MAJOR ARCANA

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.
[citation needed]
Nevertheless, one of the most common sets of names and numbers is as follows:
Number

Name

None (0 or 22)

The Fool

The Magician

The High Priestess

The Empress

The Emperor

The Hierophant

The Lovers

The Chariot

Justice

The Hermit

10

Wheel of Fortune

11

Strength

12

The Hanged Man

13

Death

14

Temperance

15

The Devil

16

The Tower

17

The Star

18

The Moon

19

The Sun

20

Judgement

21

The World

Strength is traditionally the eleventh card and Justice the eighth, but the influential RiderWaite-Smith deck switched the position of these two cards in order to make them a better fit
with the astrological correspondences worked out by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
under which the eighth card is associated with Leo and the eleventh with Libra.[citation needed]
Today many decks use this numbering, particularly in the English-speaking world. Both
placements are considered valid.