The relationship between tarot symbols and their meanings is a layered system of correspondences where each visual element — color, posture, number, object, and astrological sign — anchors a specific interpretive range, allowing the reader to move from the concrete image to the abstract message without losing either.
This system was not invented all at once. It was built over five centuries, from Renaissance allegory to Golden Dawn ritual, and it continues to evolve with every deck and every reader. To understand how tarot symbols carry meaning, you must understand how they were assembled.
Where the System of Symbols Was Born
The earliest surviving tarot decks — the Visconti-Sforza cards from the 1450s, were painted for the Milanese court. Their symbols were allegorical: Virtue, the Cosmos, the Triumph of Christ. The relationship between image and meaning was direct. Temperance pouring water between two cups meant moderation, nothing more.
That changed when the esotericists got hold of it.
In 1781, the French pastor Antoine Court de Gébelin published a treatise claiming the Tarot was a surviving fragment of the Egyptian Book of Thoth, a symbolic encyclopedia of all knowledge. He was wrong about Egypt, but right about the principle: the symbols were not decorative. They were a coded language. That idea electrified the occult world.
Éliphas Lévi, writing in the 1850s, was the first to assign the 22 Major Arcana to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and to planetary and astrological signs. He drew the link between the Fool and the letter Aleph (the ox, the breath, the beginning), and between the Magician and Beth (the house, the container, the will). For Lévi, each symbol was a node in a universal network. The relationship between a card and its meaning was not arbitrary; it was structural.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, turned Lévi’s sketches into a rigorous system. They assigned each Minor Arcana card to a specific astrological decanate, each Major card to a path on the Tree of Life, and each number to a sephirah. The image of the Five of Pentacles became not just “poverty” but the number 5 (Geburah, severity) combined with the earth element, material hardship as a spiritual test. The symbol was a compound, not a single note.
When A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith released the Rider-Waite-Smith deck in 1910, they painted that system into the cards. The rose and lily in the Magician, the stars in the Star, the wall in the Hierophant, all were chosen to carry the Golden Dawn’s correspondences in a form anyone could see. The relationship between symbol and meaning became democratic: you could read the image without knowing the astrology, but the astrology was still there, underneath, like a foundation.
For a deeper look at how these numbered symbols relate to divine structure, see our glossary entry on the Tree of Life.
How a Symbol Means: The Layers of a Single Card
Take the Tower. The lightning bolt comes from above, not from the ground. The crown is knocked off. The two figures fall headlong. The structure is masonry, not wood.
Each element carries a specific weight. The lightning is divine intervention, sudden and impersonal. The crown is the pride of the ego. The fall is a descent from illusion into truth. The Tower is the Babel of human ambition, built without God. The card is associated with Mars (action, violence, war) and the Hebrew letter Peh (mouth, speech, destruction). The number 16 reduces to 7 (the Chariot, the will that must be broken).
The meaning, cataclysmic change that destroys what is false, emerges from the collision of these layers. The visual tells the story. The astrological attribution tells the force. The number tells the pattern. The Kabbalistic path tells the spiritual lesson. The reader does not need to recite all of them. They only need to feel the weight of one layer that resonates with the querent’s life.
The same principle applies to every card. The Lovers show a man and a woman, a winged figure above, a mountain behind. The obvious meaning is romantic union. But the Golden Dawn assigned it to Gemini (duality, choice, communication) and the letter Zayin (sword, separation). The card is about the choice that defines a path, not just about love. The mountain (the goal) and the angel Raphael (healing) add nuance: the choice must be made in full awareness, with a blessing.
The relationship between symbol and meaning is not a dictionary. It is a grammar. The symbols are the vocabulary; the spread, the question, and the reader’s intuition are the syntax.
The Practice of Reading Symbols
When we lay out a Celtic Cross spread, the first card sets the tone. The symbol of the Magician, the lemniscate above his head, the tools on the table, one hand pointing up and one down, means willpower, manifestation, the alignment of the four elements. But in a reading about health, the same symbol shifts: the tools become the body’s resources, the lemniscate becomes the need for energy flow, the pointing hands become the connection between mental intention and physical state.
