Four suits, four elements

Most of a tarot reading is made of Minor Arcana, and every Minor belongs to a suit. So before the numbers, the courts or any single card, it pays to know the four suits well. Not as four words to remember, but as four different ways a situation can feel.

When you can look at a card and say "this is a Cups kind of thing", you have done half the reading already.

Where the suits came from

The four suits are older than tarot. They came into Europe with playing cards from the Islamic world, and the most likely ancestor is the deck of the Mamluks, who ruled Egypt and Syria. In those cards the wands were polo sticks, from a game played on horseback.

Italian and Spanish cards kept the four objects: swords, batons, cups and coins. French cards later turned them into the suits most people know today. If you play cards, the match is roughly this:

• Wands are Clubs.
• Cups are Hearts.
• Swords are Spades.
• Pentacles are Diamonds.

The pentacle, a coin with a five-pointed star on it, is a later touch. Many decks still call the suit Coins, and some call it Disks.

The four elements

The link between suits and elements came much later again, from occult writers in the nineteenth century. It has stuck because it works: each element gives the suit a picture you can hold in your head.

• Wands are Fire. Fire spreads, warms and burns. It doesn't sit still.
• Cups are Water. Water takes the shape of whatever holds it, runs deep and reflects.
• Swords are Air. Air is clear, cold and quick, and it carries words.
• Pentacles are Earth. Earth is solid, slow and fertile. Things grow in it if you wait.

The suits one by one

Wands: what you want

Wands are the suit of energy, desire and drive: ambition, enthusiasm, creative sparks, the urge to start something or win. Wands cards are full of people building, setting out, competing, celebrating.

At their best they are courage and get-up-and-go. At their worst they are the fire left unwatched: rashness, impatience, burning out, picking fights for the fun of it.

Cups: what you feel

Cups are the suit of emotion and connection: love, friendship, family, intuition, imagination, the things that move you. A cup is a container, and the suit is about what fills you up or leaves you empty.

At their best they are warmth, tenderness and a feel for what's going on under the surface. At their worst they are the water with nowhere to go: moodiness, daydreaming instead of doing, or getting lost in other people's feelings.

Swords: what you think

Swords are the suit of the mind: ideas, words, truth, judgement, decisions. A blade cuts, and our language already thinks of the mind that way, with "sharp" wits and "cutting" remarks. The word "decide" comes from the Latin for cutting off: you choose one path by cutting away the others.

That's why Swords is the hardest suit to receive. At its best it is clarity, honesty and the courage to face facts. At its worst it is worry, conflict, cruelty, or a mind that keeps cutting at itself. Many of the most painful-looking cards in the deck are Swords. They describe hard moments; they don't sentence you to them.

Pentacles: what you can touch

Pentacles are the suit of the material world: work, money, home, health, the body, nature, skill built slowly over time. If you can count it, hold it or eat it, it's probably a Pentacles matter.

At their best they are patience, reliability and real results. At their worst they are the earth that won't shift: stubbornness, rigidity, holding too tightly to what you have.

Look at the four cards above. In the Eight of Wands, eight staves fly through an open sky: speed, news, things in motion. The Two of Cups shows two people pledging to each other: a meeting of feelings. The Three of Swords is a heart pierced by three blades under rain: the hurt that comes with a hard truth. The Eight of Pentacles shows a craftsman at his bench, carving one pentacle after another: steady work, getting good at something.

Two pairs

The suits also fall into two pairs. Wands and Swords are the active suits. Their objects are long and pointed, they can be used as weapons, and their cards are full of movement and struggle. Cups and Pentacles are the receptive suits. Their objects are round and hold things, and their cards tend to feel calmer and fuller.

Neither pair is better. A life with only Wands and Swords would be exhausting; one with only Cups and Pentacles might never change.

Spotting the suit in real life

Here is a useful habit. Take one situation and ask how it would look in each suit. Say you've just started a new job:

• In Wands, it's the excitement, the ambition, the wish to make your mark.
• In Cups, it's how you feel about the people, and whether you'll belong.
• In Swords, it's the decisions, the learning curve, perhaps a difficult conversation.
• In Pentacles, it's the salary, the hours, and the skills you'll build.

When a reading comes up mostly in one suit, it's telling you which of those sides is doing the talking. A reading heavy in Swords about a relationship suggests the matter is being thought about, argued about or decided, more than felt. When a suit is missing altogether, that can be worth a question too: what part of this are you not looking at?

What to take from this

• Each suit is a way a situation feels. Wands want, Cups feel, Swords think, Pentacles build.
• The element is a picture to think with. Fire, Water, Air and Earth each have a gift and a way of going wrong.
• Count the suits in a reading. The suit that dominates shows which side of the matter is speaking.

Next, the numbers: how Ace to Ten turns the forty numbered cards into one pattern you can learn once.