Tarot Card Reading Manual
Many of us associate Tarot cards with fortune reading, which is wrong. In fact, Tarot cards have nothing to do with fortune-telling. Read on and get to know everything about tarot card reading and the card meanings. There are major arcana cards and then there are minor arcana cards in the entire lot, thus the Tarot Card Meanings must be attained from a professional reader for best results.
Meaning Of the 22 Major Tarot Cards
The Major Arcana Tarot cards aren’t arranged in any order of hierarchy. They are equal, and each is an element in the circle of transformation. They are signs of events, destiny, chances, exceptional people that we need to pay special focus to in pour lives.
In this section, we look at each of the Major Arcana Cards and the Tarot Card Meanings in a Tarot card reading.
The Minor 56 Arcana Tarot Cards
The Minor Arcana suit of cards is sometimes referred to as the “lesser mysteries” as it can point to the events and situations people face on a daily basis. For people perplexed with troubles, they can be very useful to provide the right perspective on areas of our lives that need quick solutions.
A traditional tarot deck contains 56 Minor Arcana cards. Of these, there are 40 numbered cards spanning four suits—the Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. Lastly, there are 16 Court or personality cards. When combined with the 22 Major Arcana cards, they sum up 78 cards. All of them have card meanings and are very important.
What It Means to Get a Minor Arcana Card in Your Tarot Reading
There are 56 Minor Arcana cards that signify the problems that we face every day. Though these cards are termed ‘minor’, they have a deep impact on your life. In fact, they can offer you an awareness of your present-day problem and offer appropriate solutions. So, pay special attention to the Minor Arcana card you pick and be open to the learning it gives you.
The Minor Arcana cards also play the role of temporarily influencing your life by representing moving energy that makes its course through your life. Depending on the actions you take, its course can be changed. They show you where you go right or wrong. They complement the Major Arcana cards by informing you how and why you can reach the various milestones in your spiritual development. Thus they are very helpful and the correct Tarot Card Meanings will certainly help you move forward spiritually.
What It Means When Your Reading Is Made Up of Minor Tarot Cards
The Minor Arcana contains 56 cards, spread over four suits of 14 cards each.Western tradition says that these suits are divided into four elements, namely Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. These four suits are The Wands, The Cups, The Swords, and The Pentacles.
Broadly, the Minor Arcana suits point out the areas of your life that demand your attention. The energy that reaches you is shown by the number on the card you draw, spread across from one to 10. These numbers and the Court cards bear overall energy that helps you understand the Minor Arcana’s messages. Thus Tarot Card Meanings suggest here that you need to pay immediate attention to listed matters.
Meaning Of the 56 Minor Tarot Cards
Whereas the Major Arcana suit of cards helps you with life’s twists and turns, it is the Minor Arcana cards that help you deal with life’s daily challenges. They also give you the necessary perspective to your problem.
Let us look at a Minor Tarot Card to understand its significance in a Tarot reading.
The Suit Of Cups
The 56 Minor Arcana cards in Tarot reflect people’s positive and negative life experiences. The Minor Arcana also comprises four suits—the Suit of Wands, Swords, Cups, and Pentacles. Everyday life events form the stuff of the Minor Arcana, and they are generally linked with water. The suit of cups tarot is one of them. Now, water can either be a gentle stream or a huge, destructive tidal wave. So the cups tarot card meanings need to be gauged properly.
The Suit of Cups, therefore, is emotional and intuitive. The cups tarot meaning represents one’s emotional situation and embodies people, their relationships and reactions to others and their immediate environment. Being emotional, it deals with love and other emotions one experiences right through life. It lets you explore your feelings and how you connect with others and the world at large.
Water is the predominant element here, and it stands for flexibility, intuition, healing, cleansing, and the subtle power that you often find in women. Water is also a feminine element that reflects one’s adaptability, receptiveness, purity, and fluidity. In a deck of cards, you’ll find that the Suit of Cups corresponds to Hearts. It has a direct connection with the heart and to emotions such as love, sorrow, and rejection. For this reason, in love, the Cups play a major role in a Tarot reading. Thus Tarot Card Meanings here help your love-life tremendously.
Typically, the Suit of Cups consists of 14 cards, ranging from the Ace of Cups to Ten of Cups. At the higher end of this deck of cards are the Page of Cups, the Knight, King, and Queen of Cups. The season associated with the Suit of Cups is autumn, and it represents the west.
What Do the Cups Tarot Cards Signify in A Reading?
The Suit of Cups or the cups tarot cards indicates that an individual thinks with his heart, not his head. This has a bearing on his spontaneous responses and usual reactions to certain situations. The Suit of Cups is also associated with imagination, creativity, fantasy, and romanticism. Here the card meanings clearly indicate an emotional persona.
