It is simple. The Magician is the master of transformation. He takes the tools in front of him (in Tarot: the sword, the cup, the wand, the pentacle) and turns them into alchemy. Just like Shah Rukh turned a middle-class Delhi boy with no industry godfathers into the King of Bollywood. He didn’t wait for permission. He just said it out loud, “I am the last of the stars.” The Magician is about charisma, manifestation, and sheer willpower. He’s the person who channels energy from above into the real world and SRK does that every time he steps on a stage, greets a fan, or owns a role like it was made for him. He doesn’t just perform for the sake of performing and it shows on screen. He makes the audience live the role through him.

As The Magician, Shah Rukh reminds us:

it is not about what you have, it is about what you believe you can do.

Now let us take a look through a tarot-inspired lens on Shah Rukh Khan’s roles over the years. I would like to pay a symbolic tribute to the way his roles mirror the soul’s journey. Think of it as cinematic astrology with a Bollywood twist. And who knows? You might just find your own soul card hidden among of one of his iconic characters.

Raj Malhotra (DDLJ) – The Sun


Keywords: Joy, Innocence, Radiance

Raj isn’t just a character, he’s a feeling. The wide-eyed charm, the cheeky humour… everything about Raj radiates warmth and light. He’s the embodiment of The Sun card, which represents joy, youthful optimism, and the kind of love that feels like home. But The Sun isn’t just about happiness. It is about authenticity. It is about showing up as you are, without manipulation or masks. Raj is playful and goofy, yes, but also deeply respectful, especially of Simran’s boundaries and her father’s authority. He chooses love with integrity, which is rare and powerful.

Raj reminds us that the brightest kind of love is the one that’s honest, patient, and brave enough to wait.

The Lovers – Aman (Kal Ho Naa Ho)


Keywords: Love, Choice, Sacrifice

If ever a character embodied the bittersweet beauty of The Lovers card, it’s Aman. His presence electrifies everyone around him. He is love in motion, laughter in chaos, life in a dying body. But The Lovers card isn’t just about romance, it is about the choices we make in life, especially the hard ones. And Aman’s story is ultimately about choosing someone else’s happiness over his own. He doesn’t fight for love in the traditional sense. He lets go. He steps aside so that Naina can have a future with someone who give her a ‘forever’. The Lovers card asks: What will you choose when the heart is divided? Aman chose selflessness.

Aman reminds us that love isn’t always about possession. Sometimes it is about giving someone else a lifetime when you only have a few moments left.

The Emperor – Major Ram (Main Hoon Na)

Keywords: Authority, Protection, Duty

Major Ram is the embodiment of order, discipline, and devotion; both to his country and his family. As The Emperor, he stands tall as a figure of structure and safety in a chaotic world. Whether he’s defusing bombs, tackling teenage drama in a college corridor, or trying to unite a broken family, Ram always brings calm, control, and unshakable principle. The Emperor in tarot represents the divine masculine: a provider and protector who leads with integrity. Ram is that archetype made flesh: a man in uniform who softens only for his loved ones, who holds his ground when everything around him threatens to collapse.

Major Ram teaches us that strength isn’t about stoicism. It is about showing up, staying grounded, and leading with heart led authority.

Justice – Rizwan Khan (My Name is Khan)


Keywords: Truth, Fairness, Moral Clarity, Cause and Consequence

Rizwan Khan’s journey across cities, heartbreaks, and hostile people is one of radical clarity. Diagnosed with autism and driven by purpose, Rizwan’s mission to tell the U.S. president that he is not a terrorist isn’t just personal. The Justice card is about accountability, truth-telling, and standing firm against prejudice. Rizwan embodies all of it, with sincerity and zero ego. He’s not loud, but he’s relentless. He doesn’t seek revenge, but he demands recognition. He is living proof that moral courage doesn’t need anger to be effective.

Rizwan shows us that justice, at its core, is love made brave.

Strength – Veer (Veer-Zaara)

Keywords: Inner Power, Compassion, Patience, Devotion

Veer isn’t strong in the way most heroes are. He doesn’t flex his muscles or raise his voice - ever. But when it comes to emotional strength, no one comes close. He sacrifices his future, freedom, and voice for love, for peace, for respect, and for Zaara’s dignity. The Strength card is about quiet resilience: the power to wait, to endure, to love without demand. Veer spends 22 years behind bars, not out of helplessness but from a place of deep, unwavering choice.



Veer teaches us that the strongest hearts are often the softest ones and that love isn’t proven through possession, but through patience.

