Tarot and Oracles and Lenormand, Oh My!

There seems to be a trend these days to call any deck of cards that are designed for divination “Tarot” cards. I have been at Psychic Fairs where the Readers have a variety of decks that are far removed from the Tarot, yet still consider themselves to be Tarot readers. I have some decks that claim to be Tarot cards yet have nothing in common with the numbering or suits that make up the Tarot. This trend dilutes the meaning of the word “Tarot” and causes confusion when it is misapplied to non-Tarot decks.

In some ways the trend to call any divination deck a “Tarot” deck is helpful. People don’t necessarily want to have to decide which cards are being used for their reading, and “Tarot” is more commonly known. If a seeker asks for a Tarot reading, the reader may explain that they work with Angel cards rather than Tarot, but that isn’t something that really needs to be discussed. The fact that the seeker chose that reader says a lot more about the energy between them than what cards are being used for the reading.

 At the same time, deck creators and publishers sometimes use “Tarot” as the description for a deck of cards that have no business being classified like that. They do not have 78 cards, 56 made up of 4 suits and 22 made up of trumps. By definition these decks are not Tarot decks, but if they are represented as Tarot that can causes a lot of confusion.


There has been a resurgence of interest in some of the lesser known systems of divination decks, like the Lenormand and the Kipper. These are 36 card decks that are read in a very different way than Tarot cards are read, and to call either of these decks “Tarot” is wrong. At the same time the oracle decks that are so popular with certain deck creators are as far removed from being a “Tarot” deck as they are from being standard playing cards. But some people feel that they can call a deck “Tarot” as if the term is interchangeable with “divination”.

Tarot is a system, as is the Lenormand and the Kipper. The differences among the systems may seem to be minor, but in practice there are very different methods used to read a deck from each system. Lenormand does not use reversals, or spreads where the position of the card has a certain meaning. Tarot places a lot of meaning into a single card, and that can be interpreted differently if the card is upside down. And oracles are each their own set of cards that can use any system they want to.

There is no right or wrong system to work with. I know many people who combine two different systems for a reading – Tarot for the main reading and Oracle to add an extra level of meaning. The point isn’t that there’s an inherent advantage to using one or the other (there isn’t), it is that there is a need to call each system by its rightful name.


As readers we can make sure that people know the system that we work with when they sit down to a reading. Even if all we do is say “I will be doing a Lenormand reading for you”, we can help make people aware of the fact that there are different systems out there. It may not seem like a big deal to us, but it could help force the deck creators and publishers to keep their systems straight instead of adding to the confusion that is already out there about divination decks.

 After all, aren’t we supposed to help people find some clarity in their lives?