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Tarot deck

Tarot de Marseille: the 78 cards and how to read them

The Tarot de Marseille is the classic deck of images read through gesture, color, and number.

By Thomas Guilhot · updated

The essentials

Tarot de Marseille at a glance

For you

A deck of flat color, where each image is read through its gesture, its number, and its place in the spread.

Cards
22 Major, 56 Minor Arcana
Version shown
Conver, dated 1760
Minor Arcana
Repeated pips
Reversals
Often not read
Read more
Draw the cards Combine two cards

By Thomas Guilhot · updated

The deck

Conver’s 22 cards

Seventy-eight cards: twenty-two numbered Major Arcana and four suits of fourteen cards, wands, cups, swords, and coins, whose minor cards show patterns without a scene.

Tarot de Marseille: Nicolas Conver, dated 1760, restored by the Tarot World Project, CC BY-SA 4.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons. Images resized and compressed by Versana; Marseille Minor Arcana diagrams and card back drawn by Versana.

History

The key stages

A deck of long tradition, passed down in similar forms from one workshop to the next; its exact origins remain debated, and this page puts forward no date.

  1. Origins

    The images are first those of a card game: numbered cards, suits, and court figures, recognizable from one copy to the next.

  2. The deck takes shape

    Over time, the Major Arcana drew the attention of readers, who see in them symbolic stages rather than simple trumps.

  3. Reading

    The minor cards remained suit patterns: you read their number and their suit, with no scene to describe.

  4. Today

    Today, the deck serves as a reading tool: each person looks in it for images to interpret, following a reported tradition rather than a rule.

Reading

How to read it

  • The image

    Start by describing what you see: gestures, colors, objects, the direction of the gaze. The Major Arcana offer a scene seen head-on; the minor cards, suit patterns that you read mostly through their number.

  • The number

    Each card carries a number, a reference point for reading: from zero to twenty-one for the Major Arcana, from ace to ten for the minor cards. Many readers see in it a degree of progress, from the first impulse to its completion.

  • The position

    A card’s place in the spread nuances its reading: the same image can describe a resource, an obstacle, or a question, depending on its position and the neighboring cards. Read the whole before the detail.

Draw the cards Tarot concepts

Frequently asked questions: Tarot de Marseille

Where does the Tarot de Marseille come from?

The deck belongs to an old tradition of printed cards, whose forms were passed down with variations. Its name evokes a city, but its exact origins remain debated; this page sets neither a date nor an author, so as not to claim anything that cannot be verified.

How many cards are in the deck?

The deck has seventy-eight cards: twenty-two Major Arcana, from zero to twenty-one, and fifty-six minor cards divided into four suits of fourteen cards each, with four court cards per suit: page, knight, queen, and king.

How does it differ from the other deck?

The main difference lies in the minor cards: here, suit patterns without a scene; there, a drawn image for each card. The Major Arcana echo each other in principle, but the artwork varies, and the Marseille deck is readily read through numbers and patterns.