Minor Arcana
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The Minor Arcana of the Tarot deck consist of 56 cards, which are closely related to the deck of 52 playing cards used in most modern card games. It is comprised of four suits, derived from the older Latin playing card suits most commonly named Wands or Batons, Cups, Swords, and Coins (also called Pentacles or Disks), although there is a wide variety of different names and suit symbols used in different decks. The name Minor Arcana is used only in esoteric practice; Game players using Tarot decks for playing call them suit cards and sometimes use the more modern hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs suit system.
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[edit] Symbolism
Often, the suits are associated with one of the four classical elements, with a common set of associations being the following: Wands with fire, Cups with water, Swords with air, and Coins with earth. In other sets of associations, Fire is occasionally exchanged with air for the Swords suit. Other associations are also possible:
| Tarot suit[1] | Playing-card suit | Element | Class | Faculty |
| Wands, Staves or Rods | Clubs | Fire | Peasantry | Creativity and Energy |
| Pentacles or Coins | Diamonds | Earth | Merchants | Material body or possessions |
| Cups or Chalices | Hearts | Water | Clergy | Emotions and Love |
| Swords | Spades | Air | Nobility | Reason and Will |
Each suit has 14 cards, being Ace (One), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Page, Knight, Queen, King. These last four are called the court cards, and often have different names in different decks. One common variation, introduced by the Victorian-era Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (for the Order's tarot deck) and later followed by occultist Aleister Crowley, is to replace the Page and Knight with a Princess and Prince (for more, see Thoth Tarot). There are Italian playing card decks which have a page, maid, knight, mounted lady, king and queen.
Modern decks often have the numbered minor arcana cards (Ace to 10 of each suit) named and numbered, although many resemble early decks in that there are no titles or numbers on those cards. The numbered minor arcana cards usually have the appropriate number of symbols for the suit depicted, and the court cards usually have the corresponding person depicted holding the symbol of their suit.
Modern divination decks, especially if based on the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck (circa 1910), will often have a symbolic scene depicted on the numbered Minors, although this was generally not the case before the Rider-Waite-Smith deck was published. Before this, with only the exception of a handful of decks, the numbered cards of the Minors showed merely a geometric arrangement of the appropriate number of suit symbols.
Some decks reverse the correspondance of Swords to Air and Wands to Fire and, instead, have Swords representative of Fire and Wands of Air.
[edit] Cards by Suits
[edit] Wands
[edit] Coins
[edit] Cups
[edit] Swords
[edit] References
- ^ {cite book |last=Dee |first=Jonathan |editor=Liz Dean |title=Tarot, An illustrated guide |year=2002 |publisher=Silverdale Books |language=English |isbn=1-856056-85-6 |chapter="Introduction to the Minor Arcana"}}