While these are the positive aspects of the Suit of Cups, it also has negative aspects. The suit of cups include a state of being disengaged or over-emotional or fantasizing about what could occur in the future.Examples could be a lack of proper expression of one’s feelings or the lack of imagination or some repressed feelings.
Zodiac implications can also be predicted via cups tarot. The Suit of Cups correlates well with Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio from the Zodiac signs. So, when, in a Tarot reading, you draw a Cups card, it could mean a person corresponding to the Cancer, Pisces, or Scorpio water signs.Usually, people who belong to this sign are creative and emotional and draw the required energy from their inner feelings.
What Does It Mean To Have A Tarot Reading Predominantly of Cups Tarot Cards?
If your Tarot reading comprises mainly Cups cards, it means that you want solutions to emotional problems, matters of love, betrayal, creativity, and related matters. If there are several Cups cards in a reading, it could also mean that you’ll soon fall in love, or you may fall in love with your beloved one more time. This harks back to the idea that Cups are associated with fertility and good luck.
Conclusion
There’s a wealth of meaning in suit of cups Tarot cards and their interpretation by a good Tarot card reader. It’s up to you to accept this interpretation and apply it to events in your life.
Cups
The Suit of Swords
The Suit of Swords is associated with the Air element and the fall season. These cards enhance the mind, consciousness and the crystal clear and sharp truth. Due to their strong links with the truth, these cards are also related to Justice and fairness. A classic Tarot deck of Suit of Swords cards contains 14 cards. They begin with the Ace of Swords and moves upwards steadily through the 10 of Swords to the four Court cards. They are the Page, Knight, Queen and King of Swords.
This suit is the mind’s receptacle that embodies all conscious thoughts and workings of the inner mind. This suit is logical, rational, practical and analytical, so it can penetrate the layers of imagination and reach the bare bones of any situation. The Suit of Swords also has a problem-solving approach to life because of which it can reach realistic decisions. This suit works a masculine force that could be very aggressive at times and almost domineering.
However, this energy originates from a thinking mind, so it is usually balanced and fair.
The Suit of Swords deals with the psychological world of man, in terms of his ideas, conversations, arguments and thoughts. It also takes into account those aspects of life that lack substance or are intangible. Swords are usually double-edged. So, this suit stands for bringing about a perfect balance between power and intellect and the way these fundamental elements are put to a good or bad purpose. For this reason, the Swords should achieve a perfect balance between the Wands (spirit) and Cups (feeling) for the maximum effect. It relates to Air. Though we can neither see it nor feel it, yet we know it is constantly moving. When still, air goes unnoticed, but when it turns into a gale or a sharp wind, we can feel its power. When seen in the human context, the Air matches with action, change, knowledge and power, though invisible.
What Do the Swords Tarot Cards Mean in A Reading?
The Suit of Swords Tarot spread is associated with emotions like ambition, conflict, courage, power, change, force, oppression, etc. In this context, action could either be positive or negative. Its negative qualities include anger, mercilessness, mental and verbal abuse, guilt and harsh judgment. These cards symbolize Libra, Aquarius and Gemini. When a seeker draws a Swords Court Card, it means that the seeker is either an Aquarian, a Libran or Gemini.
People under this sign are usually rational, thoughtful, intelligent, logical and eloquent speakers. Being rational, they prefer to have experiences of the world according to their personal experiences and draw their own observations. On the negative side, they are domineering, rigid, ruthless and quarrelsome.
What Does It Mean When A Tarot Reading Is Mostly Swords Tarot Cards?
If a Tarot spread is largely Swords cards, it means the seeker is looking for solutions to conflicts or arguments and needs to reach quick decisions. He could be faced with several disagreements or, at worst, violence. Swords come with strong and powerful messages and some negativity too. Yet, one must be careful of happenings around one.
Swords
The Suit of Pentacles
The Suit of Pentacles is connected to the mother earth element. Earth represents stability, fertility, and security. It is the foundation on which everything grows, and it nurtures plants and animals alike. This suit has 14 cards that tell you about the physical and material world. This suit is about harmony in the material world, which ensures your spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical needs are being met. The Suit of Pentacles relates to stability, wealth, and security. Pentacles speak of prosperity and success not only in wealth matters but also in your career, health, family, and body matters.
Each pentacle is engraved with one or more pentagrams. A pentagram is a five-pointed star drawn in one stroke. The pentagram in each of these pentacles symbolizes that the world is ruled by the spirit, and it’s in harmony. The suit is also referred to as the Coin Suit, and in a regular deck of cards, it corresponds to the Suit of Diamonds.
