Foundations · 12 min
The four suits and their elements
Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles: the element and the area of life each suit describes, and how to recognize a suit from its picture.
In this lesson you will
- Map each suit to its element and its area of life.
- Recognize a suit by its motif in the VeilSoul deck.
- Decide which suit's territory a situation belongs to.
A card shows a cup, a sword, a staff or a coin, and you have never seen it before. You can already say a great deal about it. Each of the four suits of the Minor Arcana covers one area of life, and the suit is printed in plain sight on every card.
Four suits, four areas of life
In the Waite–Smith tradition each suit is linked to one of the four classical elements, and each element to an area of everyday life. Learn these four lines and you can place any of the 56 Minor cards before you know its number.
| Suit | Element | Area of life |
|---|---|---|
| Wands | Fire | Drive, creativity, ambition, energy |
| Cups | Water | Feelings, relationships, intuition |
| Swords | Air | Thought, communication, conflict, decisions |
| Pentacles | Earth | Body, work, money, home |
The element is a way to remember the area. Fire spreads and pushes forward, like ambition. Water flows and fills whatever holds it, like feeling, while air is quick and sharp, like thought, and earth is solid and slow, like the things you build and keep.
Warm up
A quick look back before the new material. Recalling helps you remember.
Warm-up
The Queen of Wands sits on a throne holding a wand. Which family is she from, and what tells you?
Warm-up
Before drawing for Friday's interview, you rewrite “Will I get the job?”. Which version gives the reading the most to work with?
Look first
Look at these three Aces before reading on. Each shows a hand from a cloud holding one object. What is each hand offering, and what kind of gift does it feel like?
Remember
- Wands are Fire (drive, creativity), Cups are Water (feelings, relationships), Swords are Air (thought, conflict) and Pentacles are Earth (body, work, money, home).
- You can name a suit by its motif: living staves, chalices with water, straight blades, coins with a five-pointed star.
- The suit tells you which area of life a card speaks to before you know its number.
Sources: original VeilSoul text · VeilSoul card pages · the 1909 Waite–Smith imagery (public domain)