Open standards for digital tarot decks and esoterica.
| Specification | Version | Status | Implementations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tarot Deck | 1.0 | Stable | libarcana (full), Tarot Canvas (partial) |
| Tarot Deck | 2.0 | Draft | libarcana (in progress) |
| Esoterica | 1.0 | Draft | None |
The Tarot Deck Specification describes canonical card identifiers, how a deck is structured as a directory, its TOML manifest, image formats and internationalization.
The Esoterica Specification describes meanings, correspondences and other interpretive material for the cards. It is an early draft and is not implemented anywhere currently.
Esoterica packs are now being built at arcanaland/esoterica, but no implementation currently exists to consume them.
Both specifications address tarot objects by the same identifiers, which any project is free to adopt:
major_arcana.00 # The Fool
major_arcana.21 # The World
minor_arcana.wands.ace # Ace of Wands
minor_arcana.pentacles.king # King of Pentacles
Each specification carries a version of the form MAJOR.MINOR.
Major versions may change or remove existing requirements. A conforming artifact valid under one major version is not guaranteed to be valid under the next.
A substantial revision of the deck specification is in development on the deck-v2 branch.
Released versions are tagged in this repo.
| Tag | Specification | Released |
|---|---|---|
deck/v1.0 |
Tarot Deck 1.0 | 2025-04-30 |
See CONTRIBUTING.md.
The specification prose is CC-BY-4.0. The identifier scheme, vocabulary and examples are CC0-1.0. Tooling is MIT. See LICENSING.md.