What Does It Mean To Get the Suit of Pentacles in Your Tarot Readings
The Suit of Pentacles in your Tarot reading offers insights on the major aspects of your material world. While most cards in the Suit of Pentacles often relates to mater income and possessions, there are other aspects of your material world that these cards can touch on when they appear in your spread.
In the emotional sense, the pentacles may be a symbol of security, abundance or safety. The suit of pentacles in a tarot reading can also be a symbol of the gifts and strengths you have. The cards may also signify a reward for putting effort or for investing in your gifts. The cards may also give you the direction to take if you want to gain from the use of your gifts. Simply put, pentacles show you the assets you have and their value.
Thus tarot card meanings in this case point towards appreciating what you have in your life.
What It Means When Your Tarot Reading Is Majorly Made Of the Suit of Pentacles
If your Tarot reading is made up of more than one card from the Suit of Pentacles, know that Tarot Card Meanings indicate towards issues related to finances and material things are at the center of the reading. When your reading is majorly made up of this suit, then the pentacles will take over the reading. There are fourteen Pentacles cards in this suit, and each of the cards relates to an issue in the material world. In totality, these cards provide you with an overview of how you relate to material things.
Let’s consider each of these cards in the next section and learn how they fit into the suit’s material possession puzzle.
Pentacles
Suit of Wands
The Suit of Wands is made up of 14 Tarot cards. It is found in the Minor Arcana. The cards in the Minor Arcana compared to the cards in the Major Arcana are seen to be lesser since they provide meanings related to the minor life mysteries. However, this doesn’t mean that they are not important. The cards in the Suit of Wands are related to the element fire. The astrological signs related to these cards include Aries, Sagittarius, and Leo. This suit is also related to the summer or spring season.
Fire as an element is a masculine element that is unpredictable and hot. It can also be destructive. However, it is also useful as we use it for cooking food and purifying things. Fire as a symbol represents energy, passion, and enthusiasm. This suit advises you to live your passion and to pursue things that make you excited. An individual represented by this element is passionate and adventurous. He or she is willing to push the limits to get what they want. They give their all to achieve their goals. The Tarot Card Meanings here are very positive in reflection.
Some of the features associated with this suit include:
- Inspiration
- Spirituality
- Creativity
- Strength
- Ambition
- Intuition
- Seeds of life
What It Means To Get Wands in Your Tarot Reading
Wands are like clubs in the traditional pack of cards. When you get wands in your Tarot spread, they symbolize growth, innovation, and ambition. They may also mean you have inspiration, desire for power, and competition. The suit of wands cards often appears in relation to business and work and in other instances when the reading is about your spirituality. They may also appear in a reading concerning relationships and love since they are related to desire and charm.
If you see an upright Wands card in your tarot reading, be aware that you are being advised to take action or be ready for change. Wands also represent a part of you that is related to creativity. This part allows for the creation of solutions to life problems. Wands cards in your Tarot spread may also be a warning that you are taking things too fast. In the inverted position, the wands may symbolize laziness, lack of direction, illusion, impulsiveness, or egotistical behavior. The card meanings bear a cautionary sign here.
What It Means When Your Reading Is Mainly Made Of Wands Tarot Cards
If your Tarot reading is made mainly of wands cards, it may mean that you are focused on projects that you have just started. It may also be an indication of the discovery of a higher purpose and ideas related to your purpose. The cards may show you that it’s time for spiritual awakening. You may feel restless, and you may also be feeling burning energy from the inside that may lead to a rebirth.
In the upright position, most wands cards are related to actions or ideas that help you push things. These are things you are enthusiastic about. You may also be very active at this point. Although being active is good, the cards may be cautioning you not to overdo it as it could result in burnout and fatigue. However, if your reading is made up of mainly reversed wands cards, they may show that you lack direction, or you feel that life has no meaning. This suggests that the card meanings point to a lack of clarity.
Ace of Wands
Ace of Wands is the first card in the Suit of Wands. We see a hand emerging from the clouds that has a wand. The wand has leaves that are sprouting from it while others are falling from it. Below the hand is a fertile land with trees, mountains, and rivers, but the hand and its wand are at the center of all this. In the background, we can also see a tall castle on a hill.
This card is a symbol of rebirth and new beginnings. The new leaves on the wand indicate growth and renewal. The silver sky is an indication of intuition and inspiration. The fertile land below is the best for new projects while the trees and the river are symbols of abundance and growth. The castle on the hill is a sign of the success of your ideas. Thus the card meanings here portend a very positive sign.
