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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 have been drawing a lot of aces in my readings recently — both for myself and for my clients — and there seems to be an atmosphere around right now that supports the idea of new beginnings, which is what I believe that aces are associated with. So I thought that today we would focus on the aces in a tarot deck, and the ideas that they bring to a reading.
Each ace has a different quality, but they all share the same idea: that of initiation. Each represents the purest potential that its suit offers to us. It heralds the arrival of a thought, a feeling, a creative spark, a new method. It is the inspiration that precedes incarnation — it is what we draw upon from above and then manifest in the world.
As the major arcana describes the journey that our consciousness takes as we move through life, so each suit of the minor arcana describes an evolution in a particular area of our lives. The ace is the starting point of that evolution, as we take its gifts in the form of inspiration, and forge our own experience as we move along the path, ace through to ten, page through to king.
The path is not strictly linear, in that we may find ourselves seemingly going over the same experience again; and we may jump around the cards from time to time. But even if it feels like we’re traveling in circles, or going backwards, we are constantly moving forward: we revisit old ground in order to seek out something new in it, and we use what we find — no matter in what form it comes — to continue on our path. We also make different journeys along the same cards depending on what it is that we have chosen to focus on. We end one journey, and start another. We travel several paths at the same time. But at the beginning of each one, there is the moment of ignition in the form of the ace.
Let’s look at the aces individually and collectively, and see what we find. I am using the aces from the Rider-Waite Smith deck because there is a symmetry to their design that helps illustrate certain key ideas, and there is a clarity to what they describe that is very much to the point. These cards don’t pussy-foot around.
First of all, the cards make it clear that what they bring is divinely inspired: the process of initiation has its roots in spirit. Each card depicts a disembodied hand, radiating light, appearing from the clouds with its offering. Each shows the hand as visually discrete from the ground or water beneath it. There are no other clouds in the sky but for the ones surrounding each hand. There is no room for confusion here. The objects are not being forced on us, but they are being presented to us in a way that suggests that the energy behind them is resolute: “This is what is here for you right now. It is yours for the taking.”
What is more, there is a symmetry to them: in the Aces of Wands and Cups, the hand comes in from the right-hand side of the card; in the Aces of Swords and Pentacles, from the left. Why is this, I wonder? Is it to emphasize that no matter what the outward manifestation, that everything in heaven is in balance, in order — and therefore everything here is as well, though we might not see it from our limited viewpoints? As above, so below.
The Ace of Wands
Wands represent fire, creativity… mojo; and the Ace of Wands is the initiation of that fiery energy.
In the image, we see the hand as if it has just moved into the picture from the right, holding the staff that we first encounter on the table in front of The Magician along with a sword, a cup and a pentacle. (As an aside, there is an argument, which I hold to with some decks, that the wand makes its first appearance in The Fool, who carries a staff across his shoulder; but in this deck the objects look and feel dissimilar. Or perhaps it is because The Fool is as yet ignorant of the power of creativity, and fails to recognise it to the extent that the only use that he has for it is as a knapsack.)
This wand is vital. Far from being fashioned from wood that has been separated from the tree, and consequently has no life, this wand embodies life: young, green leaves burst from the main bough, unable to be contained by it. Below, the land is green too; vibrant. There is an outline of a building on the left, perhaps a castle, that seems to rise above the mountains behind it. Does this symbolise the potential, as yet unfulfilled, of what creativity can achieve when we build something in service to the divine? Or is what we create is simply an empty shell if it does not sit in balance with the rest of nature? What is it that you can see in this card?
The Ace of Cups
Unlike the Two of Cups, which tends to describe love between two individuals, the Ace of Cups is the love that flows from creator to creation. This is “agape love” — love for life itself, given without condition.
In Tarot: Mirror of the Soul, Gerd Ziegler writes of the Ace of Cups: “The Ace of Cups is the feminine counterpart to the Ace of Wands; open, receptive, surrendering; bearing the transformatory power of giving love.” The image is richly symbolic, from the five streams of water — possibly referring to the five senses — and the dove, symbol of peace, carrying the host; to the vessel itself, which carries on it the letter “M” or “W.” As far as I can tell, there is no definitive interpretation of the letter, though theories abound, including its referring to the Hebrew letter for ‘water’, or a nod to the deck’s co-creator, Arthur Edward Waite.
Whatever the exact meaning of the symbols, the picture evokes for me a pervading feeling of abundance — but abundance in a spiritual rather than material sense. Agape love is offered freely, and knows no limits because it springs from a source that is itself unlimited: the hand rests above the earth, its origin unknown; and yet what it offers is earth-bound. We are free to accept it, to draw from it, to misunderstand it, to lose sight of it: all of these actions, and more, are described in the ensuing thirteen cards in the Cups suit. The Ace remains unaffected, a reminder of our potential.
