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The One-Page Tarot Cheat Sheet

Written by the Toe Bean Tarot team Aug 19, 2026 · 3 min read We built a full tarot curriculum: 98 guided lesson sections, spaced repetition, and two original 78-card decks.

This tarot cheat sheet compresses all 78 card meanings into a handful of patterns you can hold in your head: 22 short labels for the majors, 4 suit themes, a number arc, and one formula for the court cards. Save it, and you can make a fair read of any card before you've studied it.

The Toe Bean Tarot card back, face down before a reading. — Any card, face down, is one of these patterns.

The 22 majors in two or three words

0 Fool fresh start · 1 Magician focused will · 2 High Priestess intuition · 3 Empress nurture · 4 Emperor structure · 5 Hierophant tradition · 6 Lovers love, choice · 7 Chariot willpower
8 Strength quiet courage · 9 Hermit reflection · 10 Wheel change, luck · 11 Justice fairness · 12 Hanged Man new view · 13 Death transformation · 14 Temperance balance
15 Devil attachment · 16 Tower upheaval · 17 Star hope · 18 Moon uncertainty · 19 Sun joy · 20 Judgement awakening · 21 World completion

Full story versions live in the Major Arcana guide.

The four suits

Wands: energy, action, creative fire
Cups: emotion, relationships, the heart
Swords: the mind, truth, conflict
Pentacles: work, money, the material world

The number arc (Ace to Ten)

Ace: the suit's pure spark, a beginning
Two: balance, choice, partnership
Three: first results, growth
Four: stability, holding steady
Five: conflict, loss, the rough patch
Six: recovery, harmony, help
Seven: testing, reassessment, tricky choices
Eight: effort at full tilt, speed or skill or feeling boxed in
Nine: nearly there, the suit's fruits (sweet or heavy)
Ten: completion, the suit's full weight or full reward

Now combine: Eight of Wands is effort-at-full-tilt energy (things arriving fast). Four of Pentacles is stability plus money (holding on tightly). Five of Cups is a rough patch of the heart (grief). That's the whole trick.

The court card formula

Rank sets maturity, suit sets flavor: Page is the student, Knight the doer, Queen inner mastery, King outer mastery. All sixteen are worked through in the court cards guide.

Tarot practice games in the Toe Bean Tarot app on an Android phone. — Drilling the cheat sheet is more fun as a game.

Making it stick

A cheat sheet gets you through a reading; repetition makes it yours. Draw one card a day, guess from the patterns above, then check yourself (here's the full memorizing method). The Toe Bean Tarot app turns that checking into keyword quizzes and spaced-repetition reviews, on Google Play (iPhone coming soon). When a one-liner isn't enough, the full hub of all 78 tarot card meanings goes deeper.