In my earlier post, we went over what exactly the Major Arcana are and, in this post, I hope to cover exactly what the Minor Arcana are and the symbolism of the Four Elements found within them.
So what are they? The Minor Arcana is a group of the 78 card Tarot deck consisting of the majority (56) of those cards. The Minor Arcana are then further subdivided into four subgroups known as the four suits. These suits are known as the Cups, the Swords, the Pentacles, and the Wands (in traditional playing card decks these are the clubs, spades, diamonds, and hearts). These Suits then contain two more groups: The Pip cards and the Court cards. The Pip cards are numbered 1 through ten and the Court cards go from Page to Knight to Queen to King.
Each suit is representative of one of four elements: Wands/Fire, Cups/Water, Pentacles/Earth, and Swords/Air. These elements each represent their own innate meaning.
Wands/Fire: Pure creative energy, inspiration, spirituality, innovative thought, ambition and determination, strength, and intuition.
The suit of Fire represents action and the way we make change in the world.
The negative aspects of the suit of fire are potential impulsiveness, lack of direction, improper planning, and feeling meaningless or a loss of purpose or drive.
In relations to time, fire and the Wands represent Spring and Weeks.
Cups/Water: Emotional energy, love, compassion, feelings, relationships and connections. This suit comparative to the suit of Swords is known for the saying "thinking with your heart not your head." Cups also relate to the imagination and fantasy.
Negative aspects of the suit of Cups can be being emotional empty or disconnected, overly emotional or too "in your feels", over-fantasizing, or lacking creative ambition.
In relations to time, the suit of Cups represents the Fall
Pentacles/Earth: The material world, the physical reality. Money, finance, career, and any tangible object or property. This suit is representative of abundance and manifestation. Creating your best life. Feeling fulfilled. Related to how we interact with the world to navigate and shape it and our reality.
Negative aspects can be possessiveness, greed, over-indulgence, not exercising, poor diet, overly materialistic, not managing money or time well, not making proper plans for the future such as not having a solid savings account. Can also represent overly focusing on your career and finances to the detriment of your family life, creative or leisure time, or any other aspect of your life not related to work.
In order to get the energy back in alignment, once must learn to set goals, manage funds, indulge less (or in rare cases more), and build a solid foundation for the future.
In respect to time, the suit of Pentacles represents Winter and years.
Swords/Air: Intellect, the mind, power, logic, swift action and change. Because the sword is double edged, we can take this to represent that not all change or decisions are good ones and can bite the hand that made them. Positive aspects of the Swords are the clean and precise judgment made, the clarity of intellect, and the perspective of fairness and justice. Known colloquially as thinking with the head not the heart.
Negative aspects include harsh judgment, emotional disparity, anger, guilt, or lack of compassion.
All of these suits come together to fulfill a balance and an eb and flow to life that creates a whole picture. The meaning of each card becomes clearer once you add in the factor of the numerology of the cards. For more on that Click Here.
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