Suits and elements

Now we turn to the Minor Arcana: 56 cards in four suits of fourteen. If the Major Arcana are the chapter titles of your life, the Minors are the everyday sentences: moods, conversations, work, money, conflict and timing. They are not less important. They are closer to ordinary days.

The four suits

Each suit runs from Ace to Ten, followed by four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen and King. Each suit also has its own climate.

• Cups (sometimes Chalices) speak to feeling, relationships and imagination. Element: water.
• Swords speak to thought, words, conflict, truth-telling and worry. Element: air.
• Pentacles (sometimes Coins or Disks) speak to the body, work, money and practical care. Element: earth.
• Wands (sometimes Batons, Rods or Staves) speak to drive, creativity, courage and momentum. Element: fire.

The elements as a memory trick

The four classical elements are a compact way to remember the suits, and each one has a gift and a risk.

• Fire (Wands): heat, initiative and courage. The risk is burnout.
• Water (Cups): feeling, bonds and imagination. The risk is overwhelm.
• Air (Swords): thought, language and conflict. The risk is overthinking.
• Earth (Pentacles): body, craft and money. The risk is getting stuck.

When you draw a Minor card and forget its meaning, start with the suit’s climate. A Cups card is about feelings in some way. A Swords card is about thoughts or words. Then add the number, which we will learn in the next lesson.

Reading suits together

When several cards of one suit appear in a reading, that suit sets the tone. Many Swords suggest the situation is mostly in your head or in conversations. Many Pentacles point to money, work or the body. Many Cups point to relationships and feelings. Many Wands mean energy, projects and drive.

The suits also change the meaning of the Major cards around them. A Tower with three Pentacles might be about a job or a home. A Tower with three Swords might be a sudden truth about how you have been thinking. Practice saying the difference out loud.

Suit families

It also helps to think of each suit as a family of concerns. Cups gather around attachment and imagination. Swords gather around stories and conflict. Pentacles gather around maintenance and worth. Wands gather around appetite and courage. If you can name the family, you can usually find your way back to the card.

If your deck is different

Some decks swap the elements of Swords and Wands, or use other suit names. Learn the system in front of you first. The meanings in this course follow the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, which is the most common.

Try this

Today’s exercise: Sort your Minor Arcana into four piles by suit, and write one word for the mood of each pile. Keep it short. Two or three lines in your notebook are enough, and there are no wrong answers. If you like, come back to the page tomorrow and add one more line about anything you noticed in the meantime. Small, regular notes like these are how the cards slowly become familiar.

Quick recap

• The Minor Arcana have four suits of fourteen cards.
• Cups are water and feeling, Swords air and thought.
• Pentacles are earth and practical life, Wands fire and drive.
• When you forget a card, start with the suit’s climate.

Keep going

When you have done the exercise, press “Mark as done” and continue with the next lesson, Numbers one to ten. There is no hurry. If a lesson needs a second day, give it one.

To go deeper, read “The Minor Arcana” and “Elements in Tarot” in my book The Novice’s Guide to Tarot.

Need a refresher? Go back to The Devil to the World or see the whole course.

Go deeper: The Novice's Guide to Tarot: The Minor Arcana; Elements in Tarot

Mark as done