The 56 Minor Arcana: four suits, and why they speak about this week

Fifty-six of the 78 cards are Minor Arcana — more than two-thirds of the deck. Beginners tend to put all their attention on the 22 Majors because the names are dramatic, then find the rest dull. In fact the Minors are the part about ordinary life, and in most spreads the majority of what you draw will be Minors.

Four suits, four regions of a life

• Wands — action, drive, things just started. Hot, fast, easy to burn through.
• Cups — feeling, relationship, what you actually feel rather than what you decided to feel.
• Swords — thought, speech, conflict. Sharp, and usually painful to use.
• Pentacles — work, money, the body, the things that need doing again next week.

The dominant suit says more than any single card

When a spread comes up with three Swords and one Cup, it usually means the situation is being thought about more than it is being felt — you have analysed it thoroughly and not yet asked how you feel. That is already an answer, before any card is interpreted.

A spread of nothing but Pentacles often says the opposite: a question that seemed to be about meaning is actually about something concrete — money, health, or time.

Four ranks, and one trick for reading them

Each suit has ten numbered cards and four court cards: Page, Knight, Queen, King. A memorable reading of the ranks: the Page is learning, the Knight is overdoing it, the Queen has mastered it inwardly, the King has mastered it and taken responsibility for it outwardly.

With court cards, the useful question is not "who is this" but "which part of me is behaving like this". A Knight of Swords is not necessarily another person; very often it is you, halfway into an argument that did not need having.