The Minor Arcana of the Tarot

Most anyone is familiar with the Major Arcana of the tarot, but next to nobody is truly familiar with the cards and their meanings of the Minor Arcana. As such, the Minor Arcana is a collection of suits that is frequently used as playing cards, especially in European countries. There are the clubs, the coins, the swords, and the cups. Interpreting these cards within a Tarot reading is not always considered although sometimes they are most valuable when seeking to underscore a perhaps ambiguous display of the Major Arcana.

The clubs generally symbolize the peasant but in today's work this may also refer to the manual laborer or industrial worker. Anyone who uses their hands to produce work results would be symbolized by the clubs, but interestingly the same is also said of those who work with their minds in the creative processes. The coins then and now are relegated to the merchant and shopkeeper. This may be the CEO of a successful retail business or the store manager of a small mom and pop shop. Cups point toward the religious leader but in some cases this may also refer to a spiritualist medium or counselor while the swords point toward the soldier, regardless of rank or outfit.

Of all the cards that make up the tarot's Minor Arcana, the queens are perhaps the most fascinating. The Queen of Clubs is known for depicting a down to earth intuition that must be tempered with patients, while the Queen of Coins denotes either a woman with wealth or a foolish woman who seeks to keep up a façade of wealth although her wealth has long since crumbled away. Great care is to be taken when the Queen of Cups presents herself because right side up she speaks of loyalty and love but upside down she may warn against a person close by who is pretending at loyalty and instead is practicing deceit. This is a much dreaded card in the Minor Arcana of the tarot.

The Queen of Swords, on the other hand, is an excellent example of wisdom that is coupled with life experience or perhaps gained by the painful lessons of the past. As it pertains to the tarot reading that perhaps is a bit uncertain at the onset, this card is most welcomed and exemplifies in many ways why a reliance on the Minor Arcana cannot be overemphasized!

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