Four ways to read a card using the quality of each suit

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

I’ve been thinking recently about the different ways that we’re able to approach a tarot card reading — not least because, late last year, I attended an afternoon workshop by Mary K. Greer (author of, among others, 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card) where a group of us spent an afternoon exploring the subject.

At one point in the afternoon, we took part in a 30-minute exercise that was conducted at a relentless pace that allowed for absolutely no planning, and little pause to ask, “Can I really do this?” We simply dived in and did it. The exercise consisted of doing single-card readings, each a minute long, moving on to the next person — and the next reading — once the minute was over. Each reading had a different theme, including doing a standard intuitive reading; summing up the card in a single word; speaking in metaphor; speaking without knowing the question; holding the card and talking about it, but not being able to look at it.

It was energising, quite exhausting and eye-opening, and I came away with two very clear insights. The first was that there is no ‘right’ way to read a card. This goes back to my statement toward the beginning of this series on tarot that readings are like myriad routes to a single destination. Some reading approaches — the routes — are well-worn ‘old faithfuls’ that you know will get you there; others are more experimental. But the message — the destination — remains unchanged.

The second is that anyone can read tarot. It is not for a few initiates. We are all initiates in our own right and in our distinct ways; we all hold The Magician archetype, as we hold all other archetypes. That doesn’t mean that everyone wants to, nor that someone should feel that they ought to. It just means that the choice is there if we have the desire. There is no barrier to entry as long as we are prepared to look at and negotiate the barriers inside us.

A lengthy preamble, I know, but I want to reinforce the idea that I’m not writing only for those who already know and work with tarot. Curiosity and a willingness to give it a go are all that are needed to start seeing how tarot can be a useful tool. Keeping that in mind, and inspired by my workshop with Mary K. Greer, here are four ways that you can approach a tarot card — this time, by harnessing qualities of the four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. Let’s step into the realm of The Magician — whose work is the mastery all four of these elements of life — and see where we go…

If you have a pack of tarot cards, go and fetch it — or look up the cards on a website (Learning the Tarot has good quality images of the entire Rider-Waite Smith deck).

Pick a card — it doesn’t matter which one — and then go through each of the four exercises below and see what you come up with.

Wands

Wands are associated with fire, creativity, divine inspiration. They are a suit of passion — not necessarily sexual passion, but a good descriptor would be ‘libido’ in its more Jungian sense: psychic energy. The lust for life.

This energy is the precursor to feeling, thought, and action (Cups, Swords and Pentacles respectively). By the same token, it is the least tangible of all the qualities that the suits represent. Psychic energy is hard to capture and dissect. Like some things that are better seen by looking out of the corner of the eye rather than directly at them — smoke, for instance — the feeling that the Wands evokes is best approached obliquely. You can’t walk up and grab it; you have to do a psychological side-step to get to it.

So, to read a card harnessing the quality of Wands, you need to remove emotion, thought and concrete thinking as much as possible from the equation. And one of the best ways to do this is to adopt a similar method to the one we used in the workshop, above: don’t think, don’t feel, don’t analyse. Just look at the card and start talking. Preferably out loud. Say the first thing that comes into your head, then the next and the next. Or write it down, if you can write quickly enough. If you can tear a small part of you away and observe yourself while you’re doing this, then see if you are having any physical reaction: a heating up; a burning in the pit of your stomach; a feeling of zinginess; whatever it is, make a note. See if it comes up again when you work with that Wands energy. Wands energy is visceral.

Once the dust has cleared and you feel you’ve gotten from the card what it wanted to give, you can then re-engage your feelings and your thoughts to start working on meaning. You will usually know when you’ve hit something interesting when you catch yourself thinking/saying, “Ah-hah!” Go with that and see where it takes you.

Cups

Cups are the seat of emotions in the tarot. They are also associated with water, emotions being watery things themselves: not quite tangible, not as nebulous as Wands, and yet with the ability to change fluidly in an instant, to ripple fleetingly across pebbles of thought, to crash on the sand in angry waves, or to span depths that even the feeler isn’t aware of. (When I dream about a soul mate, for instance, I am often swimming in the ocean, or diving into an aquamarine — or, sometimes, disconcertingly, murky and dirty — pool.)

