Talk:Major Arcana

"Fortune Telling" needs serious work

I am going to preface this by saying I admittedly know nothing about Tarot. I have, however, read a great deal of Wikipedia and it feels like the author of this section has never read an article on Wikipedia before and most certainly is not following the style guide.

"An encyclopedic style with a formal tone is important: straightforward, just-the-facts, instead of essay-like, argumentative, or opinionated. The goal of a Wikipedia article is to create a comprehensive and neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge about a topic."

Almost immediately, this article fails to satisfy most of these criteria. This section is needlessly wordy at best and completely inappropriate most of the time. It reads as if it were ripped from an "academic" article intended to be read by an audience that was already completely familiar with Tarot, and concerned with extremely niche minutiae. A good encyclopedia explains the subject at hand in a way that can be read by anyone without having to have prior knowledge of the subject. The language should be kept straightforward, the content centered around mainstream facts and its relevance to the greater part of history. The author takes extreme liberty with word choice in places that he or she should not and continually wanders off on completely tangential information that most readers would not consider relevant whatsoever. At the end of this article, I still feel like I know very little about Major Arcana or why they are significant. To those out there who are knowledgeable on this subject: I challenge you to please update this article to the modern standards of Wikipedia.

Some examples:

esoteric commentary of the magical, mystery tarot

What the fresh hell is this? How is this even related to the previous sentence?

There is a line of development of the cartomantic tarot that occurs in parallel with the imposition of hermetic mysteries on the formerly mundane pack of cards,

No one knows what the "cartomantic tarot that occurs in parallel with the imposition of hermetic mysteries" is.

Lenormand was the first and most famous cartomancer to the stars,

What?

I could go on, but you get the point. Please, someone versed in this fix this mess. 162.232.216.110 (talk) 19:17, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 20 August 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. 4 commenters on either side. Good arguments on both sides, this is a sticky one with inconsistency in the literature and MOS guidelines. This discussion has reached an impasse, but does not meet the criteria for a second relisting. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 21:25, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

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• Major Arcana → Major arcana
• Minor Arcana → Minor arcana

– These are very frequently lowercase in sources about tarot: "major arcana, minor arcana, greater arcana, lesser arcana" (e.g. see [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], etc.). Per MOS:GAMECAPS (and MOS:CAPS more generally) there is no reason they should be capped in Wikipedia. Other articles such as Tarot, Tarot card reading, and Tarot of Marseilles, among others, use lowercase already. Being consistent with Wikipedia style would be a good move here. Dicklyon (talk) 00:51, 20 August 2021 (UTC) — Relisting. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 02:00, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Board and table games has been notified of this discussion.  — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 02:02, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

WT:MOSCAPS was also notified. Dicklyon (talk) 02:34, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose, for now (would like to see the n-grams) [everything looked at has strong uppercased majority]. The page Major Arcana seems to say uppercase is historically standard, and a look at about 10 pages into a search engine dive using lowercase as the search term came up overwhelmingly uppercase. Site consistency in mind, thanks for bringing this up. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:38, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Interestingly, the Tarot page informs us that "The terms "Major Arcana" and "Minor Arcana" were first used by Jean-Baptiste Pitois (also known as Paul Christian) and are never used in relation to tarot card games." If never used in card games, MOS:GAMECAPS does not apply to this discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 04:10, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

    Interesting unsourced factoid. But per MOS:CAPS, since the n-grams do not show close to consistent caps, we should default to lowercase. As I also showed, many sources do that; caps are clearly not "necessary". Dicklyon (talk) 21:54, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

    "the Major Arcana" still much preferred in your "the..." examples so nothing broken here, and how about a look at a clean simple n-gram "Major Arcana" "major arcana" "Minor Arcana" and "minor arcana". Randy Kryn (talk) 23:34, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

    Here. Makes little difference. Not nearly consistently capitalized, even without any context. Proper names would show over 90% caps. Dicklyon (talk) 04:39, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

