The Minor Arcana
On the overarching themes of the tarot meeting the daily grind of our regular lives
While everyone of course, has had to deal with a cataclysmic shift at least once in their life, it seems unlikely that most people are grappling with such shifts on a regular daily basis. (And if we are, perhaps it really is time to reexamine and reevaluluate one's own life and career path.)
Put another way, most people don't cope with divorce, a deconstruction of religious traditions and beliefs, or calling into question their sexual and gender identity in their personal life with regular frequency (unless their occupation deals directly with them). Most times in our daily experience, the drama we have to deal with in our lives may stem from problematic supervisors at work, difficult situations with coworkers, rough patches with friends, challenging projects, or uncomfortable choices involving family, our dating life, and our finances. In the lives of ace and aro people, these can also extend to situations involving activism and advocacy, even if it is on the interpersonal level–especially when we're faced with queerphobia, transphobia and aphobia. These aren't any less important or profound than the grand big picture themes expressed in the Major Arcana, but the smaller scope and commonality of regular day-to-day situations necessitate a part of the tarot where they can be recognized and discussed in more detail.
The brings us to the Minor Arcana: A feature of the ancient tarot decks of Renaissance Europe (including the Tarot de Marseilles) that gave rise to what we now know as the modern playing card deck. While the Major Arcana is often seen as the flashier, sexier,and more iconic part of the tarot, the Minor Arcana is the part that arguably does most of the heavy lifting. It opens up important conversations about the more mundane, finer-grained aspects of our daily experience–both internally, and externally. This, incidentally, is why I personally don't read tarot with just the Major Arcana: Without the Minor Arcana, we miss so much of the broader narrative that we discover when we read the tarot.
The Minor Arcana is organized into four "suits", much like a modern playing card deck. The modern innovation that the Smith-Waite tarot is famed for was its introduction of illustrated cards. Prior to the Smith-Waite deck, the Minor Arcana in most tarot decks, (like the classic Tarot de Marseilles) were simply illustrations of the suit's symbol in the amount of the number of the card. Like a modern playing card deck, cards like the Five of Coins would just show five coins, often with some ornamentation cryptically linked into the sets of meanings attached to the card.
Pamela Coleman-Smith turned these cards into dramatic scenes that lure the reader in with their recognizable symbols and characters, yet are enigmatic and ambiguous with how they are used and staged. In the Four of Cups, we recognize the scene of a figure sitting against a tree, but why are there three cups in front of them, and why is this person looking at them with that expression on their face? And why is a hand (Coming out of the sky?) holding out a fourth cup? Is this a scene of someone who is quietly content with what they have in their life, politely refusing the contents of the fourth cup bestowed on them by the universe? Is this a scene of someone stubbornly refusing the fortune and opportunities given them because they're so obstinately focused on what they already have? Maybe it's somewhere in the middle?
In this way, the Smith-Waite deck wasn't the first to feature illustrated Minor Arcana cards, but it was the first to do so in a way that made the tarot fully accessible to modern Western culture, while at the same time capturing the ambiguity that arguably lies at the core of its magic and power.
Each suit is itself symbolically associated with either air, earth, water or fire. These are the four classical elements long believed to make up the world, before the Scientific Revolution of the 15- and 1600s. Each of these elements is in turn associated with a trait, or an aspect of human personality. This leads to the general set of connections that most people associate with the minor arcana: Wands are connected with fire (passion, willpower, and creativity). Swords are connected with air (logic, reason, and the thinking self). Cups are connected with water (intuition, love, and the emotional self). Pentacles are connected with earth (wealth, stability, and practicality).
The Minor Arcana is more than just the elemental suits though: The Minor Arcana also uses cards numbered from one (the Aces) to ten, and leans on numerology to give further meaning to the numbered cards (often referred to as the "pip cards"). The ultimate meaning then to the numbered Minor Arcana cards, is the cross between the numerological meaning of the numbered cards, and the elemental symbolism of the suits: for example, Two is the number of duality and balance, while the Swords is the suit of the mind. Therefore, the Two of Swords may talk about being of two minds about an important decision, or a struggle with what we think is the duality surrounding a situation or a person.
Numerology can be intimidating to learn, but when we are mindful of how certain numbers are ascribed certain spiritual properties (such as the numbers three and seven), or used in our society, we can also see patterns emerge that start to make intuitive sense. What helps of course, are Pamela Coleman-Smith's pictures on the pip cards, individually illustrating the meaning and themes underlying each of them. Again, this was an innovation rarely seen in previous tarot decks that were widely available.
Speaking of spiritual properties, this is where I again have to make a concession to my own biases surrounding the tarot. While I've tried to be as inclusive as possible of people who come from more non-spiritual backgrounds, I am going to be delving at times into discussions of spirituality, meditation and energy exchanges. I will promise to not urge you to bury yourself in a bathtub full of rose quartz, or fill your house with the smoke of burned patchouli…though, there is much magic to be had in the self-intimate ritual of a bath, or an incense offering to the spirit.
There’s a wide degree of messages and themes with which ace and aro people can resonate in the Minor Arcana–from the Two of Cups and Three of Pentacles, which can speak to the closeness and collaborative power of friendship or queer platonic relationships, to the Four of Pentacles and the Four of Swords, which can remind of us the need to pull back from our favorite ace or aro community activities to avoid burnout. The Major Arcana gave us a window into the large scale themes and energies that can move within our lives for months, or years. But coming out of our bird’s eye vantage point, it’s time to zoom in and talk about what these themes can mean in the nitty-gritty course of our daily lives.
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