It must be terribly confusing to be the Knight of Pentacles. Or, for that matter, the Queen of Wands. Or the King of Cups. One of the first tactics you learn when you’re starting to tackle the big, scary Court Cards is that they can be understood as a confluence of elemental energies. Each rank within […]
Read more "The Courts Out of Their Elements"In my previous post on this subject, I examined the typical five-element structure of a Tarot deck and argued that actually, this system makes more sense if we reduce it to a four-plus-one system, with the fifth element of “spirit” somehow separated from the four classical elements of earth, air, water, and fire. Really and […]
Read more "How Many Elements Are There in Tarot? (Part 2)"It seems like a simple question at first. There are five elements in Tarot, each represented by one of the five suits: Pentacles for earth, Swords for air, Cups for water, Wands for fire, and the Major Arcana for the mysterious quintessence that Wiccans tend to label “spirit”. The first four are the classical elements […]
Read more "How Many Elements Are There in Tarot? (Part 1)"One of the fundamental underlying principles of Tarot is the idea of duality and polarity. Dark and light, masculine and feminine, creative and rational–it’s everywhere in Tarot. Buried in the very structure of the deck is the idea that the universe is made up of opposites. So it makes sense that one of the easiest […]
Read more "Dichotomizing the Minor Arcana"