Course/The Seventy-Eight Cards
Lesson 02
Major Arcana, card by card
Observe first. Interpret second. Research third.
All twenty-two Majors. You have walked them as a road. Now you meet them one by one.
Use the pattern. Traditional first. Then the image. Then where this card sits in the sequence. Then practise. Do not rush to collect captions so you can say you have done the Majors.
How to use these card lessons
Work in order if you can. The Fool through The World. The sequence is still in the room even while you study a single card.
For each Major, learn the traditional foundation, look at this image, and remember the neighbourhood: the card before, the card after. That neighbourhood is not a plot for the querent. It is literacy for you.
Do not skip a card because you think you already know it. Do not skip a card because you do not like it. Sit with the picture. Use the library to revise. Use the Practice Room to actually use it.
What you are meeting
Big weather. Archetypes. Thresholds. A Major can still be about a Tuesday. Keep the volume honest.
When several Majors show up in your study week, notice whether you are living in formation, inner work, or crisis and return. That is the Fool's Story doing its job in the background. Then come back to the single card on the table.
Strength, studied as a card, held by the road
Traditional notes for Strength often include courage, patience, a gentle hold on a living power. Look at the image in your deck: the lion, the hands, the figure's face.
On the road, Strength follows The Chariot. Force has already been learned. This is a different courage. If you study Strength with no Chariot behind it, you can still learn the card. If you remember the Chariot, you will not confuse Strength with driving harder.
That is how this module sits on the last one.
Practice
One Major, full pattern
Open The Fool, or whichever Major you are on. Write the traditional note. Look at the image for a minute. Write the card before it and the card after it. Then practise it against a real small question in the Practice Room.
Open the practiceActivity
Name the Major you resist
Which Major do you not want to sit with? Death, Devil, Tower, Emperor, maybe The Fool. Write why. Then put that card at the top of your study list. Resistance is a curriculum.
Reflection
Can you let a Major be both a station on the road and a card in its own right, without forcing every querent onto the road?
Related in the school
In this lesson
- 01The FoolTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 02The MagicianTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 03The High PriestessTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 04The EmpressTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 05The EmperorTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 06The HierophantTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 07The LoversTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 08The ChariotTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 09StrengthTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 10The HermitTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 11Wheel of FortuneTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 12JusticeTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 13The Hanged ManTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 14DeathTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 15TemperanceTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 16The DevilTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 17The TowerTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 18The StarTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 19The MoonTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 20The SunTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 21JudgementTraditional foundation, then looking.
- 22The WorldTraditional foundation, then looking.