What tarot card am I? Six ways to find out

There are six common ways to answer “what tarot card am I?” Add up your birth date for your arcana number, use Mary K. Greer’s method for your tarot birth cards, match your sun sign to its zodiac card, use the day you were born for your birthday card, find your court card by suit and rank, or take a personality quiz. Each one answers a slightly different question, so it’s normal to end up with more than one card.

Six ways to find your tarot card

The first four come from your birth data and never change. The last two depend on you, and can shift as you do.

Your arcana number: the card from your full birth date

It’s the most popular answer, and the one behind our homepage calculator. Add all eight digits of your birth date, and while the total is above 22, add its digits again.

For March 15, 1990: 0+3+1+5+1+9+9+0 = 28, then 2 + 8 = 10, the Wheel of Fortune.

Treat this card as your core theme, the one that runs through your whole life. A total of 22 is the Fool. For the full method, including how to check your sum, see How to Calculate Your Arcana Number.

Your tarot birth cards, by Greer’s method

Tarot author Mary K. Greer adds the month, the day and the full year as whole numbers, then reduces. The first result is your personality card, how you come across in the world. Reducing it to a single digit gives your soul card, the purpose underneath.

For March 15, 1990: 3 + 15 + 1990 = 2008, then 2+0+0+8 = 10, the Wheel of Fortune (personality), and 1 + 0 = 1, the Magician (soul). This pair has its own page, Wheel of Fortune and Magician.

Here the personality card matches the arcana number, which happens for roughly six birth dates in ten. When they differ, the two cards still share a root number. Personality Card vs Soul Card explains how to read the pair.

Your zodiac card: the card for your sun sign

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn gave each zodiac sign a Major Arcana card, and most modern decks keep that system.

March 15 falls in Pisces, so our example’s zodiac card is the Moon. Each sign has its own page, such as the Pisces tarot card, and Zodiac Signs and Tarot Cards covers the planets and elements too.

Your birthday card: the card for the day you were born

It’s the simplest method of all. The day of the month you were born is your card number. Born on the 7th? Your card is the Chariot. Born on the 22nd? The Fool. For the 23rd to the 31st, add the two digits: the 23rd gives 5, the Hierophant, and the 29th gives 11, Justice.

Our example was born on the 15th, so the birthday card is the Devil. Readers treat this card as a small signature, a quality you show in everyday habits more than in big life choices. Each day has a page, for example born on the 15th.

Which court card are you?

If you’d like a card that looks like a person, a court card is the traditional answer. In a reading, the card chosen to represent the person asking is called a significator, and court cards have filled that role for over a century. Older books, including Waite’s, picked one by hair and eye coloring. Most readers now use two simpler questions:

• Suit, from your element. Fire signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius) take Wands, water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) take Cups, air signs (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) take Swords, and earth signs (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn) take Pentacles.
• Rank, from your stage of life. Pages for students and beginners, Knights for people in motion, Queens and Kings for those with settled experience, whatever their gender.

These two methods can disagree. The zodiac guide’s sign shortcut fixes the rank by the sign’s mode (Knights for mutable signs), so March 15, 1990 gets the Knight of Cups. By stage of life, the same person as a settled adult might be the Queen or King of Cups instead. Use whichever method feels truer to you. If you’d rather go by personality than birth sign, the court card quiz scores your suit and rank from eight questions, and Tarot Court Cards Explained describes all sixteen.

Quiz results: the card you’re living right now

Calculated cards are fixed for life, while a quiz reads how you behave today. The persona arcana quiz asks ten everyday questions, gives points to the Major Arcana that fit each answer, and shows your top three cards.

A quiz result is a snapshot. If it matches one of your birth cards, that’s a strong sign the card fits. If it doesn’t, read the birth card as your long-term theme and the quiz card as your current style. The quiz borrows its framing from the Persona games, which Persona Arcana Explained covers.

What if you get several different cards?

Most people do, and the cards don’t cancel each other out. Our example person ends up with:

• Wheel of Fortune twice, as arcana number and personality card
• The Magician as soul card
• The Moon as zodiac card
• The Devil as birthday card
• Knight of Cups as court card by sign, or the Queen or King of Cups by stage of life

Three simple rules help you sort a set like this:

1. Start with the card that repeats. The Wheel appears twice, so it’s the main theme: change, timing and luck.
2. Group cards that share a root. The Wheel (10) and the Magician (1) both reduce to 1, so read them as one idea, turning chances into action, at two strengths.
3. Treat single cards as color. The Moon and the Devil add an intuitive, intense undercurrent to a life built around the Wheel.

If two calculators gave you two different arcana numbers, the methods behind each usually explain the gap. The arcana report collects your calculated cards in one place.

How to use your card once you know it

• As a significator. Take the card out of the deck and place it at the center of a spread to represent you. Any layout in the tarot spreads collection can take one.
• As a lens for each year. Compare your fixed card with your tarot year card to see what the year asks of you.
• As a journaling prompt. Study the image and write about where you see its strengths and its shadow in your life. How to Work With Your Birth Card has prompts and a five-card spread.

To start with the most common answer, put your birth date into the arcana calculator and see your card with every step shown.