The Ace of Swords
Swords as a suit represent the mind, and while some — such as the Five or Eight of Swords — evoke situations where we lose our mental footing, the Ace of Swords signifies clarity and truth. It is, in essence, divine sight, unfettered and free from the various obstacles that we, as humans, put between us and what it is that we are looking at.
Emerging from storm clouds, a sword is held aloft, the golden crown encircling its tip and the green foliage a contrast to the barrenness of the mountains beneath it. The leaves on the left look like they come from the yew: a tree that is often solitary, reaches a great age, and yet has the power to kill a man. The fronds on the right seem to be seaweed: life that comes from the ocean — parts of which still remain inaccessible to our explorations. There is wisdom here; there is the intimation that truth is reached alone, and that it can often rise up from those parts of us that are not altogether knowable. It can be harsh medicine that asks to be treated with the utmost respect (yew), or it can heal (kelp, for instance). Either way, when wielded in service to a higher authority (the crown), its inspiration is empowering and liberating.
The Ace of Pentacles
A hand makes a simple offering of a pentacle, while below the Earth is in full bloom, with flowers in the fields and fruit on the boughs. I love the imagery on this card, which says it all without affectation: here it is, a gift from the divine. Use it well.
Pentacles represent the material world in which we live: our physicality, our possessions, what we earn, the work that we put into something and the value that we hold for what we have to offer. It can be the recognition that we need a new skill (the Three of Pentacles); it can be hard slog (the Eight); it can be the inability to recognise the gifts that we do have (the Five) — but I feel that the message from the Ace is that the abundance that we seek is most meaningful when it is seen as connected to our spirit, not separate from it.
The Queen and the King understand this: their worth is seated in who they are as well as what they have. The landscape of the Ace is echoed in their surroundings as what is offered as potential in the first card is manifested in the final two.
Whether we are aware of it or not, our actions here on Earth are performed in concert with a force that (literally in the four Aces) has a hand in what we do. Which means that the origins of our thoughts, words, actions, creativity — our own origins — are inseparable from it. When we start to understand this, we have started to walk the later pathways of the major arcana as we follow a calling that transcends our physical surroundings and causes us to separate from the patterns and clamour of things that no longer serve our journey. The Aces are the initiation of that process, and the goal. Through the cards, we travel full circle.
That’s the order of the suits, IHVH. I heard one tarotologist describe it as “the process of becoming.” Fire: conception, will. Water: the form and design. Air: decisions and forming. Earth: realization.
I like to think of the archetype of the Ace of Pentacles as one penny. It’s the fundamental unit of money, any sum can be calculated in pennies. It’s the smallest symbol of the concept of value put into a physical token.
Well, there is a lot that could be said about all the aces. But I like the Ace of Pentacles the best. I admit bias, it’s my “birth card,” according to the cartomancy system I use. I think Crowley also liked the card because it was on the bottom, and was an ideal place to put his sigil as a symbol of the whole deck. In a sense, the Ace of Pentacles is the grounding for all the other cards.
Thank you, Liz!
Yes, Charles, a very helpful observation, and I agree that the Ace of Pentacles has a very different quality to it. What you write is similarly spoken of about the Thoth Tarot; and I believe that Aleister Crowley considered the Ace of Disks to be one of the most – if not the most – important cards in the Thoth.
A part of me was actually deliberately avoiding the Crowley interpretation, however, because I wanted to see if there was a parallel that could be drawn between the four cards. Nevertheless, when I was writing about the Ace of Pentacles, what came out was wanting to go full-circle rather than simply wanting to describe a starting point. It didn’t work in the way the other aces did.
Now that I think of it, the Aces are ordered in a specific way: Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles – Energy, Emotions, Thoughts, Manifestation. As you move along, there is an increase of density. Spirit becomes matter. The Pentacle can then be seen as the culmination of that process. Interesting.
Inspiring and beautiful as always, Sarah. Thank you!
Love
Liz xx
I don’t have time to write but a mere few sentences, so I will just drop you a brief note.
You say the four aces are about initiation. But one ace is different. I think it is the most important card in the deck.
The Ace of Pentacles is not about initiating anything, it is about the culmination of all things into their ultimate form in the physical plane. It has unique symbology. Of the four aces, it is the only one with the horizon mostly obscured. We see distant mountain peaks through an opening in a flowery hedge.
Consider that when you open a new Tarot deck (at least this was true of the last RWS I bought) the deck starts with the Fool and on the bottom is the Ace of Pentacles. Tarot is often considered a “path” from the highest, purest spiritual realmls, taking that energy down through levels to the final form it takes in physical reality. But we can stand on the ground and look up at the spiritual realm. I think that’s what the little opening in the garden wall is for. We see the distant mountains, I think those are the same mountain peaks appearing on the card The Fool.
That’s what I feel like when I draw an Ace, Len. You’re picking up on those Ace-like vibes … 🙂
— S
Sarah,
Thank you. Not sure whether it’s me finally beginning to “get it” or the quality of the subject matter but this piece was downright stimulating, exciting even.