  Randy, the n-grams show 70–80% caps, which is far below what one sees with proper names. This is more typical of specialty terms that appear in a lot of titles, citations, headings, tables, etc., and capitalized by writers who want to emphasize the importance. The 20+% of uses that are lowercase make it clear that caps are not necessary, so per MOS:CAPS, Wikipedia style is to use lowercase. Why don't you see/admit that? Dicklyon (talk) 02:34, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  80% uppercasing, combined with search engine results and long term Wikipedia use, shows that nothing is broke here or needs to be fixed. Randy Kryn (talk) 03:09, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  Long-term widespread inconsistency in capitalization in Wikipedia needs to be fixed, and would be best fixed by moving toward Wikipedia style, not by propagating more specialist over-capitalization. Dicklyon (talk) 03:59, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Ngram viewer clearly shows the capitalised form is way more common that the lower case form. And Tarot of Marseilles does not use lower case except where Dick Lyon has just changed it without checking the sources. Bermicourt (talk) 07:27, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

  You are mistaken. Tarot of Marseilles uses mostly lowercase, even after you reverted my fix of mostly French over capitalizations, which are so clearly wrong. Dicklyon (talk) 21:54, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support—for the reasons Dicklyon gives, and like Royal flush. Are we going to cap "Diamonds" and "Spades" next? Tony (talk) 00:11, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  Totally unrelated example. The Major Arcana (which mean "Major Secrets") has nothing to do with suits of cards. They are not used in card games, and are the backbone of the occult aspect of Kabbalah diagrams (symbolizing aspects of several different things unrelated to card games). You are mixing these up with playing cards. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:24, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  Not that unrelated. We do sadly have all the tarot suits capped, as in Queen of Coins. The n-grams show a big run-up of capping since about 1980. Maybe the bigger problem is that every card in the friggin' deck is considered notable enough to have its own article. Dicklyon (talk) 02:45, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

  Because each card is a representative pathway and structured mental-map. Anyway, the cards and names of the occult tarot system have nothing to do with games. I've never studied tarot regarding giving readings, not one of my things, but do know enough to say that using the language of games with these things misses a lot, and a nomination of a subject such as this tends to steer people who don't know what they "are" into connecting them with card games like hearts, 52-pick up, and poker. Luckily the n-grams and other measurements uphold their present upper-casing as normal, so no need to get into the high weeds (although it helps). Randy Kryn (talk) 03:05, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Not consistently capitalized in reliable, independent sources (which is our standard; "capitalized in somewhat more sources than not capitalized, especially capitalized in sources closely tied to the topic" is not our standard, never has been, never will be). It's not even consistently capitalized in tarot-specific sources, anyway. Those that do capitalize it also tend to capitalize "Tarot" and other terms WP would not capitalize ("Magic[k]", etc.). This is a classic WP:Specialized-style fallacy. PS: A lot of them are also internally self-inconsistent, capitalizing "Major Arcana" but lower-casing "minor arcana"; this is clearly capitalization for signification/emphasis (MOS:SIGCAPS). And, yes, the playing card suits need to be lower-cased, per MOS:GAMECAPS. Also, the modern playing cards and their suits are directly derived from tarot and closely related (tarocchi, etc.) historical fortune-telling cards. Anyone even passingly familiar with the topic knows that, so RK's attempt to sharply distinguish them has no wings.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:37, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

