he 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, most commonly named Wands, Cups, Swords, and Coins (esoterically called Pentacles or Disks), although there is a wide variety of different names and suit symbols used in different decks. 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 Playing-card suit Element Gender Faculty
Wands or Staves Clubs Fire Active masculine Creativity and Energy
Cups or Chalices Hearts Water Active feminine Emotions and Love
Swords Spades Air Passive masculine Reason and Will
Pentacles or Discs Diamonds Earth Passive feminine Material body or possessions


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 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.

With the "pip" cards of the decks like the Marseilles/1JJ Swiss, though, you can often read the cards intuitively - the Two of Swords and the Two of Coins came up in one spread with the Swiss the other night, and the message I got from them was that I was being too rigid and had to be more flexible - the swords are arranged as if they are bending or straining, and the coins are presented in a nice, fluid design that swirls across the card.

My one real pet hate is modern decks that just have non-pictorial pip cards, as they don't attempt the same classic designs. It's just laziness or cheapness really. There are however some really imaginative non-pictorial decks out there though, there is one where the number itself (i.e. 2,3,4 etc.) is presented with an insight into its meaning without resorting to pictures of people.