I would like to offer a brief explanation of the minor arcana for those who have difficulty with this part of the Tarot deck.

The suit of Pentacles is a grossly misunderstood suit, and unless you are familiar with the activity of the elements, you won’t properly understand the nature of the minor arcana. Many people think that Pentacles suit has to do with money, career, health and  with the material world. But it really has to do with how you relate to money, how you relate to your  career, to your state of health, to the material world. If you get sick how do you feel about that? What do you do about it? What aspect of the element is out of balance that caused the illness? When you go to work, is it just a way for you to earn money, or is there a sense of service involved? Are you satisfied with your work? Do you come home feeling as if you accomplished something or are you pleased to get out of the rat race? Not the world, but how we interact with the world, is the domain of Pentacles. This suit also relates to our calm, peaceful nature, someone who is generous and giving, friendly and likeable, and also the opposite qualities as well. The suit of Pentacles is analogous to the element of the earth.

The Suit of Cups has to do with your feelings: how you feel, how you express your feelings, and how you respond to the feelings of others and your ability to analyze. Some overanalyze their feelings to the detriment of their relationships. Some take their relationships for granted and miss out on the joy of the mystical union. Cups also deal with quality of life, attention to detail, being very organized and logical, often serious and reserved, but very responsible.  The arts also fall under cups. Most artists paint, draw, sing, act with tremendous feeling. The suit of cups is analogous to the element of water.

The Suit of Swords, associated with air and the intellect, whose way to spirit is courage and the pursuit of truth, and whose flaw is harsh criticism and the despair that ensues when you cut the intellect off from your other functions of consciousness. It has to do with your clarity, your capacity to think clearly because it invokes fast, energetic energy which also makes for flexibility and being multi-talented, innovative and creative. This energy is light, but fast and energetic. If used incorrectly or by thinking negatively, the results are graphically shown in this suit. Swords relate to the airy elemental principle. Unfortunately, a lot of people use this energy incorrectly then wonder: “Why did this happen to me?”

The Suit of Wands is associated with the function of con­sciousness called intuition, and intuition is really quite miraculous; it is spiritual fire.  It is a way of knowing that has nothing to do with reason and very little to do with perception. It is knowing without having learned. Something has come to mind that is totally new. It is not the result of study or of inductive or deductive processes. Even if you had scoured your brain centres, all your ideas, and your entire conceptual framework, you would never have come up with what has suddenly come to you in a flash. What you expe­rience is a miraculous entry into consciousness of something that seems to come from somewhere else. All at once you just know!

The Suit of Wands is related to the fiery elemental principle, with its quickness, suddenness, and dissimilarity to its source. You begin with a match and a matchbox, and all of a sudden, in a flash, you have a flame, which looks nothing at all like either the match or the matchbox. There’s no way to figure out how you can get fire from these two inert little pieces of cardboard. That’s the way intu­ition flashes into consciousness.

The Suit of Wands represents as well, life energy of all forms, including what is called libido. It is the animal energy that drives life, the vital life force that you feel surging up within you. And although those two, intuition and libido may strike you as totally different from one another, they are the opposite ends of the same pole; they really are related as suggested by the word sublimation. Sublimation clearly means “to make sublime.” So if you take that basic life energy and express it, not in its most primitive way through the act of procreation, but by elevating it up through the spine to the sacred gland in the head, you elevate it to a point of artistic expression. By moving the energy to that creative place, you make it sublime.

That we need all the suits of the Tarot is clearly seen in the creative process. When we speak of the creative process, we do not limit ourselves to the writing of a symphony or a poem, or the painting of a canvas. We address anything we do, or any way we live, that involves creative thinking. Functional relationships require endless creativity, the ability to engage another in a way that enhances the lives of each rather than rigid adherence to old patterns that result in conflict. To be ourselves demands creativity. In a relationship it is not two halves coming together to make one whole, but two wholes helping each other to achieve their full potential in the partnership.

I would like to make a final point about the Tarot. It is my belief that everything that is part of human experience can be expressed by, and is expressed in, the Tarot. One excellent way to work with the cards is to think in terms of Tarot, so that when you have a significant experience, you immediately ask yourself, “What would be the card for that? Allow your mind to find it. If you follow that practice, you will find a much-enriched understanding of the cards, especially if you are reading for others.

Some thoughts on the major arcana will follow.

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