The symbols do not change. The meaning does, because the relationship is contextual. That is the skill: to hold the fixed correspondences in one hand and the living situation in the other, and let the card speak through the gap.
Some readers work entirely from the imagery. They describe what they see, the figure’s posture, the color of the sky, the objects on the ground, and let the querent find the meaning. Others work from the esoteric attributions, reciting the astrological ruler and the Hebrew letter. Both are valid. The Golden Dawn itself used both: the symbol and the system.
The practice of reading is a conversation between the fixed symbol and the fluid moment. The Fool is always the fool, the beginning, the leap. But in one reading he is a new job; in another, a reckless gamble; in another, a spiritual awakening. The symbol is the constant. The meaning is the variable.
The Architects of the System: Notable Figures and Influences
A. E. Waite did not invent the Tarot’s symbols. He synthesized them. His work sits on the shoulders of Lévi, the Golden Dawn, and the unknown engravers of the Marseille Tarot. But his collaboration with Pamela Colman Smith was decisive. She was an artist who understood symbolist theater and the occult. The images she painted are not illustrations of the meanings; they are visual equations that generate the meanings when read correctly.
Aleister Crowley’s Thoth deck, painted by Lady Frieda Harris and published in 1944, took the symbol system further. Every line, every color, every angle was calibrated to a specific esoteric number. The Magician in the Thoth deck holds a caduceus, wears a serpent belt, and stands before a background of gold. The symbols are denser, more explicit, and less forgiving. The relationship between symbol and meaning is almost mathematical: read the symbol, compute the meaning.
Paul Foster Case, founder of the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA), taught that the Tarot symbols were keys to the unconscious mind. His deck, the BOTA Tarot, is black-and-white, designed to be colored by the student as a meditation. The act of coloring the symbols is itself an act of meaning-making. The relationship becomes personal.
What the Relationship Is Not
A common misconception is that Tarot symbols have universal meanings that apply in every reading. They do not. The Tower always means upheaval, but the upheaval can be a job loss, a divorce, a spiritual crisis, or a sudden insight. The symbol is the raw material; the meaning is shaped by the question and the spread.
Another misconception is that the images are merely decorative, that you can learn the Tarot from a list of keywords without looking at the cards. That is like learning a language from a dictionary without reading a sentence. The Three of Swords is not just “heartbreak.” It is a heart pierced by three swords, suspended in a gray sky, with rain falling. The image tells you that the pain is multiple, that it is sustained, that it is atmospheric. A keyword cannot carry that.
A third misconception is that the Rider-Waite-Smith deck represents the “original” or “traditional” Tarot. It is a 20th-century creation, and its symbols, while deeply influential, are only one interpretation of a much older tradition. The Marseille Tarot, for example, uses minimal imagery for the Minor Arcana: wands, cups, swords, coins arranged in patterns. The relationship between symbol and meaning in the Marseille deck is more abstract, more numerological, and less narrative. Both are valid.
FAQ
Do tarot symbols have the same meaning in every deck?
No. The core symbols (lightning, stars, cups) carry similar resonance, but each deck interprets them differently. The Thoth deck’s Tower is more violent than the Rider-Waite-Smith version, and the Marseille deck’s Tower lacks the falling figures.
How do I learn the meanings of tarot symbols?
Start with one deck. Study its imagery without reference to meanings. Note what you see. Then compare with the traditional correspondences, astrological, numerological, elemental, and with the card’s history. The meaning emerges from the overlap. Exploring our glossary of tarot symbols can also help clarify specific elements.
Why does the same card mean different things in different readings?
Because the symbol is a lens, not a label. The same word can mean different things in different sentences. The card’s meaning is shaped by the question, the position in the spread, and the cards around it.
The Tarot is a language built of images, not words. Each symbol is a letter; each card is a phrase; each spread is a sentence. To read the cards is to learn the grammar of that language, and to let the symbols speak for themselves.
For a deeper study, see our guide to the correspondence tables of the Golden Dawn and the glossary of esoteric symbols. The relationship between symbol and meaning is not something you memorize. It is something you practice.