Duke from King Wenceslas—thereby establishing the Viscontis as royalty.

The same black eagle is also depicted on the ornate hat worn by The Emperor. Kaplan argues there are more heraldic devices that appear throughout the deck, such as the fountain and the lion. This is intriguing to Tarot enthusiasts because most Tarot decks show the Ace of Cups as a fountain and the court cards as holding such a fountain in minature, but Kaplan writes:

“The sixty-seven card Cary-Yale pack (Visconti-Tarot) contains the heraldic device of a large fountain decorating the garments of the queen, female knight and male page in the suit of staves. This fountain is believed to have been a heraldic device bestowed on Francesco Sforza after he successfully completed the campaign during which his father drowned.”

Could it be that the Visconti-Sforza deck was so well known in its time that it influenced the use of a fountain for all succeeding depictions of the cups suit? Or would Tarot artists have used the fountain regardless of whether it appeared as a heraldic symbol related to Sforza?

The fountain is a loaded image that carries with it a depth of symbolism and myth—such as the baptismal fountain or the fabled fountain of youth. It’s highly likely that if the Visconti-Sforza deck was never created, artists would still have utilized that powerful symbol in future Tarot designs.

In my personal opinion, having studied the Visconti-Sforza deck, I suspect it was intended for use as a card game that was branded, in a sense, with the heraldic imagery of the two noble families intended as its recipients. But we have to agree that the chances the Visconti-Sforza deck is the first Tarot deck are very very low. It’s much more likely that The Tarot was already being used by peasants and the working class long before it became popular enough with nobility to warrant a golden deck. But of course, those decks belonging to common people would have been made with cheaper paper and materials—that is why no examples of Tarot exist before 1450.

The Tarot is older than the United States, older than Great Britain, and very likely predates written mention (such as in the gambling sermon) by at least a hundred years. It’s my impression that the Tarot cards did not originate in the royal courts, but they were first cards used by peasants and the working class. In that regard, they provided value to the local communities as both a game and a rich divination tool which eventually made its way up to the aristocracy, and into our hands six centuries later.

The Tarot is more than a deck of cards—it is an idea. And ideas can survive even the fall of empires.