Tarot and Astrology | PsychicSmile
Two Languages for the Same Sky: Tarot and Astrology Together
Tarot and astrology are two different systems that describe the same sky, and they have been used together for more than a century. Tarot is a deck of 78 cards: 22 Major Arcana, the big archetypal cards like the Fool, the Lovers, and Death, and 56 Minor Arcana, the four suits of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. Astrology is a chart of the sky at a moment in time: twelve signs, ten planets, twelve houses, and the aspects between them. The two systems meet in a table of correspondences, a grid that pairs each tarot card with a sign, a planet, or an element, so that a card and a placement in a chart can be read as two expressions of the same idea.
The table most readers use today comes from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical society founded in London in 1888. Its members, including S. L. MacGregor Mathers, wrote a private instruction paper known as Book T, which matched each of the 22 Major Arcana to one of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and so to one element, planet, or sign. The system draws on an older text, the Sefer Yetzirah, which divides the 22 letters into three sets: three mother letters linked to the three primal elements, seven double letters linked to the seven classical planets, and twelve simple letters linked to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Three plus seven plus twelve equals twenty-two, and that is exactly the number of Major Arcana cards.
Tarot itself is older than this table by centuries. It started as a game of cards in fifteenth-century Italy, with no tie to the sky at all. The tie to astrology was woven much later, by a particular school, and it is a human invention, not an astronomical fact. That matters, because it means the correspondences are a tool for reading, not a discovery about the world. They are useful because they give you a second language for the same ideas, and they are honest only when they are presented as a system, not as nature. This page gives you the table, explains how to use it, and shows how a combined reading works.
The Twelve Sign Cards
Twelve of the Major Arcana carry the twelve signs, in zodiac order, and they are the easiest part of the table to learn. Aries is the Emperor, card four. Taurus is the Hierophant, card five. Gemini is the Lovers, card six. Cancer is the Chariot, card seven. Leo is Strength, card eight. Virgo is the Hermit, card nine. Libra is Justice, card eleven. Scorpio is Death, card thirteen. Sagittarius is Temperance, card fourteen. Capricorn is the Devil, card fifteen. Aquarius is the Star, card seventeen. Pisces is the Moon, card eighteen.
Notice how the imagery matches the sign. The Emperor sits on a throne carved with rams' heads, the symbol of Aries, the ram. The Hierophant is a priest, the figure of tradition and teaching, which is the Taurus theme of established values. The Lovers show a man and a woman under a great winged angel, the Gemini theme of duality and choice. The Chariot is a warrior in a shell-like vehicle, the Cancer theme of protection and home. Strength shows a woman gently closing a lion's mouth, the Leo theme of courage without force. The Hermit carries a lantern on a mountain path, the Virgo theme of careful, solitary work. Justice holds scales, the Libra theme of balance and fairness. Death rides a white horse, the Scorpio theme of ending and transformation. Temperance pours water between two cups, the Sagittarius theme of blending and aiming high. The Devil shows two figures chained to a dark throne, the Capricorn theme of bondage to material things. The Star shows a woman pouring water under a great star, the Aquarius theme of hope and shared knowledge. The Moon shows a crayfish crawling from a pool under a moonlit sky, the Pisces theme of dreams and the unconscious.
The numbering matters too. The Golden Dawn numbering places Strength at eight and Justice at eleven, the same order used in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, the deck most readers learn on. Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, who created that deck, were both members of the Golden Dawn, which is why the imagery matches the table so closely. If you use a deck that swaps Strength and Justice, the Thoth deck does the same, the correspondences stay attached to the named cards, not to the numbers.
The Planet Cards and the Element Cards
Seven of the Major Arcana carry the seven classical planets. The Magician is Mercury, the planet of words, cleverness, and skill. The High Priestess is the Moon, the planet of intuition, mystery, and the unconscious. The Empress is Venus, the planet of love, beauty, and abundance. The Wheel of Fortune is Jupiter, the planet of growth, luck, and expansion. The Tower is Mars, the planet of force, disruption, and sudden change. The Sun is the Sun, the planet of identity, vitality, and clarity. The World is Saturn, the planet of structure, limits, and completion.
Three of the Major Arcana carry the three primordial elements. The Fool is Air, the element of thought, freedom, and the open road. The Hanged Man is Water, the element of feeling, surrender, and the unconscious. Judgement is Fire, the element of spirit, renewal, and awakening. That accounts for all 22 Major Arcana: twelve signs, seven planets, and three elements, three plus seven plus twelve.
