The Four Suits

Each suit belongs to one of the four elements, and once you know the element you know how to read the suit. Water feels. Fire acts. Air thinks. Earth builds. Most of what happens to you in a day is one of those four, and usually more than one at once.

Cups: water

Cups are the heart. Feelings, love, friendship, family, intuition, dreams, the inner life. The water signs, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, live here.

The Ace of Cups is love pouring in, a cup overflowing from a hand in the clouds. The Six of Cups is memory and the sweetness of the past. The Ten of Cups is the family under the rainbow, happiness that is shared. And the Five of Cups is grief: a figure in a black cloak staring at three spilled cups, with two still standing behind that the figure has not turned round to see yet.

That last card has a lot to teach. Nearly everyone who is grieving has two cups standing behind them. Turning round to see them comes in its own time, and it does come.

Wands: fire

Wands are the spark. Passion, drive, creativity, ambition, courage, the urge to start something. The fire signs, Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, live here.

The Ace of Wands is a living branch held out from a cloud, a new idea with sap still in it. The Three of Wands is a figure on a headland watching his ships out at sea, the plan under way and the horizon widening. And the Ten of Wands is a man bent double carrying ten heavy staves on his own.

Most of us know that one. Fire is wonderful until you try to carry the whole bonfire yourself.

Swords: air

Swords are the mind. Thoughts, words, decisions, truth, arguments, conflict. The air signs, Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, live here.

It is the suit people fear most, and I understand why. The Three of Swords is a heart pierced by three blades in the rain. The Nine of Swords is someone sitting up in bed at three in the morning with their face in their hands.

Look at the Eight of Swords, though. A woman stands bound and blindfolded among eight swords stuck in the ground, three on one side and five on the other. Her feet are free and there is a gap in the swords. She could walk out any time she chose. That is F.E.A.R., False Evidence Appearing Real, painted on a card, and it is why so much of the pain in the Swords lives in the head.

Pentacles: earth

Pentacles are the body and the ground under it. Work, money, health, home, craft, patience, the practical world. The earth signs, Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn, live here.

The Seven of Pentacles is a gardener leaning on his hoe, looking at what he has grown and deciding whether to keep going. The Eight of Pentacles is a craftsman at the bench, carving one pentacle after another, each a little better than the last. The Four of Pentacles clutches a coin to his chest and cannot let go of it. The Ten of Pentacles is family wealth and legacy, three generations and the dogs, all at home.

Pentacles are the chop wood, carry water suit. They are slow, and they are the cards that actually build a life.

Reading the balance of a spread

Once you know the suits, count them.

A spread full of Swords says you are living in your head at the moment, and the answer may be to get out of it. A spread full of Cups says this is a matter of the heart, whatever the question pretended to be about. Plenty of Wands says energy and momentum. Plenty of Pentacles says the practical, the money, the body.

A missing suit speaks as well. A question about work that comes back with no Pentacles at all is worth sitting with for a while.

The exercise: read across and down

Take the 40 numbered Minor cards out of your deck, Ace to Ten in each suit. Lay them in four rows, one row to a suit, Ace on the left.

First read along each row. Watch Cups move from the overflowing Ace to the rainbow of the Ten, and notice where the suit struggles on the way.

Then read down each column. Look at all four Fives together, all four Sevens, all four Tens. You will see the number doing the same work in every element: the Fives all shake something loose, the Tens all finish something. After ten minutes of that, the numbers on the How to Read a Card page will never need looking up again.

If you would like the cards read against your own chart, my readings are here.

Related pages
The Elements and Modes