Isaac Tarot Card Guide: All Major Arcana Effects & Ranking

Introduction

In The Binding of Isaac, a single card can be the difference between a failed run and a god-tier victory. These powerful consumables can clear a room, spawn critical resources, or teleport you out of a deadly situation. But with dozens of unique effects, knowing when to play The Hierophant versus The Devil can be a challenge for new and veteran players alike.

This definitive guide eliminates the guesswork. We'll explain and rank all binding of isaac tarot cards, detailing what each one does, how to use it effectively, and which ones you should always prioritize to secure your next win. Let's dive into the complete guide to Isaac's Major Arcana and transform your strategic approach to the game.

What Are Tarot Cards in The Binding of Isaac?

In the treacherous depths of the basement, Binding of Isaac tarot cards are powerful, single-use consumables that can dramatically alter the course of a run. As part of the broader "card" pickup pool, they are found randomly after clearing rooms, purchased in shops, or obtained from certain beggars and items. Each of the 22 Major Arcana cards offers a unique effect, ranging from spawning helpful pickups to unleashing devastating damage upon your enemies.

Unlike passive items that provide constant benefits, tarot cards deliver a burst of utility that requires strategic timing. Knowing what each card does is only half the battle; knowing when to use it is what separates a good player from a great one. These items are distinct from both standard playing cards, which have simpler effects like spawning bombs or keys, and runes, which often have more complex, floor-wide implications that can manipulate the game's core mechanics.

To truly master the game's complex systems, understanding the function and strategic value of each card in the Isaac Major Arcana is fundamental. Having this knowledge allows you to make informed decisions under pressure, turning a simple pickup into a run-defining play.

All Isaac Major Arcana Effects Explained

This comprehensive Isaac tarot card guide breaks down every card from the Major Arcana, detailing both its direct effect and its most effective strategic applications in your gameplay.

0 - The Fool

Effect: Teleports you to the starting room of the current floor.
Strategic Use: The Fool is the ultimate escape card. Use it to get out of a dangerous room you can't handle, like a Double Trouble boss room or a chamber filled with Brimstone-shooting enemies. It is also invaluable for backtracking efficiently. After defeating a boss, you can use it to instantly return to the shop or library without a long walk back, saving precious time and health while preserving your Devil or Angel Deal chance.

I - The Magician

Effect: Grants you homing tears for the current room.
Strategic Use: While seemingly simple, The Magician is excellent for clearing rooms with highly mobile or evasive enemies like The Haunt or Gurdy Jr. It ensures every shot counts, maximizing your damage output in chaotic situations. It becomes less useful if you already have a permanent homing item like Spoon Bender, but it remains a solid offensive boost early in a run.

II - The High Priestess

Effect: Summons Mom's foot to stomp on a random enemy, dealing massive damage. If used during the boss fights against Mom, Mom's Heart, or It Lives, it will stomp on the boss instantly.
Strategic Use: This is a boss-killer in your pocket. Its most famous use is to instantly kill Mom, granting you a free win and a clear path to the next floor. Against other enemies, its random targeting makes it a gamble, but it can one-shot almost any non-boss enemy, making it a great panic button in a crowded or dangerous room.

III - The Empress

Effect: Activates the "Whore of Babylon" effect for the current room, granting a significant damage up and speed boost when you are at one red heart or less.
Strategic Use: This card is a high-risk, high-reward tool. It's most powerful when you're already low on health and need a desperate damage boost to clear a tough room or boss. For characters like Eve, who starts with the Whore of Babylon item, or players skilled at manipulating their health with soul hearts, The Empress can be activated intentionally to melt bosses quickly.

IV - The Emperor

Effect: Teleports you directly to the boss room of the current floor.
Strategic Use: A fantastic time-saver and escape tool. If you have a powerful build and want to speedrun to the boss, The Emperor is your best friend. It is also a lifesaver on floors with the "Curse of the Lost," which removes the map. Instead of wandering aimlessly, you can use this card to find your objective instantly and conserve health for the fight ahead.

