Tarot birth card calculator
Your birth date reduces to one or two cards of the Major Arcana. Enter it and see which — and what the pair is usually taken to mean.
Enter a full date first.
Read as a pair: the higher number is the outward lesson, the lower the inner drive. A lens, not a verdict.
How the arithmetic works
Greer methodAdd three numbers: the month, the day, and the full four-digit year. For someone born 22 November 1923 that's 11 + 22 + 1923 = 1956. Any total over 22 gets its digits added again: 1 + 9 + 5 + 6 = 21. Twenty-one is The World, the first birth card; it reduces once more to 3, The Empress, the second. Most dates give a pair like that. A total of 19 gives three (The Sun, the Wheel of Fortune, The Magician); 22 is read as The Fool and pairs with The Emperor.
You may see another version that splits the year in two (11 + 22 + 19 + 23 for the same date). That is a different school’s shortcut, not Greer’s, and it lands on a different first card for more than a third of birthdays; this calculator follows Greer.
Put the current year in place of your birth year and the same sum gives your personal tarot year card, the card for the twelve months from one birthday to the next.
It's numerology on a calendar, not astronomy, and the honest framing is the one Greer gave it: a way to pick two cards to think with over a lifetime, not a prediction. If you want the version computed from where the Sun actually was on your birthday, that lives on our sister site.
Common questions
Birth cardsHow are tarot birth cards calculated?
Add the month, the day and the full year of your birth as numbers (for 22 November 1923: 11 + 22 + 1923 = 1956). If the total is over 22, add its digits (1 + 9 + 5 + 6 = 21). That number is your first birth card (21, The World); reduce it once more for the second (2 + 1 = 3, The Empress). This is the method Mary K. Greer sets out in Tarot Constellations and Who Are You in the Tarot?
Why do most people have two birth cards?
Every Major Arcana number from 10 to 21 reduces to a single digit, so it comes with a partner: 14 with 5, 17 with 8, and so on. Three totals behave differently: 19 reduces twice (19 → 10 → 1, three cards), 22 is written as The Fool and pairs with 4 (The Emperor), and totals that are already a single digit are paired with the two-digit card that reduces to them.
What do birth cards mean?
They are read as a life-long pair rather than a daily message: the higher card as the outward lesson and the lower as the inner drive. They do not predict anything. Treat them the way you would a sun sign: a lens, useful exactly as far as it describes you.
Is this the same as my zodiac sign?
No. Birth cards come from arithmetic on the calendar date; a sun sign comes from where the Sun actually was. If you want the astronomical version of a birthday, our sister site computes it from the sky.