Discover what’s behind your favourite tarot cards with the help of Tarotbella
Words: Priya Kantaria
The Minor Arcana is made up of four suites in wands, cups, coins and swords and are often overlooked for their partner set of cards, the Major Arcana. In fact the Minor Arcana can help you discover more about yourself and how you should proceed than you might think! There’s power and beauty here, and now here's a beginner’s guide to these four suites to help you use their mystery for your highest good...
HARNESS MAGICK AND MYSTERY
Tarot has been a tool of divination, insight and truth for centuries, and there are therefore centuries of human wisdom and knowledge embedded in those 78 cards. Tarot, as we’d recognise it now, appeared first in Renaissance Italy in the 15th century and journeyed across Europe, eventually being picked up by Victorian magicians and occultists in England, and used as a tool of magick and fortune telling.
Times change. Things move on. People’s outlooks shift. Now, I personally don’t believe you need to be magic, psychic, clairvoyant or even particularly spiritual to read the tarot. I simply believe that the tarot is an ancient and visualised source of human wisdom. Our ancestors have used these cards to explain their lives, behaviours, relationships and decisions, and the cards’ meanings and interpretations have evolved through time. Who wouldn’t want to tap into that? Tarot is a wisdom tool, accessible to all.
TAP INTO A HIGHER WISDOM
In no other area of the tarot is this human wisdom more accessible than in the Minor Arcana. There are 56 minor arcana cards in a tarot deck, divided into four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords and Coins (Pentacles). Each suit, a bit like a normal card deck, has cards numbered from 1 – 10, plus four court cards (a Page, Knight, Queen and King). Sometimes, it’s tempting to think of the Minor (the clue seems to be in the name, perhaps) as the ‘second fiddle’ or poor relation to the grand ‘Major’ Arcana, but I think that’s a mistake.
The Minor Arcana focus on the everyday events, opportunities and issues of life which are in our own control and influence (whereas the Major Arcana are like ‘power cards’, revealing messages or unseen forces from the Universe; those that are out of our hands). As such, the Minor Arcana cards tend to have more narrow and specific meanings, represent things we can actually do or influence, and offer more guidance on our own course of action versus waiting for the cosmos to ‘do’ something to us.
DISCOVER THE WONDER
Each of the Minor Arcana suits link to a particular astrological e