V - The Hierophant

Effect: Spawns two soul hearts.
Strategic Use: Simple, effective, and always welcome. Soul hearts are a critical defensive resource, protecting your red heart containers and securing Devil or Angel Deal chances. Use The Hierophant when you've taken red heart damage to regain that protection or before entering a boss room to give yourself an extra buffer. It's one of the most consistently useful Binding of Isaac cards.

VI - The Lovers

Effect: Spawns two red hearts.
Strategic Use: Most useful for characters who rely on red hearts or for healing after a bad fight. It's particularly valuable when you need to use a Blood Donation Machine or Devil Beggar safely. However, for players prioritizing Devil Deals, taking red heart damage is detrimental, making The Lovers less valuable than its soul heart counterpart in many scenarios.

VII - The Chariot

Effect: Grants temporary invincibility and the ability to damage enemies by contact for the current room. You cannot shoot tears while the effect is active.
Strategic Use: A powerful defensive and offensive tool. Activate it to navigate through rooms filled with projectiles or cross spike-laden floors without taking damage. It's also excellent for clearing rooms with many low-health, swarming enemies like spiders or flies. Be mindful that you lose your primary attack, so it's best used for strategic repositioning or against specific enemy types.

VIII - Justice

Effect: Spawns a random assortment of pickups: a bomb, a key, a coin, and a heart.
Strategic Use: A solid resource generator, especially in the early game when keys and bombs are scarce. Justice can be the difference between opening a treasure room and having to leave it behind. While the rewards are random, it almost always provides something of value, making it a reliable card to carry on the first few floors.

IX - The Hermit

Effect: Teleports you to the shop. If there is no shop on the floor, it has no effect.
Strategic Use: Excellent for resource management. After clearing a floor, you can use The Hermit to make a last-minute purchase without backtracking. It's also a decent escape card if you're near the shop and find yourself in a dangerous room. Its value is highest on floors where the shop is far from the starting room or boss.

X - Wheel of Fortune

Effect: Spawns a Slot Machine.
Strategic Use: This card is a gamble. It can pay out with coins and pickups, or it can take your money and give nothing back. Its best use is when you have an excess of coins and are looking for a chance at a valuable pickup like a Dollar or Skatole. It's a low-priority card unless you have items that improve gambling odds, such as a high Luck stat.

XI - Strength

Effect: Increases your damage and size for the current room, and refills all empty red heart containers.
Strategic Use: A fantastic combat and survival card. The damage boost is significant, making it perfect for tough boss fights. The full red heart heal is an incredible bonus, often saving a run from the brink of failure. Use it right before entering a boss room you're worried about to get the maximum benefit of both the health refill and the temporary stat increase.

XII - The Hanged Man

Effect: Removes Isaac's body, allowing him to fly over obstacles for the current room.
Strategic Use: Flight is one of the most powerful abilities in Isaac. The Hanged Man provides it on demand, allowing you to access pickups trapped behind rocks, cross gaps to reach secret areas, and easily dodge ground-based enemies and hazards like creep. It's particularly useful for navigating tricky room layouts and solving certain puzzles.

XIII - Death

Effect: Deals 40 damage to all enemies in the room.
Strategic Use: One of the best room-clearing cards in the game. Death can instantly wipe out most standard enemies on the early floors and severely weaken tougher ones later on. It's a perfect panic button for when you're overwhelmed. Save it for rooms packed with dangerous champions or layouts that make dodging difficult.

XIV - Temperance

Effect: Spawns a Blood Donation Machine.
Strategic Use: A high-risk way to generate coins. If you have plenty of red hearts to spare (or an item like IV Bag), you can use the machine to farm money for the shop. It pairs well with items that trigger on self-damage, such as for the character Samson. Be cautious, as overusing it can leave you vulnerable.

