Super Easy Tarot Tips
I definitely didn’t come up with these, but they’re worth repeating!
Interpreting the suits
The pip (minor arcana) suits can tell you what aspect of life is being discussed. Everyone can have their own definitions, but often –
Pentacles = Earth and reveal income and money, home life, all domestic issues, family, and platonic relationships.
Cups = Water and reveal emotions, romantic relationships, subjective experiences, and personal need.
Swords = Air and reveal mindset, objectivity, professional relationships, pain, and difficult or professional (“it’s just business”) choices.
Wands = Fire and reveal passions, desires, boundaries, sexual relationships, burdens, and choices borne out of inner need.
Noting which suit is dominant, absent, or balanced with another suit can provide instant context to a reading. You can actually provide really insightful interpretations just based on the suits and how they’re arranged next to each other, before ever considering what each card actually is.
Example: If you draw a 6-card spread about finances and there are 4 wands and 2 cups, you know the issue or blockage your client is facing is probably about what they really want out of life and how they feel about their job and current status.
Pip sequence
You don’t have to memorize numerology to use pip numbers. Each suit represents a progression from beginning (Ace) to end (10). If you look at a number 7 card, you don’t have to remember what 7 might mean numerologically. You already know that 7 is getting pretty close to the end of the suit, and this card is going to represent something already well developed and headed towards completion, but it isn’t quite there yet.
Example: You draw a 3-card spread about how someone’s relationship is going. You get an Ac, a 2, and a 9. You can interpret that this person’s relationship is still in the beginning stages, in the phase where a lot is still being worked out. However, there is an aspect of their relationship where they already feel like old friends.
Court cards
If you understand the numbered cards to be events and circumstances, court cards can easily become roles, identities, and behaviors. Switching court cards from having to be a person, and allowing them to be aspects of personhood, can make them easier to read. Using this interpretation, a court card can be:
- The role or persona a person feels they must take
- An aspect of someone’s overall identity
- The category or type of behaviors needed or displayed
- The resulting effect of a situation; the court card is how people are made to feel, act, or react
- Etc.
Generally, pages are beginners, learners, experimenters, and observers. Knights are in the thick of things, taking actionable steps and affecting the world around them. Queens represent the wisdom and knowledge of their suit. Kings represent managing, ruling, and delegating within their suit.
Example: In a spread about becoming a better person, one card is the Knight of Wands. The reader can’t think of anyone they know who is a Knight of Wands type and doesn’t know who it could be referring to. If the card is reframed as a category of behaviors, the reader might see that they should more often take action and stand their ground.
Exercise suggestion!
Take out all the major arcana cards and do practice readings with just the pips and court cards. Only interpret suit, pip number, and title (that is, if the card is a page, knight, queen, or king). See what interpretations you’re able to come up with only using these 3 factors and not the images on the cards or any traditional meanings.