To read a tarot card harnessing the quality of the Cups suit, try this technique: Putting all analytical thought aside — including any judgements you might have about your card-reading abilities — look at the card while focusing on your feelings. Whatever comes up (bearing in mind that nothing need be censored), try staying with it for a while, still without analysis. Sometimes this will be easy; sometimes it will be hard. It is useful to bear in mind that so-called ‘positive’ cards will not always evoke positive feelings, nor ‘negative’ cards negative feelings.

Follow the strand of a feeling backwards to see if it is attached to another one — in other words, dive beneath the feeling floating on the surface and feel what is underneath. When you’re ready, you can then start to look at the image more analytically and link what you felt with what you’re seeing. What part of the card prompted the emotion? What was the quality of the emotion? What was your reaction to it?

Obviously, if the prevailing reaction is “blah!” then that card holds no emotional resonance for you. If that’s the case, look through the cards and find one where you get an immediate emotional reaction to it. Then, if you’re comfortable, try the exercise again.

Swords

Swords are the analytical suit in the tarot deck. They are about thoughts, mental processes, the mind rather than the emotions. They are, according to Greer, “rational” and “impersonal.”

Because I tend to use the energy of the Wands quite a lot when I read, I find the idea of using straightforward analysis quite challenging. My approach is analytical, but I use it in conjunction with that fiery feel in my belly. Turning that fire off — or at least putting it to one side — is key here; and I think one of the best ways to do this is to invoke the power of the Swords themselves.

Therefore, when you look at the card, see what happens if you preface every observation you have about it with, “I think…”: “I think this card is about x,” “I think that symbol means y.” Or, if you feel yourself going into ‘I-think overkill’, then stick to short statements of fact.

If you’re unsure of a particular aspect of the card, feel free to look it up. Help yourself to as many different perspectives as you want. Information-seeking in this way is a Swords quality and one that can play an important role in getting to know the basics of each card — even if only to discard certain meanings as you develop your own reading skills.

When you feel emotions coming into play, or you’re getting an intuitive ‘nudge’, put your attention back on your mind. This is not because either of these experiences is undesirable or that they aren’t effective. Rather, this exercise is about getting yourself used to a particular quality with as little interference as possible.

Pentacles

Pentacles are associated with working with and in the tangible world, and their associated element is, unsurprisingly, earth. Pentacles are the things that we can hold in our hands, from money, to tools of a trade, to the natural resources around us.

Therefore, to harness the qualities of Pentacles when reading a card, this exercise delves into the world of the physical. It is based on one of the exercises I did with Mary Greer (with acknowledgment and thanks).

Take a card, look at it, and describe everything that you see without interpretation, without speculation and without building a narrative. For example, if you pick the Ace of Pentacles from the Rider-Waite Smith tarot deck, you might say something along the lines of, “There is a hand coming out of a cloud, and it is holding a yellow disk with a five-pointed star on it. The hand has white etch-marks around it, but there are no etch-marks around the yellow disk…”

Once you have done this, and you have a fully formed and wholly literal description, start to bring in the interpretation, speculation and narrative. What, for instance, do the etch-marks represent? Why does the hand have those etch marks around it, but not the pentacle? I have found that doing a literal reading can throw up details otherwise overlooked — ones that provide valuable insights and which add considerable depth to a reading.

I don’t think it is uncommon for people to think that tarot is a wholly intuitive or ‘psychic’ activity. Perhaps that is why it can often seem so daunting. It is a belief that can put it out of reach, that can make it unattainable or somehow special.

But essentially tarot is just a combination of all four approaches above, the ratios of each differing from reader to reader, from reading to reading. Learning the different approaches helps to demystify tarot and dispel that notion of exclusivity. It also helps us to identify and differentiate between each quality, to see when and how one kicks in and takes over, and when and how it stands back to let another one in. Sometimes all four will work together closely; at other times one will take charge. Work with the cards for a little while, and this will become clearer. It might even become second nature. That is when we move from a state of conscious incompetence to unconscious competence. It just takes some time, some patience and some practice.