XV - The Devil

Effect: Grants a significant damage boost for the current room, equivalent to the Book of Belial.
Strategic Use: A pure, offensive powerhouse. This is the card you use right before fighting a boss. The damage increase is substantial and can drastically shorten the length of a fight, minimizing your exposure to danger. It's a top-tier card for any build, turning even mediocre tear damage into a serious threat.

XVI - The Tower

Effect: Spawns 6 troll bombs around the room.
Strategic Use: Highly chaotic and often more dangerous to you than the enemy. The Tower is best used in large, open rooms where you can get to safety before the bombs detonate. It can be used to open secret rooms or destroy rocks, but its unpredictability makes it risky. It has niche synergies with items like Pyromaniac or Host Hat, which turn the explosions into a source of healing.

XVII - The Stars

Effect: Teleports you to the Treasure Room. If you have already visited it, it will teleport you to a random special room you haven't visited yet (like a Library or Planetarium).
Strategic Use: A fantastic utility card for exploration. Use it at the start of a floor to immediately grab the item, or save it for a chance to find a rare special room. On floors with Curse of the Lost, it's a reliable way to find the item room without getting lost. Its value increases significantly once Planetariums are unlocked.

XVIII - The Moon

Effect: Teleports you to the Secret Room.
Strategic Use: The ultimate tool for secret hunters. Using The Moon guarantees access to the Secret Room and its potential rewards without wasting bombs searching for it. It's especially powerful on later floors where Secret Room item pools are stronger. Hold onto it until you've explored most of the floor to maximize its value.

XIX - The Sun

Effect: Fully restores all health, deals 100 damage to all enemies in the room, and reveals the entire map for the current floor (including secret rooms).
Strategic Use: One of the most powerful and versatile cards in the game. The Sun is a full heal, a room-clearer, and a map reveal all in one. There's almost no bad time to use it, but it's best saved for a moment of desperation when you're low on health and facing a tough room. The map reveal is an incredible bonus, saving you time and resources.

XX - Judgement

Effect: Spawns a Beggar (either Key, Bomb, or Devil Beggar).
Strategic Use: A resource-generation machine. Spawning a beggar can turn excess pickups (like coins or hearts) into items from that beggar's specific pool. The Devil Beggar, in particular, can pay out with powerful Devil Deal items. It's a great way to leverage surplus resources for a chance at a game-changing item.

XXI - The World

Effect: Reveals the entire map for the current floor (excluding secret rooms).
Strategic Use: A pure utility card focused on information. Use it at the beginning of a floor to plan the most efficient route, ensuring you don't miss any special rooms or waste time heading down dead ends. It's especially valuable on large, sprawling floors or when under the effect of a curse that hides the map, as it helps locate Super Secret Rooms by showing the floor's overall shape.

Knowing these direct effects is the first step, but prioritizing which cards to hold and when to use them is what truly elevates your gameplay. This strategic layer separates novice players from seasoned veterans.

Binding of Isaac Tarot Cards Ranked: A Tier List

Not all Binding of Isaac tarot cards are created equal. Some can single-handedly win a run, while others are barely worth picking up. This tier list ranks the Major Arcana based on their overall power, versatility, and impact on a typical run.

S-Tier: Run-Defining Power

These cards offer game-changing effects that can save a failing run or supercharge a winning one. They should almost always be prioritized.

The Sun: A full heal, a powerful room-clearing attack, and a full map reveal. It is the ultimate "all-in-one" utility card with no downside, capable of saving a run from the absolute brink.
Death: A simple but incredibly effective room clear. It solves almost any non-boss combat encounter instantly, saving you from taking damage in the most dangerous situations and preserving your health for what lies ahead.
The Hierophant: Two soul hearts provide a defensive buffer that protects Devil/Angel Deal chances and can be the difference between life and death. Its universal utility makes it invaluable in every run, at every stage.
Judgement: The potential to spawn a Devil Beggar and obtain a powerful item like Brimstone or Mom's Knife for just a few hearts gives this card immense, run-defining potential. It embodies the high-risk, high-reward nature of Isaac.

