Okay, so I got this idea buzzing around in my head lately about birth tarot cards. You know, the ones supposedly linked to your birth date? Sounded kinda cool, so I thought, why not try and figure out how to calculate them myself? Maybe make a simple tool or something.
Getting Started
First thing, I had to figure out the actual calculation. I poked around a bit, just reading stuff here and there. Seemed like the most common way involved adding up the numbers in your birth date: month, day, and year.
So, let’s say someone was born on December 1st, 1990. That’s 12 / 01 / 1990.
The idea was to add these up: 12 + 1 + 1990 = 2003.
Then, you keep adding the digits of that number until you get a number that corresponds to a Major Arcana card (usually 21 or less, though some methods handle 22 for The Fool differently).
So, for 2003, I’d do 2 + 0 + 0 + 3 = 5.
Number 5 in the Major Arcana is The Hierophant. So that’s one card.
Digging Deeper – More Cards?
But then I saw some folks talking about getting two or even three birth cards. This got a bit more complicated. One popular way seemed to involve breaking down the big sum (like that 2003) before adding all its digits together.
Like, take the year 1990. Add its digits: 1 + 9 + 9 + 0 = 19. Okay, 19 is The Sun card. Cool.
Then maybe add the month and day digits: 1 + 2 (for December) + 0 + 1 (for the 1st) = 4. The Emperor.
And then add those results together: 19 + 4 = 23.
Now, 23 is higher than 21 (or 22, depending on the system). So you add its digits: 2 + 3 = 5. The Hierophant again. It seemed like this number (5 in this case) often popped up as the “main” or “personality” card, the same one I got from the first simple sum.
Some methods also derive a second card from the first reduction step. If the sum (like 2003) was already a two-digit number corresponding to a card, that might be one card. Then reducing it further (2+0+0+3 = 5) gives the second card. If the initial sum was, say, 1995 -> 1+9+9+5 = 24 -> 2+4 = 6. The first number might be 24 (needs reduction) and the second is 6. If the sum was, say, 19 -> that’s The Sun, and then 1+9 = 10 -> Wheel of Fortune. So you’d get 19 and 10. It got a bit fuzzy depending on who you asked.
Making the ‘Calculator’
I wasn’t aiming for some fancy app. Honestly, I just wanted a reliable way to do it for myself and maybe friends. So, I started simple. Pen and paper first, running through dates, making sure I understood the steps.
Then I thought, okay, let’s make this a tiny bit easier. I know a little bit of basic web stuff, like really basic HTML and JavaScript. Nothing fancy, mind you. I decided to try and put together a super simple page.
It involved:
- An input box for the birth date (Month, Day, Year).
- A button to click like “Calculate”.
- Some space to show the results.
The tricky part was the calculation logic. I had to write down the steps clearly:
- Get the numbers: M, D, YYYY.
- Sum them: M + D + YYYY = TotalSum.
- First Card Calculation: Keep adding the digits of TotalSum until I get a number 22 or less. Let’s call this Card1. (Need to decide how to handle 22 – usually The Fool, sometimes reduced further 2+2=4). I decided for my tool, if the sum reduced to 22, I’d keep it as 22 (The Fool). If it reduced to a number higher than 22, I’d sum its digits.
- Second Card Calculation (Optional): This was the part with variations. I decided to go with the method where you take the TotalSum (like 2003 in the example) and if it’s a 4-digit number, break it down like 20 + 03 = 23, then reduce 2+3 = 5. If it was a 3-digit number like 123, maybe 1+2+3=6 directly or 12+3=15. I found this confusing, so I stuck to the first method for my main card: just keep summing the digits of the total sum (M+D+YYYY) until you get 22 or less. Maybe add the corresponding card name later.
I fumbled around with the JavaScript quite a bit. Getting the date parts, making sure they were treated as numbers, doing the repeated digit summing… that took some trial and error. Lots of checking my math on paper against what the script was doing.
The Result
In the end, I got a very plain little page working. You type in MM, DD, YYYY, click the button, and it spits out a number (or maybe two, depending on the exact logic I settled on – I kept tweaking it). I focused on getting that main “personality” card number correct using the sum-all-the-digits method.
Example Output:
Birth Date: 12/01/1990
Sum: 12 + 1 + 1990 = 2003
Reduced Sum: 2 + 0 + 0 + 3 = 5
Your Birth Tarot Card number is: 5
It’s not much, really just a basic calculation tool for myself. But it was fun figuring out the process and getting it to work. It does what I wanted: give me that core birth tarot number based on a date, without me having to do the summing manually every time. Simple, but kinda satisfying to have built it myself.
