By the Suits
About a month ago, I wrote about reading the numbers present in a spread to gain information about the situation or question before beginning to interpret individual cards. You can find that post HERE.
In addition to gathering information from the numbers, I also scan the elements present to help form my initial outline for the message in the cards.
There are different meanings and associations for the suits, depending on who you ask and what system they use. Below, I’ll give mine. Because I associate very naturally and easily with the elements, I rely on those associations quite heavily.
Major Arcana
Elemental Association: Spirit. Many readers assign each card in the Major Arcana an elemental association based on their astrological associations. The astrological associations have never made sense to me, so I do not use them.
Major life lessons or events, a situation that will take a long time to play out, events beyond the querent’s control.
Wands
Elemental association: Fire
Passion, will, enthusiasm, career or calling, projects, ideas, lust, attraction, and in timing, things are moving fast.
Cups
Elemental association: water
Emotional situation, relationships, healing, and grace; in timing, things are moving at a leisurely pace.
Swords
Elemental association: air
How one thinks, philosophy, truths, revelations, and, like with wands, things are moving quickly.
Pentacles
Elemental association: earth
Resources, mundane, everyday things or events, physical things. In timing, things are moving slowly. Not as slowly as the Majors indicate, but still, usually slower than the querent wants!
When scanning a reading, I take note on the presence or absence (sometimes the absence of a suit is more telling than the presence of others) of any particular suits and the ratio. For example, the presence of swords tells me that there may be some problems present. If the question is about income or finances and there are many cups and some swords, I would keep my eyes open for attitudes about abundance and self-worth. If the question is about love and there are no cups, that is a warning sign to me. Also, if there are a lot of wands and nothing else to ground the relationship, it tells me it is probably a physical attraction rather than something with staying power, at least at that moment. The elements can also help me with timing, as I noted in the descriptions.
Hi Barbara,
I hadn’t thought about the suits relating to timing before, so that’s very interesting.
However, I was wondering whether you would be able to share your views on the question of people who are quite new to the tarot working with several decks, more or less at the same time.
I have been studying the tarot for a few months now and although I have been concentrating on one deck, I own others and keep wanting to ‘bring in’ more and more – kid in a candy store style. Perhaps I should try and get a firmer ‘grounding’ before I bring in different decks..?
I LOVE your posts – so insightful! This is the kind of step-by-step break-it-down post that is really helpful and easy to remember. Thanks for making it simple. 🙂
I thought I’d share: I recently did a relationship reading for a friend of mine. ALL of his cards came up wands, and ALL of her cards came up cups. As my Jewish friend used to say, “Oy, vey!” They broke up about a week later because they just knew they were heading in different directions and needed different things. But it was so interesting, and gave them a lot to talk about. Of course, maybe that type of relationship could work, but that time at least, it just wasn’t in the cards!