A-Tier: Consistently High Value

These are powerful, reliable cards that you are always happy to find and should hold for the right moment.

The Devil: A massive damage boost on demand. Perfect for melting bosses and elite enemies, shortening dangerous fights significantly and minimizing opportunities to take damage.
Strength: A boss-fight powerhouse that combines a full red heart heal with a temporary damage upgrade, making it an ideal card to use right before a challenging boss encounter.
The Fool: An essential escape tool. Its ability to get you out of any bad situation provides a safety net that is always valuable, from escaping a deadly room to optimizing floor traversal.
The Stars / The Moon: Guaranteed access to high-value special rooms (Treasure Room, Secret Room) saves resources and provides opportunities for powerful items that can define a build.

B-Tier: Strong and Situational

These cards are very effective in the right circumstances but lack the universal applicability of the higher tiers.

The Emperor: A huge time-saver and a great tool for navigating cursed floors. Its value depends entirely on whether your goal is to explore the floor fully or to proceed as quickly as possible.
The High Priestess: An instant boss kill on Mom is fantastic, but its random targeting against multiple enemies makes it less reliable in other combat situations.
Justice: A solid and reliable source of early-game consumables. It loses value later in a run when bombs and keys are more plentiful, but it can be crucial on the first few floors.
The Hanged Man: Temporary flight is an amazing utility for dodging, sequencing breaks, and reaching otherwise inaccessible areas, but its value diminishes if you already have a permanent flight item.

C-Tier: Niche or Underwhelming

These cards have specific uses but are often outclassed or require a specific build to be effective.

The Magician: Homing tears are nice, but many items grant this effect permanently. It's a decent boost for a single room but rarely a game-changer.
The Empress: The damage boost is powerful, but the strict health requirement makes it risky and difficult to use optimally for many characters and playstyles.
The Hermit: Teleporting to the shop is useful, but often less impactful than teleporting to a boss or treasure room, making it a lower-priority utility card.
The Chariot: Invincibility is great, but the inability to shoot can make it awkward to use offensively, often relegated to navigating hazards rather than clearing rooms.

D-Tier: Potentially Detrimental

These cards can be more of a hindrance than a help without specific synergies, and should often be ignored.

The Tower: Spawning six random troll bombs is incredibly dangerous and likely to cause more self-inflicted damage than harm to the enemy. Its only saving grace is synergy with explosion-immunity items like Pyromaniac.
Wheel of Fortune: Spawning a slot machine is often just a way to lose money. It requires a surplus of coins and good luck to even be worth considering.
The Lovers: Spawning red hearts can be actively detrimental to players trying to secure Devil Deals by avoiding red heart damage, and it is useless for characters like ??? (Blue Baby).

This ranking provides a general guideline, but the true value of any card often depends on the specific context of your run, your character, and your current items.

How to Use Tarot Cards Effectively: Advanced Strategies

Simply knowing what the Binding of Isaac cards do is not enough. True mastery comes from understanding how to leverage them with items and in specific gameplay scenarios. This strategic depth is a core part of any advanced Isaac tarot card guide.

Key Item Synergies

Certain items completely change the dynamic of how you use tarot cards, turning them from single-use consumables into the core of a powerful build.

Blank Card: This active item, with a 4-room charge, mimics the effect of whatever card or rune you are holding. This is arguably the most powerful synergy in the game. A Blank Card combined with The Hierophant provides two soul hearts every four rooms. With The Sun, it's a repeatable full heal and room clear. Finding a Blank Card forces you to re-evaluate every card you find, turning even a simple pickup into a source of infinite value.
Tarot Cloth: This trinket doubles the effect of most tarot cards. The Hierophant now drops four soul hearts, Justice drops double the pickups, and Strength lasts for two rooms instead of one. It dramatically increases the value of every high-tier card you find, making each use significantly more impactful.
Starter Deck: This passive item allows you to hold two cards or runes at once. This simple upgrade provides immense strategic flexibility, allowing you to hold both an offensive card like Death and a utility card like The Fool simultaneously, ensuring you always have the right tool for the job.

