Divination and Magic Glossary
Plain-language definitions for the vocabulary that surrounds tarot: other forms of divination, terms from ritual and folk magic, and the words readers use to describe their own practice.
Tarot practice
- Major Arcana
- The 22 numbered trump cards from The Fool to The World, usually read as the large forces and turning points of a life rather than day-to-day detail.
- Minor Arcana
- The 56 suit cards — Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles — covering the texture of ordinary life: work, feeling, thought and material circumstance.
- Court cards
- The Pages, Knights, Queens and Kings of each suit, read either as people involved in the question or as a stance the querent is taking.
- Spread
- A layout that assigns each drawn card a fixed position and therefore a fixed question to answer.
- Querent
- The person the reading is for — the one who brings the question, whether or not they are the one shuffling.
- Reversal
- A card that lands upside down, usually read as its own energy blocked, delayed, internalised or overdone rather than as a plain opposite.
- Significator
- A card chosen in advance to stand for the querent or the subject of the question, placed at the centre of the spread.
- Tarot journal
- A running record of readings — cards, positions, question and what actually happened — which is how single draws turn into a practice.
- Deck cleansing
- Any small ritual — smoke, moonlight, a knock on the deck, reordering it — used to mark a break between readings.
- Cutting the deck
- Splitting the shuffled deck before dealing; some readers turn the bottom card of the cut as an overall theme for the reading.
- Daily draw
- One card pulled each day and revisited that evening — the standard way readers learn a deck by experience rather than memorisation.
- Rider-Waite-Smith
- The 1909 deck illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith to A. E. Waite’s design; its scenic Minor Arcana made it the reference point most modern decks answer to.
Forms of divination
- Divination
- Any practice that uses a structured, chance-driven procedure as a prompt for insight — cards, dice, bones, smoke, water or lots.
- Oracle cards
- Card decks with no fixed structure or card count, unlike tarot; each deck defines its own vocabulary of images and messages.
- Cartomancy
- Divination with cards in general, including readings done with an ordinary 52-card playing deck.
- Lenormand
- A 36-card system read in combinations rather than card by card, with blunter, more literal meanings than tarot.
- Scrying
- Gazing into a reflective or shifting surface — a black mirror, still water, a crystal, a candle flame — until images form.
- Pendulum
- A weight on a cord whose small, largely involuntary swings are read as yes/no answers; a form of dowsing.
- Runes
- Letters of the Old Norse and Germanic alphabets, drawn or cast from a bag and read individually or in small spreads.
- I Ching
- A Chinese oracle in which coins or yarrow stalks build one of 64 hexagrams, each with a classical commentary.
- Tasseography
- Reading the shapes left by tea leaves or coffee grounds in a cup, interpreted by position on the rim, wall and base.
- Bibliomancy
- Opening a book at random and reading the first line the eye lands on as an answer.
- Numerology
- Assigning meaning to numbers and to sums derived from names and dates; in tarot it gives the pips their through-line, ace to ten.
- Astrology
- Reading meaning from the positions of the planets and signs; tarot borrows its planetary and zodiacal correspondences from it.
- Palmistry
- Reading the lines, mounts and shape of the hand as a map of temperament and circumstance.
- Dream interpretation
- Treating recurring dream images as a personal symbol set; readers often keep dream and tarot journals in the same notebook.
Ritual and folk magic
- Ritual
- A repeated sequence of actions performed deliberately to mark a threshold and put the practitioner into a particular frame of mind.
- Spell
- A worked intention: words, objects and gestures combined into a fixed procedure aimed at a specific outcome.
- Intention
- The single clear aim stated at the start of a working; in tarot it is the question you commit to before shuffling.
- Sigil
- A statement of intent condensed into an abstract glyph, so the aim can be carried and looked at without being reread as a sentence.
- Candle magic
- Using a dressed and inscribed candle as a timer and focus for an intention, with colour chosen by correspondence.
- Moon phases
- The waxing-to-waning cycle used as a calendar for practice: new moon for beginnings, full moon for culmination, waning for release.
- Altar
- A dedicated surface where tools, cards and offerings are kept, which turns practice into something with a fixed place.
- Talisman
- An object made or consecrated to attract a specific condition, as opposed to an amulet, which is worn to keep something away.
- Amulet
- A protective object worn or carried to turn harm aside — the evil eye bead is the best known example in Anatolia and the Mediterranean.
- Smoke cleansing
- Passing objects or a room through herb or resin smoke to mark a reset; local traditions use whatever grows nearby rather than one fixed plant.
- Correspondences
- The tables that link a card, planet, element, colour, day, herb and stone to one another, so one can stand in for the rest.
- The four elements
- Fire, Water, Air and Earth, mapped in tarot onto Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles and onto will, feeling, thought and body.
- Grimoire
- A personal book of workings, correspondences and results, kept so a practice can be repeated and corrected rather than reinvented.
- Banishing
- A working aimed at removing rather than attracting — closing something down, sending it away or clearing a space before other work.
- Casting a circle
- Marking a temporary boundary around the working space, opened at the start and closed at the end so the session has edges.
- Sympathetic magic
- The principle that like affects like, and that a part stands for the whole — the logic behind poppets, knots and photographs.
- Folk magic
- Household practice passed down outside any formal system, using ordinary materials — salt, bread, thread, water, keys.
- Jar spell
- A container charm: written intention plus herbs, salt or small objects sealed in a jar and kept where the work is meant to act.
- Knot magic
- Tying intention into cord, one knot at a time, and untying it later to release what was bound.
Personal practice
- Intuition
- The fast, unargued reading that arrives before the book meaning; most readers treat it as a first draft to be checked, not overruled by.
- Synchronicity
- A meaningful coincidence with no causal link, the concept Jung offered to describe why a chance-drawn card can still land.
- Shadow work
- Deliberately reading for the parts of a situation you would rather not look at; the reversed and difficult cards are the usual entry point.
- Grounding
- Bringing attention back to the body and the room after a reading, so the session ends rather than trails on.
- Manifestation
- Working toward an outcome by keeping it clearly stated and repeatedly in view; in tarot, usually paired with a card chosen as the target image.
Tarot content on mezulla is for personal reflection and exploration. It is not a substitute for medical, legal, financial or mental-health advice.