A brief discussion of the minor arcana of the Tarot, including the symbolism of wands, cups, swords, and pentacles. This looks at their function and meaning in a Tarot spread and is oriented toward beginners.
So if you followed up on the suggestions in my previous post – Can You Learn to Read Tarot Cards? – then you’ve looked at the various Tarot decks, picked a deck that resonates with you, and you’re looking through the cards thinking profound thoughts like, “What in the hell does THAT card mean?”
We’ll get to that.
In the meantime, when you look at the Tarot deck you’ll find that it’s divided into 5 different parts: the 4 suits of cards, known as the Minor Arcana, and the 22 very, very, very symbolic cards known as the Major Arcana.
For today let’s just talk about the Minor Arcana. You’ll see that the 4 suits are designated Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. That’s the way that the Tarot divides up and analyzes the things in our world.
Wands represent ideas, intellect, the thought process, what we like to conceive as the thinking mind.
Cups represent emotions, feelings, and relationships with emotional content like friendships, lovers, family. And that means ALL of the emotions from love to hate and everything in between.
Swords represent aggression, physical force, and mental force like dominance issues and power struggles in the family or the workplace.
Pentacles represent physical possessions, money, our various toys, and both the material world and materialism.
They have other aspects, as I discuss in my ebook,“Just the Tarot.”
Wands are often associated with travel. Swords, by way of their cutting edges, may be associated with needing surgery. But for now let’s concentrate on the four basic characteristics of the Minor Arcana: ideas, emotions,force,and possessions.
Of course, we know by now that the human world is far more holistic than a simple 4 point division. Every idea has some sort of emotion tied to it and physical or mental force often hides fear or phobias. And the spiritual flows into the physical world and the physical world often blossoms with great spirituality. Still, it’s a useful way of looking at the world and the human predicament.
And that’s what the Minor Arcana are all about: the human predicament. The Major Arcana are all about MAJOR forces in your life: birth, death, transitions, good, evil. The Minor Arcana are about all of the crappy little things (and good little things) that we deal with in day to day life.
Each card represents a particular human situation that we experience as we journey through life. And each reading represents a snapshot of all of the things that the questioner is going through at that moment in time.
Think of it this way: if you could step outside of yourself (your SELF) and sort of hover around the ceiling for a while and REALLY look at your life objectively, what would you see? You might see your work-self who is dealing with a crappy, overbearing boss. Then there might be your home-self who loves to paint or write or knit or listen to music and pet the cat. Then there might be your relationship-self who is deeply in love or maybe has been hurt in the past and is afraid of love or maybe is a hopeless romantic who is in love with love. And how about your physical-self who might be a weight lifter or might be chronically ill or might be a long distance runner or might be in a wheel chair?
All of those separate, “selves,” make up the greater self which is you. When you look at the Minor Arcana in a reading you’re looking at what’s going on with all of those different selves at that moment. Home, work, romance, physical state of being, ideas,emotions,power,and possessions. And the magic happens when you see the reading come together as a story of the questioners life. Yep, even day to day life is HIGHLY magical!
On to next lesson!
Just the Tarot 