What's your card?
Your tarot birth card comes from your birth date, not from a shuffle. Add the month, the day and the year together, then keep adding the digits until the number is 22 or less. That number is your Personality Card — how you meet the world. Reduce it to a single digit and you get your Soul Card — what you are working on underneath. This page does the arithmetic and links the full meaning of each card.
One date, the same answer every time. Your birth cards do not change, which is what makes them different from a draw — they describe a starting position rather than a passing mood.
Your cards
How it is worked out
Add the month, the day and the four-digit year. A birthday of 15 March 1990 gives 3 + 15 + 1990 = 2008.
If that total is more than 22, add its digits together and repeat: 2008 becomes 2 + 0 + 0 + 8 = 10. Ten is 22 or less, so it stops there.
That number is the Personality Card — here, 10, the Wheel of Fortune. Add its digits once more, 1 + 0 = 1, and you have the Soul Card: the Magician.
A total of 22 is read as The Fool, which carries the number zero. If the first result is already a single digit, the personality and the soul are the same card.
All twenty-two birth cards
Every number that a birth date can reduce to, with the card it belongs to.
Common questions
Does my birth card ever change?
No. It comes from a date that does not move, so the Personality and Soul cards stay with you. The only part that changes is the year card, which is worked out from the current year and turns over on your birthday.
What is the difference between the Personality and Soul cards?
The Personality Card is the outward pattern — how you tend to approach things and how people read you. The Soul Card is the quieter theme underneath it. For roughly half of all dates they are the same card, which usually means the two pull in one direction.
Why do some people get three cards?
When the personality number is 19, reducing it gives 10 and then 1, so the Sun, the Wheel of Fortune and the Magician all belong to that date. Only a few numbers behave this way.
Is this the same as a zodiac sign?
No. A zodiac sign comes from where the sun sat on your birthday; a birth card comes from arithmetic on the date itself. They are separate systems and they do not need to agree.
Is this free?
Yes. There is no account, no payment, and nothing held back — the full meaning of all 78 cards is on the site to read.