Professional Tarot Readings and Tuition

Tarot Suits

CUPS – Feelings and Emotions

 

Element: Water—passive; represented by full or empty goblets or chalices, flowing water.

 

Cups represent emotions, relationships, love, the subconscious, dream and astral worlds, psychic and intuitive arts, fantasy, illusion, fertility, grace and serenity. Cups are pleasure loving, with an aesthetic orientation, and sociable.

 

Symbols: river, pool, fountain, ocean, water lilies, fish, mermaids, dolphins, crab

Colours: watery blues, mauves, pinks

 

Virtues: Serenity, love, creative visualisation, imagination, compassion, contentment, happiness.

Vices: Moodiness, excesses and addiction, psychic drains, lust, jealousy, sadness.

 

Style: Flowing, expanding, diffusing, loving, sensing.

Jungian Function: Feeling

 

Direction: West

Season: Summer

 

 

SWORDS – Life Challenges

 

Element: Air – active; represented by swords or daggers and changing patterns of the sky.

 

Swords represent mental, rational, logical functions, communication and thoughts. They can also indicate struggle or conflict; a need for decisions about or separation from past attachments; desire for truth; uncomfortable processes; restriction and expansion.

 

Various life events we will all encounter at some point in life to be met with pure logic and rational analysis.

 

Swords reflect problems of balancing intellect with feelings, intuition and physical needs. They represent difficulties and challenges as well as solutions through clarity of thought.

 

Symbols: birds, butterflies, clouds, clouds, sky (different ‘atmospheres’ of the individual cards: wind, rain etc.)

Colours: ice blue, steel grey.

 

Virtues: Penetration, courage, strength, truth and justice, organisation, decisiveness

Vices: Thoughtlessness, being judgmental, sharp-tongued, fear, confusion, disharmony, conflict, animosity, unhappiness, sometimes illness.

 

Style: Storming, freezing, striving, conceptualising, communicating, confronting, cutting through

Jungian Function: Thinking

 

Direction: East

Season: Autumn

 

 

PENTACLES – Money and Potential

 

Element: Earth- passive; represented as coins and/or crafts made by hand or fruit (of plants of your labours)

 

Pentacles indicate a concern with money, result of labour, accumulation of knowledge and development of skills. They represent what grounds and stabilises a person; traditions, foundations, inheritances. They question sense of self-worth and values.

 

Concerned with the world of form and substance; giving ideas substance; importance of the material world; practical matters, financial issues, business projects, family ties, security and material wealth.

 

Symbols: the Pentacle - shaped like a coin (symbol of material world); five pointed star (magic powers of earth); earth dwelling animals (mice, rabbits, fox), dogs; fruit, flowers, fields, gardens

Colours: brown, green, yellow

 

Virtues: Knowledge and ability, endurance, stability; self-worth, success, financial prudence

Vices: Stress and anxiety; stubbornness, inability to change, greed, financial loss, material obsession

 

Style: Drying, cracking, materialising, solidifying, crystallising

Jungian Function: Sensation

 

Direction: North

Season: Winter

 

In the traditional Tarot decks, the Minor Arcana consists of four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. Each suit is made up of 10 number cards (Ace—10) and four court cards (Page, Knight, Queen, King).

 

Each of the four suits has its own characteristics, correspondences and energies, which are influenced by Astrology and the four elements—Earth, Air, Fire, Water.

 

You can find out more about the elements here.

 

 

WANDS – Imagination and Creativity

 

Element: Fire—active; represented as small flames emerging from wooden staves or long, cut branches with new green leaves sprouting from them (indicating new life).

 

Wands represent growth, virility, creativity, self-development, inspiration, impulse, enterprise, energy, enlightenment, passion and desire. Wands are future-orientated, entrepreneurial, and inventive; they initiate action and get things moving.

 

Wands indicate endeavours and aspirations with more than a financial goal in mind. They represent the creative urge and imagination, and the will to bring one's dreams into reality. They refer to career, work and ambition.

Symbols: the prime symbol of creativity is fire, a creative force that can illuminate and warm, or if uncontrolled will burn and destroy. Other symbols include salamanders, sunflowers, desert, sun, oranges.

Colours: red, yellow, brown, orange

 

Virtues: Creativity, enterprise, drive, enthusiasm, determination, passion.

Vices: Pride, restlessness, wilfulness, reckless behaviour and subsequent disappointment.

 

Style: Exploding, activating, inspiring

Jungian Function: Intuition

 

Direction: South

Season: Spring