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 explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
HE-llo, bayyyyyyyyyybeee! — Van Halen
Last week, I started out our exploration of the tarot suits with Swords. As I pointed out, Swords are not the conventional place to start, but given that exploration involves analysis, and analysis is thought, then Swords were fitting as our first subject.
This week, it is the turn of Wands — traditionally the first suit in the tarot’s minor arcana (the 56 cards of the tarot deck that are based on a traditional pack of playing cards). There is a good reason why Wands come first, which is to do with the quality of experience that they represent. Nevertheless, today’s choice is useful in another sense: Your writer is coming down with a cold, feeling unduly sorry for herself, and is going to be invoking a fair whack of Wands energy to ensure that this article reaches you as coherently as possible.
Back to why Wands come first in the minor arcana. If the suits reflect the process of manifestation — bringing something into tangible reality — then Wands are the kicking off of that process. They are the least tangible of the suits, and considerably harder to describe than the others in terms of the quality they embody. But let me give it a go. We’ll start with the other suits first as a recap.
Cups are emotions — they are the feelings that we get about something, and they direct us ‘towards’ or ‘away’ depending on what is being felt. For example, if we feel love, we are attracted to the object of our love; if we feel fear, we are repelled from the object of our fear. (Though I am at pains to point out here that whether this means that we ultimately meet with or avoid that object, is another matter entirely. The human psyche is a complex creature.)
Swords are the thoughts that emanate from our emotions. Have you ever woken up in a bad mood and found yourself thinking darkly about how crap life can be, how winter should really be on its way out now, how you’d prefer to stay in bed? That’s an example of thought predicated on emotion. Both are interdependent, driving each other — as do all of the tarot suits.
Finally, Pentacles are the physical manifestation of your thoughts and emotions. You get out of bed, grumbling inwardly about how cold it is, so preoccupied with this thought that you stub your toe on the way to the bathroom. That is the interplay of Cups, Swords, and Pentacles.