The planet cards are the most useful part of the table for a beginner, because the planets are the most familiar part of astrology. If you know what Mercury means in a chart, you know roughly what the Magician means in a reading, and if you know what Saturn means in a chart, you know roughly what the World means. The card is the planet in picture form, and the planet is the card in chart form. That is the whole point of the system: one idea, two languages. Your Moon sign, which you can work out with the moon sign calculator page, has its own card in this system: the High Priestess, the card of the Moon.
The Minor Arcana: Suits, Elements, and Decans
The Minor Arcana follow the same logic, at a smaller scale. The four suits match the four elements. Wands are fire, and they describe energy, ambition, and action. Cups are water, and they describe feelings, relationships, and intuition. Swords are air, and they describe thought, conflict, and truth. Pentacles are earth, and they describe money, work, and the physical world. The court cards, the Pages, Knights, Queens, and Kings, are read as people, or as styles of behavior, and each one blends two elements.
The numbered cards, from Two to Ten, are assigned to the decans, the ten-degree slices of the zodiac. Each sign is divided into three decans of ten degrees each, and there are 36 decans in total, which is exactly the number of numbered Minor Arcana cards. The Two, Three, and Four of Wands belong to the three decans of Aries. The Five, Six, and Seven of Pentacles belong to the three decans of Taurus. The Eight, Nine, and Ten of Swords belong to the three decans of Gemini. The pattern runs through the whole zodiac, sign by sign, suit by suit, in the order of the elements: fire, earth, air, water, and back to fire.
A card like the Three of Wands is not just a card about waiting and watching. In the decan system, it is the Sun in Aries, the second decan of Aries, and it carries the Sun's clarity and Aries' drive. Knowing that deepens the card's meaning, and it gives you a way to connect a tarot reading with a birth chart.
How to Use the Table in a Reading
There are three practical ways to use tarot and astrology together, and they build on each other.
The first way is to read a card through its correspondence. When the Emperor appears in a reading, look at Aries in the querent's chart. Is there a planet in Aries? Is Aries on an angle? Is Mars, the ruler of Aries, doing something important? If the answer is yes, the card and the chart are saying the same thing, and the reading is stronger for it. If the answer is no, the card is still meaningful on its own, and the correspondence is a suggestion, not a rule.
The second way is to use astrology for timing. The cards describe a situation, and the chart describes a period. A reading that shows the Tower, the Mars card, during a Mars transit to a natal planet is a reading about a period of disruption that is already visible in the sky. A reading that shows the Star, the Aquarius card, during a Jupiter transit to the eleventh house, the house of friends and groups, is a reading about hope arriving through a network. The chart gives the card a time, and the card gives the chart a picture.
The third way is to lay out a spread using the chart itself. The simplest version is the twelve-house spread: twelve cards, one for each house of the birth chart, read as a picture of the year ahead in each area of life. A more focused version is the sign spread: twelve cards for the twelve signs, or three cards for the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant. These spreads work because they use the chart as a structure, and the cards as the content, and they are a good way to learn both systems at once.
The guide to how to read tarot cards covers the basics of reading, and the guide to the birth chart covers the chart. This page is the bridge between them, and it assumes you know a little of both.
A Worked Example: One Chart, Three Cards
Here is a combined reading worked through from a constructed chart, so you can see the method in action. The chart is the one used on the vertex and part of fortune pages: a birth on June 15, 1990, at 2:30 in the afternoon in Los Angeles. The Sun is at 24 degrees of Gemini, the Moon is at 20 degrees of Pisces, and the Ascendant is at 15 degrees of Libra. The Moon is in Pisces, the sign whose Major Arcana card is the Moon, card eighteen. The Sun is in Gemini, the sign whose card is the Lovers, card six. The Ascendant is in Libra, the sign whose card is Justice, card eleven.
Now suppose a reading for this person draws three cards: the Moon, the Lovers, and Justice. In a tarot-only reading, those three cards would be read as a story about confusion and dreams, a choice in love, and a victory through control. In a combined reading, the cards line up with the chart in a way that deepens each one. The Moon card is not just a card about dreams. It is the card of the person's own Moon sign, Pisces, and it describes their emotional life directly. The Lovers card is not just a card about a choice. It is the card of their Sun sign, Gemini, and it describes their core identity: a person who lives by choices, by duality, by holding two things at once. Justice is not just a card about fairness. It is the card of their Ascendant, Libra, and it describes how they meet the world: balanced, fair-minded, and careful to weigh both sides before they act.
The reading is stronger because the cards and the chart agree. The Moon card says the person's feelings are deep, dreamy, and hard to pin down, and the chart says the Moon is in Pisces, which says the same thing. The Lovers card says the person's central question is a choice, and the chart says the Sun is in Gemini, which says the same thing. Justice says the person's public style is balanced and even-handed, and the chart says the Ascendant is in Libra, which says the same thing. The tarot did not add new information. It confirmed what the chart already said, in pictures, and that confirmation is the value of the combined system.