The Hierophant – Mohan Bhargava (Swades)


Keywords: Tradition, Teaching, Values

Mohan Bhargava starts as a man of science (NASA engineer) but as he returns to his roots, he becomes a conduit between two worlds: the modern and the traditional. The Hierophant represents a spiritual teacher or guide, someone who honors existing wisdom while also reshaping it for the future. Mohan doesn’t come to the village to “rescue” it. He listens, to understand, and eventually, serves. What makes him the Hierophant is his reverence for learning , not just textbooks and satellites, but hand pumps, village elders, and the lives of those that history usually forgets. He learns as much as he teaches.

Mohan reminds us that true leadership lies in humility and that progress is most powerful when it honors its roots.

The Star – Jahangir Khan (Dear Zindagi)

Keywords: Hope, Healing, Renewal, Guidance

Jug isn’t just a therapist, he’s The Star. He is a gentle, steady light that appears after the storm, guiding Kaira back to herself. The Star comes after The Tower in tarot, symbolizing the calm that follows emotional collapse. That’s exactly where Kaira is when she meets Dr. Jehangir Khan. Burnt out, closed off, disconnected. And he doesn’t rush her. He listens, nudges, and invites her to see herself with compassion. The Star doesn’t heal with grand gestures. It heals with presence. With stillness. With the quiet belief that you can be okay again. Jug never promises to “fix” Kaira. He just shows her she was never broken to begin with.

Jug reminds us that healing doesn’t always roar. Sometimes, it whispers: you’re safe now.

The Devil – Rahul (Darr)

Keywords: Obsession, Shadow Self, Control, Unhealthy Attachments

This isn’t the romantic Rahul we’re used to. This is Rahul with a knife and a stutter, weaponizing vulnerability and intensity. The Devil card in tarot is not evil. It is a mirror of our shadow selves: the parts of us driven by fear, obsession, possession, and the illusion of control. Rahul in Darr is dangerously fixated, mistaking love for ownership, attention for intimacy. What makes it so unnerving is how believable he is. He is soft-spoken, poetic, yet terrifyingly persistent. The Devil card reminds us that when love becomes addiction, it loses all tenderness.

Rahul shows us how unchecked desire can twist even the most romantic heart into a cage.


Death – Don (Don 1 & 2)

Keywords: Transformation, Endings, Rebirth. Power Shift

No one kills a version of themselves quite like Don. Not just once, but again and again. He is the Death card personified: not literal demise, but the complete shedding of one identity to evolve into another. Death in tarot is not an end, but a metamorphosis and Don is constantly three steps ahead, morphing from criminal to kingmaker, from hunted to hunter. What makes Don’s transformation powerful is that he is never apologetic. He reinvents himself with swagger, intelligence, and danger and forces the world to recalibrate around him.

Don teaches us that to become unstoppable, sometimes you have to bury who you were and build something scarier in its place.

The Fool – Sunil (Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa)

Keywords: New Beginnings, Naivete, Risk, Heart-led Choices

Sunil is all heart and no plan. The Fool card captures that wide-eyed, chaotic, sometimes foolish optimism and no SRK role captures this more vulnerably than Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa. Sunil lies, fumbles, schemes, and crashes. But he also feels deeply, earnestly, unashamedly. The Fool isn’t stupid. He is brave in a way only innocence can be. Sunil leaps before he looks, and when he falls, he still believes the next thing will work out. And somehow, he’s right. The world bends just enough to give him another chance.

Sunil shows us that the beginning of every journey is messy, but the heart that leads it? That’s pure magic.

The Chariot – Kabir Khan (Chak De! India)

Keywords: Willpower, Victory, Redemption, Direction

Kabir Khan drives a redemption arc so focused that it burns through into the hearts of his audience. The Chariot is about sheer will, discipline, and moving forward despite resistance. Kabir channels humiliation, bias, and heartbreak into razor-sharp determination and leads his team (and himself) to glory. He did not do any of it for applause. He was there to prove a point. Not to others, but to himself. The Chariot is victory earned, not gifted and Kabir earns every second of it.

Kabir reminds us that strength isn’t just muscle. It is momentum, forged through pain and pointed toward purpose.

If tarot is the story of the soul’s evolution, then Shah Rukh Khan has lived it on screen many times over. He’s been the boy who loved too much and the man who lost it all. He’s played the rebel, the romantic, the redeemer, and the ruthless. From The Fool’s innocent chaos to The Chariot’s unstoppable drive… from The Lovers’ ache to The Devil’s grip… SRK has danced through all the archetypes like he was born with the deck in his veins.

And maybe that’s why we keep returning to him. Because in watching his characters stumble, fight, love, lose, and transform, we’re reminded of our own messy human journeys. His films echo our fears (what if I’m not enough?), our hopes (can I try again?), and our fantasies (what if someone saw the real me and stayed?). And like the tarot, his roles don’t just entertain — they reflect, reveal, and sometimes, even heal.

