I recently got a new tarot deck and I’ve been doing card studies to understand each one better. The little book that came with it shows that each major arcana card and each minor arcana suit connects to one of the four elements.
I’m curious about why this matters? I see wands are fire, cups are water, swords are air, and pentacles are earth. The book mentions it briefly but doesn’t really explain the purpose.
How do you use these elemental associations when you’re actually reading cards? Does knowing that a card is “water” or “fire” change how you interpret it? I’d love to hear how other readers work with the elements in their practice.
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Been playing around with element meditation before readings. I’ll visualize fire for Wands, water for Cups, that kind of thing. It feels like the cards resonate differently when I do this. I got this elemental deck last week, and if you really want to work with the elements, you might want to look at something like this.
My emotional journal entries often matched up with cups cards (water), and my workout goals and creative bursts lined up with wands (fire). We pull more minor arcana since there are twice as many of them compared to majors.
But also because they relate to smaller, daily moments instead of those big Tower or Death moments. Now I get excited when I pull something like the Three of Pentacles because it usually means something concrete is happening in my day. Wrestling with The World or The Hermit can be pretty abstract sometimes.
Page of Swords with Ace of Wands crossing - interesting combo for your question about elements. You’ve got tons of resources to pick from, kind of like when Seven of Cups shows up and you’re looking at all the options.
I kept getting Hierophant energy around Anthony Louis’s ‘Tarot Beyond the Basics.’ Not a beginner book but not crazy advanced either. What caught my eye was the Star highlighting two parts of that book. There’s a section that goes into the elements themselves, then another part where it gets into how elements and astrology work together.
The Three of Pentacles came through too, which makes me think this elemental stuff will be a good foundation for your practice.
The minor arcana cards really do mirror what we go through every day.
Cups for emotions and memories, swords for when our minds are all over the place, wands for passion and conflicts, pentacles for the practical stuff. Once I saw it that way, the elements started making more sense. They’re not just symbols, they show up in how we actually live and experience things.
One thing to watch out for is getting too wrapped up in elemental associations, as it can narrow your intuition.
I like to add extras like this with intention when I feel like that specific reading calls for it. It’s the same as using the numbers in Tarot readings, you don’t need to add extra information into each card unless you have a reason to.
Seeing Swords only as a symbol of conflict might cause you to miss their role in representing intellectual clarity. Try to keep an open mind when interpreting the cards. It’s tempting to stick to traditional meanings, but exploring different perspectives can offer new insights and deepen your connection to the deck.
The elements seem to line up with different time periods in readings - wands/fire happens in days, swords/air in weeks, cups/water over months, pentacles/earth across years. Fire energy is quick, earth energy is slow. Started factoring in these timeframes with the elements and it added another layer to my readings. Now I can sense both the energies and their timing.
Here’s what I’m wondering though, do the elements really help when cards are reversed?
Like, is an upside-down fiery wand still fiery, or does it become. I don’t know, ice? The books never seem to address this properly.
elements pair up really well in readings. Fire and air together, like the Two of Wands with the Ace of Swords, have this strong strategic energy. Water and fire are interesting though. Sometimes they clash, sometimes they balance each other out. The Queen of Cups and Knight of Wands show that pretty clearly.
Crowley’s Book 4 Part 2 has some good stuff about the tarot suits.
He’s got a chapter for each ritual weapon (wand, cup, sword, and disk/pentacle. What I found interesting is how he connects the mystical side with practical uses for each suit.
His writing can be pretty meandering and goes off on tangents about various esoteric topics, but there are some useful insights buried in there about why each suit has its particular energy. It’s worth checking out if you’re into understanding the deeper symbolism.
For timeline expectations, I’ve found the elemental rules helpful as a starting point.
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Wands = days
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Pentacles = years,
That kind of thing. That said, they’re more suggestions than hard rules. Best bet is to keep notes on your readings and see what patterns emerge for you personally. Tarot timing can be all over the place.
Publishers are really inconsistent with how they show the elements.
Like Wild Unknown has these tiny colored marks that barely show up on their matte cards, then you’ve got Modern Witch where the symbols are embossed right into the card. Pretty different approaches.
A lot of the budget decks just skip the detailed element markings on the minors altogether. Probably saves on printing costs.
I only use the majors for elemental meanings; otherwise, I agree you’re probably just overloading yourself with information and not really adding anything to your spread.
King of Wands has that fiery CEO energy while the King of Cups is more like a counselor type. Understanding the elements behind each card helped, though I still have to think about it when they come up in readings.
Something that worked for me was connecting the elements to actual sensations.
I’d hold a hot cup of tea for water, stand outside in the wind for air, grab some soil from the garden for earth, light a candle for fire. With reversed cards, I noticed they often flip the element’s energy. Like wands going from passionate to burnt out, or cups shifting from emotional fullness to feeling empty.
Those physical touchpoints help remember what each element represents.
So the academic answer involves Aristotle and alchemy and how the four elements became key building blocks. My brain’s fried, so I’ll skip the philosophy lecture, but I’ve got some book recommendations if you want them.
Each suit corresponds to an element, which relates to different areas of life (Cups = water/emotions, Swords = air/thoughts, etc).
The astrology part is straightforward (mostly)… intellectual Sword cards go with Air signs (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius). Major Arcana cards get cosmic assignments too. Like the Lovers card connects with Gemini.
These elemental connections can get complicated depending on your Tarot tradition. Much of it traces back to the Golden Dawn (both Waite and Crowley were members), but modern readers often make their own associations. The interesting part is when cards interact, their elements can complement or conflict. Fire (Wands) + Air (Swords) = intensification.
But Knight of Wands next to Queen of Cups? That passionate fire meets water. Air and Water might create emotional storms or just feel disconnected. Water and Earth usually blend well though.
Think of elemental dignities as optional. Your readings work fine without them if they don’t relate to you.
The elements in tarot go pretty deep, there’s always more to learn about them. Each suit has its own elemental energy that affects all the cards in it.
Wands are all about fire energy, passion, creativity, what gets us excited. When you combine the number meanings with the element, that’s when things get interesting. The two work together to give you the full picture of what a card means.
If you’re curious about this stuff, there are some good books on tarot numerology out there. A few apps also explain the elemental connections in a way that’s easy to understand. Once you start noticing these patterns, your readings change quite a bit.
I used to always Maybe the elemental associations in my readings, but not so much anymore.
With Major Arcana cards especially, I just focus on what they mean and skip the elemental stuff. It’s funny how much my approach has changed since I started.
ok so i just found out about this elemental dignities thing. fire/air are friends, fire/water are enemies, earth/water get along, earth/air don’t. been experimenting with it in readings.
The 3 of cups next to 5 of pentacles would mean the water element helps the earth element i guess? not sure how much it matters but it’s another layer to Maybe when reading combinations.
I had this client who was asking about her work project timeline. When I laid out the cards in suit order, wands, cups, swords, then pentacles, it basically mapped out how her whole project would go. The pattern went from the initial idea (fire/inspiration) through getting emotionally invested (water), then all the planning (air), and finally making it real (earth).
I told her she’d need to get emotionally committed to the project before diving into the logistics, otherwise things would stall out. The timing I gave her based on this ended up being pretty accurate.
Since then I’ve been watching whether cards show up in their natural elemental order or if they’re all mixed up, gives me a good sense of whether someone’s project will go smoothly or hit bumps along the way.