Every tarot deck is two decks sharing a box. Knowing which half a card comes from tells you something before you have identified it.

Twenty-two Major Arcana

The named ones. The Fool, The Tower, The Star, Death, numbered zero through twenty-one. No suit, no rank. They deal in the big weather of a life: upheaval, endings, authority, luck, the moment something turns over. When one lands in a spread, the reading has usually moved to something you do not fully control.

Fifty-six Minor Arcana

The rest is built like a pack of playing cards. Four suits, Ace through Ten in each, plus four court cards per suit. If the majors are weather, the minors are Tuesday: the conversation you keep putting off, the invoice, the friend who has gone quiet, the small decisions that fill a week.

• Forty numbered cards — Ace to Ten, four times over. Events and circumstances.
• Sixteen court cards — Page, Knight, Queen, King. People, and ways of behaving.

Why the split earns its keep

Count the majors before you read a single card. A spread that is nearly all minors is describing ordinary life, and its advice will be practical and small. A spread crowded with majors is describing something larger than this month.

You can see that from across the table, which is why experienced readers glance at the whole layout before naming anything. It is the cheapest information in the reading.