Soul card calculation quiz: tarot by birth date
Work out personality and soul cards for real dates: adding, reducing to 22 and to one digit, and where The Fool fits in. Five questions with every step.
- 5 questions
- ≈ 2 min
- +5 bronze keys for a flawless run
How is the soul card calculated from a birth date?
This quiz checks whether you can work out birth date cards yourself, using the method Tayna follows. The method gives two cards: a personality card and a soul card. Both come only from the Major Arcana, and neither ever changes, because a person has just one date of birth.
Step one is to add the day, month and year as whole numbers. You get a four-digit total, and you add its digits together until the result is 22 or less. That is your personality card: 1 is The Magician, 2 The High Priestess and so on up to 21, The World. A total of 22 goes to The Fool, whose number in the deck is zero.
Step two is to reduce the same number to a single digit. That is your soul card, so it always falls between The Magician and The Hermit. If the personality card is already a single digit, the two cards are the same.
Where people usually slip
The most common mistake is stopping too early. If the digits of the total give 28 or 25, that is not a card yet: the number is above 22, so you add its digits again. The second trap is subtracting 22 instead of adding digits. Some systems do that, but Tayna does not, which is why the results differ.
The third mistake is adding every digit of the date one by one. Sometimes the answer matches and sometimes it does not, and then it looks as if the calculator is wrong. In fact these are just different methods, and cards are only worth comparing within one of them.
The quiz gives you real dates. Grab a pen or count in your head: the explanation after each answer shows the whole path from the sum to the card.
What to do with your result
The personality card describes how you act and how other people see you. The soul card speaks of what moves you from within, even when you keep quiet about it. When the cards differ, it is worth noticing where in your life one of them is louder right now.
Matching cards are not a dull result either. They point to wholeness, and also to the card's weak spots showing up twice as strongly. Either way, treat the result as a mirror to think with, not a verdict or a script.
All questions and answers
Open after you play: the full question set with right answers and explanations.
1. Born on 23 July 1985. What is this person's personality card?
Right answer: Strength
23 + 7 + 1985 = 2015, digits 2 + 0 + 1 + 5 = 8. Card eight is Strength, and the soul card is Strength too.
2. Your personality card is The World, 21. What is your soul card?
Right answer: The Empress
A two-digit number is reduced once more: 2 + 1 = 3. Card three is The Empress, and that is the soul card.
3. Born 09.01.1989: the sum is 1999, its digits give 28. What next?
Right answer: Add again: 2 + 8 = 10
While the number is above 22, Tayna adds the digits again. 2 + 8 = 10, Wheel of Fortune; the soul card is The Magician.
4. Born on 1 January 1982. What is the personality card?
Right answer: The Fool
1 + 1 + 1982 = 1984, digits 1 + 9 + 8 + 4 = 22. The twenty-second place in the count belongs to The Fool.
5. Born 30.12.1979. How many different cards does the calculation give?
Right answer: One: The Hierophant
30 + 12 + 1979 = 2021, and its digits give 5. A single digit already, so personality and soul are both The Hierophant.
6. What does Tayna add up in the very first step?
Right answer: Day, month and year whole
The numbers are added whole, such as 23 + 7 + 1985. Adding every digit separately is a different method.
7. Your personality card is The Tower, 16. Which soul card follows?
Right answer: The Chariot
1 + 6 = 7, and card seven is The Chariot: the Tower's shake-ups outside, willpower and a steady course inside.
8. Why might another site give a different card for the same date?
Right answer: The counting methods differ
Some add every digit at once, some use only the day. Tayna adds the day, month and year, then reduces.
9. Your personality and soul cards match. What does Tayna say it means?
Right answer: Outer and inner self agree
A match speaks of wholeness: the card's strength is doubled, and so are its pitfalls, so read both meanings.
10. What does the soul card show that the personality card does not?
Right answer: What drives you inside
The personality card is how you act and how you come across; the soul card is what you do everything else for.
11. Which cards can your soul card be in Tayna's method?
Right answer: Arcana 1 to 9
The soul card is always a single digit, so it is an arcanum from The Magician, 1, to The Hermit, 9.
12. A birth date calculation can also give a Minor Arcana card.
Right answer: Myth
The method only gives Major Arcana: there are 22 of them, exactly as many results as the reduction can leave.