• Specialised-style fallacy is an article you wrote to support your own style campaign that frequently flies in the face of the real world. Even the title makes no sense - subject matter style exists - it is not a fallacy - for example, the use of Latin names for fauna and flora which is specific to those fields. Wikipedia has long accepted that. You are writing the rules and then pointing to them as an authority! Bermicourt (talk) 07:27, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support: arcanum (pl, arcana): mysterious or specialized knowledge, language, or information accessible or possessed only by the initiate —usually used in plural.Merriam-Webster See also arcana: either of the two groups of cards in a tarot pack, the major arcana and the minor arcana.Oxford Learners Dictionaries and similar in MacMillan Dictionary and Collins Dictionary. It is a descriptive name phrase constructed from a common noun. It is not capitalised in dictionary sources, even in the specific context of tarot. To MOS:GAMECAPS see SMcC above and many commercial services advertise that readings are for entertainment purposes. Regardless, MOS:CAPS applies and it would need to be capitalised in a substantial majority of independent, reliable sources - ie fairly consistently. The raw n-gram data suggests it is capped about two-thirds (at 70%) of the time but as n-grams do not distinguish uses in title case such as headings and captions, this is likely an over-reporting. Adding "the" to the phrase does lower the relative incidence of caps a little. Regardless, it is not meeting a threshold of being of a "substantial majority" such that we could conclude it is consistently capped or "necessary" (per MOS:CAPS). Regards, Cinderella157 (talk) 05:43, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per, er, the ngram chart linked by Cindarella157 (who is supporting)? Ngram that shows the phrase is capitalized in a strong majority of the sources. This matches my own experience with reading about this. Also, if supporters of a move acknowledge that tarot-specific sources tend to capitalize, that's also firm evidence that the current title is accurate. If anything, the sources closer to the topic should be given more weight - imagine writing on religious topics only using books not about religion that mention a term incidentally; it'd be a tremendously skewed perspective. SnowFire (talk) 19:15, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

  That "ngram chart" clearly shows caps to be unnecessary. Please review the guidelines at MOS:CAPS. And while the term is clearly tarot specific, the use is sources written for a general audience should carry more weight than specialist sources, since specialists usually have a style of capping what's important to them, proper name or not. Dicklyon (talk) 15:25, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

  • • Dicklyon: As has been established before, we have very different thresholds for when capitalization is appropriate. Also, MOS:CAPS is legitimate as far as "Wikipedia style guide for English written in Wikipedia's voice". It is not very relevant for titles IMO, which are not Wikipedia's writing (except with descriptive titles like History of the United Kingdom during the First World War), but rather are just names derived from elsewhere. Names that can't be right or wrong, and are just reflections of external facts, so they should be strictly based on mimicing usage in other reliable sources in spelling, style, punctuation, etc. A supporter above argues it's 2/3 usage for capitalized form, so capitalized form it should be. From my own personal experience, tarot-specific sources are more like 80-90%. I also disagree with the idea that sources you don't like can be thrown out by calling them "specialist". Doubly so for a matter religion-adjacent. For a recent example, loa was moved to lwa despite loa being the undisputed common name in casual English sources, but "specialist" sources preferred lwa, and they were given more weight if anything due to the religious nature of the topic. SnowFire (talk) 17:24, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
• With 80% general caps, and probably much nearer 100% in actual use by those who use the religious symbols, this page has been uppercased since it was first written in the early 2000s. Uppercase in the occult use of the tarot is historically significant and historically consistent with the various decks. Importantly, lowercasing this would not only make Wikipedia look pretty stupid (even Larry Sanger would do a facepalm) but totally mislabel an entire factual genre of occult material. If the already overwhelming use of uppercase for this subject isn't enough for the four horsemen of the capocalypse then there is no clearer case more deserving of WP:IAR than this. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:50, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

  But it's not 80%; more like 70% counting all title-case uses (titles, headings, citations, etc.). The prevalence of lowercase is way too low to interpret sources as indicating that caps are anything more than optional. When caps are optional, WP uses lowercase. You haven't said if/why you don't understand or accept this. Dicklyon (talk) 17:18, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

• Thinking of how the project presents itself, lowercasing this would literally make Wikipedia look stupid. Which, if needed, is where WP:IAR would come in, but that's not even needed as counting titles and headings seems fine in this instance as they reflect the common name. Randy Kryn (talk) 17:23, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

