The complete seventy-eight card tarot pack is divided into two sections: twenty-two Major Arcana and fifty-six Minor Arcana cards. The Major Arcana are twenty-two trump cards, usually numbered 0 through 21 and displaying names such as "The Empress" or "The Fool." The Minor Arcana comprise four suits of fourteen cards each, ace through ten and four court cards: king, queen, knight, and page. The suits of the Albano-Waite Tarot are swords, wands, cups, and pentacles.

The twentieth century has witnessed the publication of hundreds of different tarot decks. The outpouring of tarot embraces dozens of subjects and themes, including medieval and Renaissance figures, fantasy subjects, images based on mythology, folklore, different cultures and societies, feminism, and traditional tarot symbolism, from simple line drawings to the colorful richness of fine art.

Despite the proliferation of designs and their availability through most bookstores, one tarot deck and one artist remain the most popular, the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. Published in 1909 by William Rider and Son, London, the deck is published today by U.S. Games Systems. Although Smith prepared the original black and white line drawings for each card, it is not known whether she or her publisher prepared the amber paste-ups that determine the location of the flat colors that appear on each card.

Another popular tarot deck is the Universal Tarot pack, a modified version of the Rider-Waite Tarot. The black and white line drawings by Pamela Colman Smith are retained, but the magical coloring by Mary Hanson-Roberts reveals more details in the figures, costumes and symbols than seen in the original printing.

The Albano-Waite Tarot deck also uses the line drawings of the Rider-Waite Tarot. It was first published by Tarot Productions, Inc., in 1968, under the direction of Frankie Albano. The cards feature rich, vibrant colors without tints or shadings. Toward the end of the 1970s, the Albano-Waite Tarot deck went out of print, and efforts to locate Frankie Albano have proven futile.

One of the unique features of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, and one of the principal reasons for its enduring popularity, is that all of the cards, including the Minor Arcana, depict full scenes with figures and symbols. Prior to the Rider-Waite Tarot, the pip cards of tarot decks were identifiable by arrangements of the suit signs in a manner similar to the symmetrical designs of spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds on regular playing cards. The pictorial images on all the Smith cards allow for interpretation based on conscious and subconscious readings of the scene without the need to consult explanatory texts.