A tarot deck has two layers
A standard tarot deck is organized into 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards. “Arcana” means hidden knowledge or mysteries; in practice, the labels distinguish two parts of the deck. The Major Arcana are individually named or numbered cards, such as the Fool and the Tower. The Minor Arcana are arranged more like a playing-card deck, with four suits.
Each suit has 14 cards: an ace through ten, plus four court cards. The suits are commonly called cups, swords, wands, and pentacles, though names and imagery can vary among traditions and decks.
The artwork can change; the framework remains
That structure gives artists room to reinvent the deck without changing its basic architecture. A creator can replace traditional scenes with gummy bears, vampires, or another theme while still assigning images to the same 78 card positions. Readers can then use the deck’s familiar divisions and card relationships even when its visual world is unusual.
The framework also makes a deck usable as a set rather than just a collection of illustrations: the Major Arcana provide one sequence of distinct cards, while the four Minor Arcana suits offer repeated ranks and patterns. A themed deck may rename or reinterpret those elements, but when it follows the standard tarot format, the count and underlying organization stay recognizable.
