Your tarot birth cards

How the cards are added up

Take the month, the day and the year of birth as ordinary numbers and add them: for 19 November 1988 that is 11 + 19 + 1988 = 2018. Add the digits of the result, 2 + 0 + 1 + 8 = 11, and if the number is still above 22, add its digits again. The number that is left is a card of the Major Arcana, with 22 counted as the Fool, which the deck numbers 0. If it has two digits, adding those gives a second card, so 11, Justice, gives 2, the High Priestess; 19, the Sun, gives 10, the Wheel, which gives a third, 1, the Magician. The year card is the same sum with this year in place of the year of birth.

Where the method comes from

It borrows the arithmetic of numerology and lays it over the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana in the order most modern decks use, with Strength as eight and Justice as eleven. Mary K. Greer’s books made it popular from the 1980s, calling the larger number the personality card and the single digit the soul card. Some versions add every digit of the date one at a time instead of the three numbers whole; the answer is usually the same but not always, and this page adds the whole numbers as set out above.

Using the page

If a birth date is saved on this device the page starts from it and the heading carries your name; otherwise type a date into the box. Any date works, so you can look up somebody else’s cards without changing what is saved, and a button brings back the saved birth date. The page shows the birth cards, then the year card for the current calendar year, then the working a line at a time, and last a short reading for each card: what the card says, and how it is read as a theme that keeps coming up rather than as an event.

A worked example

For 5 January 1955 the sum is 1 + 5 + 1955 = 1961. Its digits add to 17, which is not above 22, so the first card is XVII, the Star, and 1 + 7 gives the second, VIII, Strength. The Star is the personality card and Strength the soul card. For the year card in 2026 the sum is 1 + 5 + 2026 = 2032, whose digits add to 7, so the year card is VII, the Chariot, on its own because 7 has only one digit. It changes on 1 January, when the year in the sum does, not on the birthday.

Why other sites may give different cards

The same date can give different cards depending on how the adding is done. Adding every digit of 5 January 1955 one at a time gives 1 + 5 + 1 + 9 + 5 + 5 = 26, which is above 22 and reduces to 8, so that method gives Strength alone and the Star drops out. Older decks such as the Tarot de Marseille number Justice eight and Strength eleven, which changes the card for anyone whose sum reaches 8 or 11. A sum that stops at 22 gives the Fool here, and then 2 + 2, the Emperor. And some readers count the year card from birthday to birthday rather than from 1 January, the same choice the personal year in numerology has to make. The working is shown so you can see which of these choices the page has made.

What it claims

A birth card is a way of choosing which cards to think with, and the same date always gives the same ones, which is what makes them worth coming back to. The readings are composed from the same short texts the rest of the deck uses. They describe a theme, not a fate, and nothing on this page predicts anything.

Where it fits

The same add-the-date arithmetic, with the numbers one to nine in place of the Major Arcana, gives the life path on numbers. For a card drawn rather than added up there is a card for today, and the Celtic cross lays out ten of them around a single question.