So the next time you pull a card, don’t be surprised if you see a familiar dimpled smile, arms outstretched, whispering,

“Picture abhi baaki hai, mere dost.”

Psssst - Would you like me to match up rest of the Major Arcanas to other roles he has played?

The first thing that caught my attention was that the narrative at the beginning was almost parallel to Shah Rukh Khan’s life. His last release was ‘Zero’ in 2018 which flopped (still made a profit) and people have been saying a lot of negative things like he is done, his mid-life crisis, etc. But give the man some credit, yes? He has been running the show and taking Bollywood to the world for last 30 years. How many times have people predicted that his reign was coming to an end with the launch of a new hero? And what happened? Nothing - without a single release in 4 years, he is still reigning here.

He needs no introduction… the scrawny guy from Delhi who has entertained us for more than 30 years now. On tv, on big screens, on stage and even at cricket stadiums. A star that has the most ardent following all over the world an has brought multiple generations together. The King Khan. The Badshah of Bollywood. The King of Romance.

As someone born around mid-80s, I have loved Shah Rukh Khan right from Circus and since before I had any understanding of romance. Yet I wished someone would sing ‘Tujhe dekha toh yeh jaana sanam’ for me since my pre-teens and DDLJ has been a constant in my life - I watch it when I am sad and need a mood lift, I watch it when I have something to celebrate and I watch it when I can’t decide what to watch on OTT. I have dreamed of being someone’s Maya, someone’s Zaara, someone’s Mandira, and someone’s Naina. I have cheered for Aryan Khanna, just as enthusiastically as I have cheered for Kabir Khan. I have loved Kali as much as I have loved Jahangir Khan or young Sunil or Don.

In Chennai Express, Rahul is the protector. In Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, he plays both a dutiful husband and over the top lover - the glass disguise work for Superman then why not ‘apna Raj’? In Jab Tak Hai Jaan, he is the lover who loves Meera the only way he is allowed to while playing the mentor and friend to Akira. In Kal Ho Na Ho, Aman loves Naina so much that he makes the way for Rohit. In Dil Se… he plays the lover who gives his life to stop the love of his life committing a grave mistake. In Pardes, Arjun saves Ganga over and over again while nurturing her. In Harry Met Sejal, yeah I watched that one too, Harry with all his faults does the right thing time and time again.

When I watched Chak De! India, emotions were running manifold. I mean come on, in a country that worshipped men’s cricket team for decades and all but ignored other sports and teams, Chak De! India focused on women’s hockey team. Watching the girls coming together despite all the hurdles was a high in itself. But with SRK playing Kabir Khan, looking all cool and delivering dialogues like, ‘team bananey k like taakat nahi, niyat chahiye,’… was a different high. It helped me look for things in my life that could be influenced to change for better with just intention.

Fan ended up being my top favourite movie because his role as Aryan Khanna is almost autobiographical, minus the Gaurav angle. The small moment where he portrays an ageing star worried about the lines marring his features - it is such a fleeting moment in the movie, but I cannot imagine the nerve it must have taken to take the vulnerability of his life and his profession and putting it up on the screens for all to watch… Aryan Khanna is perhaps one of his best performances.

He set the screens on fire with his abs in Dard-e-Disco at 42 and let me tell you as much as I enjoyed watching it on screen, it also made me think that it is never too late to do something you set your mind to. At a time when younger actors were debuting and being compared to SRK (yet again), he stayed rock solid with his stardom and appeared on screen in a new avatar. And he is going to do it again at 56 for Pathan. An actor who claims to be bad at dancing tried his hand at (or should I say legs?!) at hip hop in 2012. Well, at 38… I think I can do too - not because I was told, but because my star showed me that it can be done.

We love him because he is an actor who portrays softer and vulnerable characters. He is not the macho guy nor is he the perfectionist. He is the one in between who is giving us the balance that is closer to what we need. He is the actor who decided that if he couldn’t change the pay gap in the industry, he could do what is in his control - make sure that actress’s names appear first on screen giving them the show runner position. He is also the actor who shares a much bigger chunk of screen times with his heroines.

He is the dependable guy who will stand by you and tell you everything you need to know. He is not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeves. He may not be able to beat up anyone who bothers you, but he’ll probably take the beating for you to protect you. He is the one who will treat you like a queen not only while wooing you, but also once you ‘happily ever after’ begins. He’ll earn a living for you or he’ll help you cook and clean depending on what you want from him. He is the guy who will carry your dress’s trail to keep it from getting dirty or to save you from tripping because of it.