Each Major Arcanum depicts a scene, mostly featuring a person or several people, with many symbolic elements. In many decks, each has a number (usually in Roman numerals) and a name, though not all decks have both, and some have only a picture. The earliest decks bore unnamed and unnumbered pictures on the Majors (probably because a great many of the people using them at the time were illiterate), and the order of cards was not standardized. Nevertheless, one of the most common set of names and numbers is as follows:

The images on the Major Arcana are often very heavy with symbolism, with far more to the illustration than a mere depiction of the card title. The Major Arcana are usually regarded as relating to matters of higher purpose or deep significance, as opposed to the Minor Arcana which relate to the everyday world and matters of immediate significance.

In pop culture

• The House of the Dead series of light gun games by Sega makes numerous references to the Major Arcana; each of the bosses in the series is named after one of the Major Arcana cards.
• The Megami Tensei Persona games revolve around the major arcana with a variety of mythological figures representing his or her own arcana, such as Satan being of the judgment arcana, Orpheus being of the Fool Arcana, etc.
• In Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django there are items fashioned after tarot cards, such as The Sun, The Moon, The Star, The Tower, The Lovers, etc. The items have effects relative to the cards interpretations, though some variation exists.
• In the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game series, there is the Arcana Force series of cards, each named after a particular tarot card.
• In the anime Escaflowne, the main character, Hitomi uses Tarot Cards to foretell events; at the beginning of each episode, a card is shown with the episode title.

External links

• Iconography of Tarot cards / many examples