Situational Awareness: Holding vs. Using

The most critical decision with any tarot card is when to use it. A powerful card used at the wrong time is a wasted opportunity.

Saving for Bosses: Cards like The Devil, Strength, and The Empress are often best saved for the floor's boss. Using The Devil to clear a room of spiders is a waste of its potential to melt a difficult boss like The Bloat or Hush, significantly reducing the risk of taking damage in a prolonged fight.
Panic Buttons: Cards like The Fool, The Sun, and Death are your "get out of jail free" cards. It's wise to hold one of these if your run is struggling, as they can save you from certain death. Entering a small room with four Grimaces or a cage full of hosts is a perfect time to use a Death card and neutralize the threat immediately.
Floor-Specific Strategy: On XL floors or floors with a curse like Curse of the Labyrinth, a card like The Fool gains immense value, as it can save you a huge amount of backtracking. An Emperor card is a godsend on a floor with Curse of the Lost, immediately ending the frustrating search for the boss room and conserving your resources.

By combining knowledge of card effects with strategic item synergies and keen situational awareness, you can transform simple card drops into run-winning plays.

Tarot Cards vs. Runes: What's the Difference?

For many players, the distinction between tarot cards and runes can be confusing, as they are drawn from the same general pool of "card" pickups. While both are powerful consumables affected by items like Blank Card, their functions are fundamentally different. Understanding this is a crucial part of any complete Binding of Isaac cards and runes guide.

Tarot Cards are based on the 22 Major Arcana and generally produce direct, immediate, and often combat-oriented effects.

Direct Action: Their effects happen instantly upon use. Death damages enemies, The Hierophant spawns hearts, and The Fool teleports you. The outcome is immediate and predictable.
Scope: The effect is usually confined to the current room or directly impacts Isaac's stats, health, or location.
Simplicity: Most tarot card effects are straightforward and easy to understand, making them reliable tools for specific tasks like healing, fighting, or navigating.

Runes, on the other hand, often have more complex, strategic, or floor-wide effects that manipulate game mechanics.

Strategic Effects: Runes often alter the state of the room or items within it. For example, Jera duplicates all pickups and chests in the room, while Perthro re-rolls an item pedestal, giving you another chance at a better item.
Delayed or Passive Value: Some runes, like Algiz (which grants a temporary shield), provide a buff rather than an instant outcome. The value of a rune like Jera depends entirely on what is already present in the room, requiring careful setup for maximum payoff.
Complexity: Rune effects can be more nuanced. Understanding the best time to use a Perthro (on a bad item) versus an Ehwaz (to create a crawlspace) requires a deeper level of game knowledge and foresight.

In summary, think of tarot cards as your tactical tools for solving immediate problems, while runes are your strategic assets for manipulating the game's systems to your long-term advantage.

Conclusion

Mastering the Major Arcana is a crucial step toward dominating the treacherous depths of The Binding of Isaac. More than just random pickups, these tarot cards are tactical tools that can rescue a failing run or amplify a powerful one when used with foresight. By internalizing each card's unique effect, relative power, and potential synergies, you transition from simply reacting to challenges to proactively controlling the outcome of a floor.

Looking ahead, the true mark of an expert player lies not just in memorizing effects, but in developing the situational awareness to know precisely when to deploy a card for maximum impact. The next era of your success in Isaac will be defined by this strategic evolution. The real question isn’t if you’ll find a powerful card—but how effectively you’ll use it to gain a competitive edge and secure victory against the horrors that await. The next time a tarot card appears, it will no longer be a simple consumable—it will be a calculated opportunity waiting to be seized.

Binding of Isaac Tarot Cards: All Effects Explained & Ranked