← Encyclopedia of Tarot · lesson 87/121
The Aces
The Aces are the first card of each of the four suits of the Minor Arcana, and the simplest. An Ace shows the suit's symbol alone — one wand, one cup, one sword, one pentacle — usually held out by a hand from a cloud. Whatever the suit stands for, the Ace is that thing at its beginning: a seed, an offer, a spark that has not yet become anything in particular. Most readers take an Ace as the best its suit has to offer, before circumstances have had a chance to shape it.
What the number means
One is the number of beginnings. In every suit the Ace is a door opening rather than a room already furnished, and so it is read as potential more than outcome — something given that still has to be taken up.
- The Ace of Wands is the beginning of will and drive: an idea, an ambition, a burst of creative energy.
- The Ace of Cups is the beginning of feeling: love, friendship, an emotional or spiritual opening.
- The Ace of Swords is the beginning of clear thought: a breakthrough, a decision, the truth cutting through.
- The Ace of Pentacles is the beginning of something material: an offer of work, money, a home, a practical start.
Because each Ace holds its suit undiluted, the Aces are also a quick way to remember what the suits mean. If you know the four Aces, you know the four elements: fire, water, air and earth.
In the Golden Dawn
The Golden Dawn, whose attributions most English-language decks follow, set the Aces apart from the other numbered cards. Each is the Root of the Powers of its element — the Root of the Powers of Fire, of Water, of Air, of Earth — and all four sit in Kether, the Crown, the first and highest sephirah of the Tree of Life. Book T calls them the "Radical or Root Force" and pictures them revolving around the North Pole of the heavens, as a link between the spiritual world and the material one.
That is why the Aces carry no decan. Every card from Two to Ten is given ten degrees of a zodiac sign and a planet to rule them, but the Aces stand above the zodiac, as the source the other cards of their suit flow from. Crowley's Thoth deck keeps the same idea.
The Major Arcana of the same number
Readers who link the numbered cards with the trumps by number pair the Aces with I, The Magician — the one who takes up the four tools of the suits and begins. By adding the digits of larger numbers, some also link them with X, the Wheel of Fortune, and XIX, The Sun. This is a later, numerological habit rather than part of the Golden Dawn system, which links the trumps to Hebrew letters instead; but it can be a useful echo when an Ace and The Magician appear together.
Several Aces in one spread
Aces are strong cards, and several together are usually read as a time of strong beginnings. The traditions gave the combination its own meanings:
- Waite: four Aces mean "favourable chance", three "small success", two "trickery". Reversed, four mean "dishonour", three "debauchery", two "enemies".
- The Golden Dawn's Book T: four Aces are "great power and force", three "riches and success", and a majority of Aces in a spread shows "strength generally".
These are old divinatory keywords, not predictions, and the two lists do not agree. Many modern readers simply note that a run of Aces suggests a lot is starting at once — several new things on offer, and a need to choose which seeds to plant. The suits of the Aces show where the openings lie.
In a reading here
When a spread is interpreted here, two, three or four numbered cards of the same rank are picked out as a pattern and given Waite's meaning for that number and count. A pair is noted only in a spread of seven cards or fewer, because in a larger spread a pair of something turns up most of the time and means little.