Persona Tarot

What Persona Tarot is

Persona Tarot is this site's working of the Persona Tarocchini system: psychological portraits that describe a personality, and the sides of a person's life and activity, through the archetypes of the Tarot arcana. Nothing is shuffled or drawn. Every position is calculated from the date of birth with fixed formulas, so the same date always gives the same portrait. A notebook, a pen and a clear head are enough to check any position by hand, and you do not need to own a deck or know the cards to begin.

The portrait is a description, not a prediction. It names tendencies: how a person thinks and acts, what they are drawn to and what they resist, what they carry from before. It does not say what will happen.

Where the system comes from

In 1995, fifty years after the end of the Second World War, a large number of military and historical archives were declassified. Among them were the works of Italian clerics dated to 1520 to 1530, attributed to the Theatines, the first order of clerics regular, founded in 1524. The document's title speaks of the sacraments of personality in relation to the faces of the Tarocchini. Researchers hold that the system drew on older Masonic knowledge among its sources, and that its authors may have stood close to a lodge themselves.

After tarologists from many countries worked through the material, the system was recreated in full as it is used today: 33 basic positions, 22 karmic positions and 42 aspects, each describing the personality through the arcana and the arithmetic that binds them. Speakers at the International Tarot Conference, the UK Tarot Conference, the Northwest Tarot Symposium, the Stockholm International Tarot Conference and the North Star Tarot Conference took part in that work.

The three levels of personal knowledge

The system assumes three basic levels on which a personality can be known.

The physical level is what happens in a person's life at the level of actions and everyday situations. On this site it holds positions 1 to 14: how you think and act, the state you tend to live in, your conscious and subconscious behavior, what drives you to realize yourself, how others perceive you, the archetype you look up to and the one you reject, and the mission under all of it.

The mental level is what happens at the level of reflection and emotion: fears, complexes, personal strengths, hidden potential. It holds positions 15 to 33: where your attention fixes, how your intellectual, business and social potential unfolds, what is hard to work through and what comes easily, and the obstacles and helpers on the spiritual path and the material one.

The karmic level is the experience of earlier incarnations that helps or hinders the present life. It holds positions 34 to 55: the karmic work set out in personal karma, health, relationships, finances and reputation, the blocks on each, the pressure and support of society and of your lineage, and then the karmic debt, gift and lesson, the obstacles and helpers in love, and the point where the levels meet.

Every card is shown to everyone. Guests read the first six positions with their interpretations, and a free account opens positions 7 to 11. The full portrait reading, a paid service, reads all 55 positions in their cards as one document; the example readings show what it holds.

Six levels of knowledge

The Persona Tarocchini program is taught in six levels: the physical level of personality, the mental level, the karmic state, the composites of personalities, the aspects, and prognostication by dates and periods of life on the basis of composites. This page follows the same order. The portrait covers the first three levels. The composite is the fourth. The aspects, from the time of birth, are the fifth. The month of day triangles is the sixth: a forecast built from the composite of a person with each day.

What the aspects add

Two people born on the same day share the same 55 positions. The time of birth tells them apart. When you enter it, the minutes give each of the first fourteen positions three Minor Arcana: a minor card, a male card and a female card. Together they make 42 aspects.

An aspect does not replace the Major Arcana in its position. It shows how that card plays out in everyday form, and in the masculine and feminine sides of a person. If you do not know your time of birth, the portrait still stands.

The composite: how two people match

A composite is the portrait of a pair. Enter two dates of birth and the page lays out both portraits one above the other, with a plus between them, and the composite below. In every position the composite card is the sum of the two people's cards, reduced into the 22 arcana. Because every formula of the system is a sum or difference of positions, the composite is also the portrait of the composite date, as if the pair had been born on the day, month and year that add the two dates together.

Read it as one personality. Position 1 shows how the two of you think when you think together, position 4 how you behave as a couple, position 14 what the pair is for. A card that neither of you holds alone is the most telling: it is what the two of you make between you. The composite works for any pair, a couple, business partners, a parent and a child, and the same two dates always give the same composite.

The month: a triangle for every day

The sixth level of the system reads dates and periods through composites, and the month view does this for every day of a month. A calendar date has a day, a month and a year, so it can be read as a portrait of its own with the same formulas as a person. The day triangle is the composite of you with the date, cut to six positions.

The top row holds the three parts of the day. The first part adds your innate thinking, position 1, to the number of the day, position 1 of the date. The second adds your innate way of acting, position 2, to the date's conscious behavior, position 4. The third adds your innate state, position 3, to the state the date leads toward, position 6. The second row holds the energies: the energies of the mind are the sum of the first and second parts, the energies of activity the sum of the second and third. The point of the triangle is the mood of the day, the sum of the two energies. Every sum is reduced into the 22 arcana, and 0 is the Fool.

The three parts move from one day to the next at different speeds, so no part of the day keeps the same card for a whole month, and the triangle of the first of the month never looks like the triangle of the fifteenth. Read the top row for what the day asks in its morning, middle and evening, and the point for the card you will feel the day under.

How to read a position

A position is a question, and the card is the answer to it. Position 1 asks how you think; if the Hermit sits there, you think alone, slowly, and at depth. The same card in the position for how others perceive you would say something different: that people find you withdrawn, or wise, or hard to reach.

So read the card in its place, not on its own. The interpretation under each position does this for you, and the link to the full card meaning is there when you want the card's wider range. A hard card in the position for health is not a diagnosis, and a bright card in the position for finances is not a promise. The portrait is useful because it names things you half know about yourself and puts them side by side.

Who it is for

Anyone who wants to understand themselves through the cards, and anyone who reads for others and wants a structured way to begin. A reader can lay out a client's portrait before a session and see where the weight sits, or lay out a couple's composite before they ask about each other. A student can use their own portrait to learn the Major Arcana from the inside, one position at a time.

If you are new to tarot, the free 30-day course on this site teaches the 78 cards of the Rider-Waite deck a day at a time, and the portrait gives you a reason to learn each one. The cards shown here are from that deck, and each links to its meaning in the library.