The Fool to The Chariot: Your Essential Guide to the First 7 Major Arcana
The Fool from The Light Seers Tarot
There's something powerful about laying out the twenty-two Major Arcana tarot cards in order. Watching The Fool take that first step off the cliff always reminds me of those moments we all face—standing at the edge of change, heart racing with equal parts fear and excitement.
What makes The Fool so special is that it's numbered zero, which means it exists both inside and outside the Major Arcana sequence. Tarot expert Rachel Pollack, author of "Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom," explained that The Fool can appear anywhere in your tarot journey because it represents something we always need—the willingness to begin again and stay open to new experiences.
The Fool isn't about being naive. It's about maintaining what some call "beginner's mind"—the ability to meet each moment and challenge with fresh eyes and an open heart. Whether you're just starting to learn tarot, going through a major life change, or deepening your spiritual practice, The Fool reminds us there's always more to discover about ourselves.
The Major Arcana cards tell what's often called "The Hero's Journey"—a concept from Joseph Campbell's work on myths and stories. But these tarot cards represent something even more personal: they're humanity's roadmap for growing up, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually too.
Tarot author Mary K. Greer offers an interesting perspective: in her book “Tarot Reversals” she suggests that when Major Arcana cards appear reversed, they might represent the "Heroine's Journey"—a more internal, intuitive path that complements the external heroic journey Campbell described. Where the hero conquers outer obstacles, the heroine navigates the inner landscape of emotions, intuition, and personal transformation.
Leaving the Safety of Childhood
Line One of the Major Arcana from the classic Rider-Waite Smith
Rachel Pollack, whose wisdom continues to illuminate our understanding, introduced the idea of three distinct lines within the Major Arcana sequence. The first line—Magician through Chariot—represents our journey through earthly pursuits, learning to navigate the physical world and develop our fundamental human capacities. The first seven cards mirror what happens in traditional coming-of-age ceremonies. We're called to leave the unconscious safety of childhood and start consciously participating in our own lives. Each card presents a new skill we need to develop.
The Magician from The Light Seers Tarot
The Magician: Learning You Have Power
The Magician stands at the altar of creation, all the tools of manifestation spread before him. "As above, so below," he declares, showing us that we have the power to bring our inner visions into outer reality. This is our first lesson in conscious living: understanding that we are not passive recipients of experience, but active creators of our reality. The Magician teaches us to harness our will, to focus our intention, to bridge the gap between desire and manifestation.
I think of The Magician every time I sit down to write, every time I choose to believe that my thoughts and words can shape reality. This is the initiation into personal power, the recognition that we are not victims of circumstance but wielders of creative force.
The High Priestess from The Light Seers Tarot
The High Priestess: Trusting Your Inner Wisdom
Where The Magician works with conscious will, The High Priestess invites us into relationship with intuition and the wisdom that lives beyond rational thought. She sits between pillars of duality, showing us that real knowledge often comes from learning to hold contradictions.
This might be our first encounter with feminine ways of knowing—not through analysis or force, but through deep listening and trusting our gut feelings. The High Priestess teaches us that not everything needs to be figured out logically; some truths reveal themselves quietly.
The Empress from The Light Seers Tarot
The Empress: Creating from Abundance
The Empress opens her arms and invites us into the realm of abundance, creativity, and nurturing. She represents the fertile ground from which all life springs, teaching us to create not from scarcity or force, but from the overflowing generosity of a well-tended garden. Through her, we learn to receive as well as give, to allow ourselves to be nurtured even as we nurture others.
I feel The Empress most strongly in moments when I stop trying to push and control, when I remember that creativity flows most freely when I create space for it rather than demanding it shows up. She reminds us that productivity without nourishment leads to burnout, that sustainable creation requires cycles of rest and restoration.
The Emperor from The Light Seers Tarot
The Emperor: Building Structure That Serves
The Emperor brings structure to The Empress's flowing abundance. He represents healthy authority, clear boundaries, and protective strength. Where she creates through receptivity, he creates through directed action, organization and clear boundaries. The Emperor teaches us to step into our leadership—to recognize that we're the stewards of knowledge and experiences only we have collected, and it's time to share what we've learned.
This card often appears when we need to step into our authority, when we must stop asking permission and start taking ownership of our power. The Emperor reminds us that healthy masculine energy protects and provides without dominating or controlling.
The Hierophant from The Light Seers Tarot
The Hierophant: Questioning What You've Been Taught
The Hierophant presents us with established tradition, religious doctrine, and societal expectations. The Hierophant not necessarily meant to be followed blindly. He represents the phase of our development where we must examine the beliefs and structures we've inherited, turn them over closely, and decide what serves us and what we need to leave behind.
This is crucial in any coming-of-age process—questioning authority, examining inherited beliefs, developing our own understanding. The Hierophant can represent both wisdom worth keeping and limiting beliefs worth releasing. Our job is to figure out the difference.
The Lovers from The Light Seers Tarot
The Lovers: Learning to Choose Consciously
The Lovers confronts us with the fundamental human experience of choice. On one level, this card represents romantic love and partnership. But on a deeper level, it represents every moment when we must choose between competing desires, values, or paths. The Lovers asks us: What do you truly value? What are you willing to commit to?
This card often appears when we're learning to make choices from the heart rather than from fear or obligation. It represents growing into conscious relationship—not just with others, but with ourselves and our deepest values.
The Chariot from The Light Seers Tarot
The Chariot: Coordinating All Your Forces
The Chariot represents the end of this first phase of development. The final boss in achieving earthly pursuits. The charioteer has learned to harness opposing forces—represented by the black and white horses depicted in The Light Seers Tarot by Chris-Anne—and direct them toward a chosen destination. This card represents mastery over our circumstances, the ability to maintain focus and direction despite conflicting influences and obstacles.
But notice what The Chariot teaches us about true mastery: it's not about overpowering or eliminating opposition, but about learning to work with all the different aspects of ourselves and our circumstances. The charioteer doesn't destroy the horses; rather learns to coordinate their movements to reach the goal.
The End of the Beginning
By The Chariot, we have achieved something significant. We've learned the basic skills of conscious living: how to create, how to access wisdom, how to nurture and receive nourishment, how to establish healthy boundaries and step into our knowledge with confidence, how to question tradition and think for ourselves, how to choose consciously, and how to stay focused despite life’s many obstacles.
In traditional rites of passage, this would be the moment of achievement, the successful completion of the trial. We might think this is the end of the story—and indeed, many people attempt to stop here, believing that external success and control constitute the fullness of human development.
But the Major Arcana knows better. It knows that true initiation has only just begun. The skills we've learned in this first line prepare us for the deeper journey ahead—the inner work where the most profound changes happen.
This is where The Fool's wisdom becomes essential. The Fool reminds us that even achievement is just another beginning. The willingness to start again, to stay open to new learning, to approach each phase with curiosity—this is what lets us keep growing beyond what we've already figured out. And it is the commitment to show up for ourselves each day, even when it feels hard.
The first line of the Major Arcana teaches us the fundamental skills of being human. But being human, as these cards know so well, is just the first step in the much larger journey of becoming whole.
This is the first post in a three-part series exploring the Major Arcana as humanity's ultimate rite of passage. Next, we'll explore the second line of cards (Strength through Temperance) and the profound inner journey of transformation they represent.