An Illustrative Example: Maya and the Card That Kept Appearing
This example is illustrative, not a real person's story.
Maya is 30, a teacher in Portland, and she had a problem that brought her to both tarot and astrology. For months, the same card kept appearing in her readings: the Star, card seventeen, the Aquarius card. She drew it in one-card readings, in three-card spreads, and in a Celtic Cross, and each time it felt important and she did not know why. She was a Taurus, and Aquarius was not a sign she thought much about, so the card's persistence puzzled her.
When she looked at her chart, the answer was waiting. Her eleventh house, the house of friends, groups, and hopes, was in Aquarius, and her natal Uranus, the modern ruler of Aquarius, sat in her tenth house, the house of career. She had recently joined a group of teachers working on a new curriculum, and the group had become the most important thing in her professional life. The Star was not a mystery. It was the card of the sign that ruled her eleventh house, and it was describing the hope she felt through that group, and the future she was building with them.
Maya now uses the correspondences as a way of checking her readings against her chart. When a card repeats, she looks for the sign or planet it belongs to in her chart, and she asks where that placement is active in her life right now.
Mistakes to Avoid When Combining Tarot and Astrology
The first mistake is treating the correspondences as facts about nature. They are a system invented by the Golden Dawn in 1888, built on the Sefer Yetzirah and on the Hebrew alphabet. They are not written in the sky, and they are not the only system. An older system, associated with the astrologer Thierens, gives each sign two cards instead of one. The Golden Dawn system is the most widely used, and it is the one this page teaches, but it is a choice, not a discovery.
The second mistake is forcing a match. If a card appears in a reading and its correspondence does not fit the chart, the card is still meaningful. The correspondences are a tool for deepening a reading, not a test that the reading must pass.
The third mistake is using the table as a shortcut for learning either system. The correspondences only make sense if you know something about tarot and something about astrology already. Learn each system on its own first, and then bring them together.
The fourth mistake is forgetting the moon phases and the transits. A combined reading is not only about the birth chart. The current sky matters too, and a card drawn under a Full Moon means something different from the same card drawn under a New Moon.
Where to Go Next
If you want to learn the correspondences, start with the twelve sign cards, in zodiac order, Emperor to Moon. Then learn the seven planet cards, and then the three element cards. Then learn the suits and their elements, and, when you are ready, the decans.
If you want to use the combined system in readings, start with the simplest method: when a Major Arcana card appears, look for its sign or planet in the querent's chart. That one habit will teach you more than memorizing the whole table at once. The tarot card combinations page shows how cards work together, and the what is astrology guide explains the chart. Between those two, and this page, you have the whole bridge. If you want a reading rather than a study session, the tarot reading page explains what happens in one.
A professional reading can work with both systems at once, reading your chart and your cards together, and talking through what the combination means for your question. The first 3 minutes are free, and they are enough to ask how your cards and your chart fit together. First 3 minutes FREE — every time, for every reading, with all advisors.
For a simple next step, try a One-Card Tarot reading and reflect on the card you draw, and the sign or planet it belongs to, and where that sign or planet sits in your own chart.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the connection between tarot and astrology?
The connection is a table of correspondences, made standard by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888. Each of the 22 Major Arcana is paired with a sign, a planet, or an element, so a card and a chart placement can be read as two expressions of the same idea.
Which tarot card is my zodiac sign?
In the Golden Dawn system, Aries is the Emperor, Taurus the Hierophant, Gemini the Lovers, Cancer the Chariot, Leo Strength, Virgo the Hermit, Libra Justice, Scorpio Death, Sagittarius Temperance, Capricorn the Devil, Aquarius the Star, and Pisces the Moon.
Do the tarot suits match the astrological elements?
Yes. Wands are fire, Cups are water, Swords are air, and Pentacles are earth. The numbered cards from Two to Ten are also assigned to the 36 decans, the ten-degree slices of the zodiac, sign by sign.
Can I use tarot and astrology together in one reading?
Yes. The simplest method is to look for a drawn card's sign or planet in the querent's chart. You can also use astrology for timing, reading a card against the current transits, or lay out a spread using the twelve houses of the chart as its structure.
Are the tarot and astrology correspondences real or invented?
They are invented, by a particular school, the Golden Dawn, in 1888, building on the Sefer Yetzirah. Tarot began as a card pastime in fifteenth-century Italy, with no tie to the sky. The correspondences are a useful tool for reading, not a fact of nature, and they should be presented as a system.
Last updated: November 12, 2026