If four major dictionaries use it in lowercase and in a subject specific context, then I think it is OK for us to look as stupid as them. And I do believe that the OP listed a string of subject specific sources that used l.c. Shouting, by highlighting something in a bold font face does not make an incorrect statement true. Cinderella157 (talk) 00:57, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

But it does highlight correct statements. The dictionaries topic is 'arcana', a word which means 'secret'. When attached to Major Arcana (major secrets) it becomes a proper noun in most instances (n-grams show its use as a proper name in the mid-70's to 80%, well within standard uppercase range for Wikipedia) and the casing that has been used since the article's 2002 inception. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:56, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

No it doesn't Randy Kryn per Oxford Learners Dictionaries and Collins Dictionary, it is quite clearly and explicitly in lowercase for the complete noun phrase "major arcana" and "minor arcana" and not just in reference to the cards. Your argument is disproven. To say: ... attached to Major Arcana (major secrets) ... only goes to prove the point that it is a descriptive noun phrase and therefore not a proper name. It is overly generous to say that the n-gram usage rises to 80% capitalised before considering headings and like but even so, if it were "necessary" to capitalise it, then it would be done almost always. It isn't done almost always (when you yould expect tit to be greater than 90% or higher) therefore it is not necessary. Sorry but ... Cinderella157 (talk) 07:34, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Where you have to hunt and search for examples in lowercase the use in uppercase is everywhere on search engines, in sources, and in almost 80% of general use. The use of uppercase in occult tarot predominates. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:03, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Skepticism has been notified of this discussion. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:59, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Paranormal has been notified of this discussion. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 01:59, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

• Then riddle me this..., uppercase is used on Wikipedia for every tarot card (see the template {{Occult tarot}}, correctly uppercased backed by n-grams as shown by Dicklyon above). We've always also uppercased their main groupings, Major Arcana and Minor Arcana. Since the card names will remain uppercased it would not only be site-and-template consistent to leave the headings uppercased but consistent with "real world" use. In addition note that neither 'Major Arcana' and 'Minor Arcana' or individual card names appear on the template {{Tarot and Tarock card games}} because they are not card games, which by itself removes the main reasoning articulated for this nom. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:03, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Common usage in Tarot books for as long as I've been reading about Tarot. Also note that there are not multiple options as there would be if it were a common rather than proper noun. It's "the" Major Arcana, "the" Minor Arcana. There are not multiple to choose from, nor does "a minor arcana" or "a major arcana" mean the same thing, but rather would refer to small and big secrets rather than parts of the Tarot. That is, both "Major Arcana" and "Minor Arcana" are proper names in English, which it is standard to capitalize, in order to distinguish such things as "the White House" from a white house. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Skyerise (talk) 10:19, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal to remove Popular Media section

The whole of the popular media section is uncited and reads like a list of every novel, song, video game or TV series that mentions MA or the names of the individual cards. Most, if not all, appear non-notable, so I'm proposing we delete this entire section. It can always return if and when notable, cited material is available. Bermicourt (talk) 11:24, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Mistakes in table: are VIII and XI backwards?

I'm new to tarot and was reviewing the major arcana, and I think somewhere in the editing process the information for arcana VIII and XI got mixed up. As the text before the table states, "Strength is traditionally the eleventh card and Justice the eighth, but the influential Rider–Waite Tarot switched the position of these two cards". The page for the Tarot of Marseilles also shows Justice as VIII and Strength as XI, but in the table on this page, the Marseilles VIII is Strength and RWS VIII is Justice, and Marseilles XI is Justice and RWS XI is Strength. This is backwards, right? I didn't want to edit it because, again, very new to tarot and maybe I'm missing something, and I'm not sure in which tarot systems Justice and Strength are swapped, but I wanted to flag this for someone more knowledgeable to fix. 71.9.102.199 (talk) 19:04, 10 October 2024 (UTC)