Tarot Solitaire

I like to play solitaire. I find it very soothing. And when I play it with tarot cards, it helps me get more familiar with the deck. (Plus, tarot cards are much prettier than playing cards.) (Plus plus, if anyone walks in, I can pretend I’m doing a really complicated reading.) 

1. Shuffle the deck.

2. Deal out a row of 7 cards. The first card (on the left) is dealt face-up; the rest are face down.

3. Deal out 6 rows below the first, each face down except for the first card. The rows should be ‘right-aligned’ – you start the 2nd row below the 2nd card of the first row and so on.

4. You can place face-up cards onto other face-up cards that are one higher in number. For example, you can place the 6 of Wands on the 7 of Cups. However, you can’t place a card onto a card of the same suit, so you can’t place the 6 of Wands on the 7 of Wands.

5. When you move a face-up card, you get to turn the card that was below it face-up.

6. Any Majors can be removed to a separate pile in any order.

7. Aces are placed above the other cards. When you get an ace out, you can place cards of the same suit on top of it in ascending number order, i.e. Ace, 2, 3, 4…

8. From the deck of remaining cards, deal three cards face down and turn them over (so you are looking at the third/bottom card). If you can place that card out onto any face-up card or an ace, do so. If not, deal three more cards.

9. When you’ve dealt out all the remaining cards, just pick them up, turn them over and start from the top again. Keep going until you have got rid of all the remaining cards or (more likely) can’t move any cards.

10. The aim is to get all the cards out onto the ace piles so you end up with four suit piles with the kings on top (plus the pile of majors).