It’s the inexplicable, the irrational, the stuff that comes straight from your heart and flows in all kinds of directions (whether you want it to or not). Sometimes it’s a running river, sometimes it’s blocked up by a dam. Water has flow, right? Sometimes it’s an uncontrollable torrent, sometimes more of a dried-up trickle. This is your soulful, emotional self your feelings and your intuition.

Similarly, the suit of pentacles in tarot represents these physical areas of our lives, and you may see lots of seeds, fruit and trees in these cards, as well as mountains, buildings, marketplaces, gardens and so on.įive and Page of Pentacles from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Water

Earth is tangible, weighty and real – I can hold it in my hands or experience it via my senses. So the element of earth represents my body and health, my sex life, my physical surroundings and my relationship with nature and the built environment, and other ‘practical’ areas of my life – crafts, work, money. These 56 cards are all about day-to-day life: the stuff we go through as living, breathing, interacting humans, the things we create, the things we feel, the things we think, the things we do.Įach of the four suits in the minor arcana corresponds to one of the four elements, like this:īelow I’ve given a few examples to show how the elements are used and illustrated in a brief selection of tarot cards. The aim here is not to give any definitive guide to these cards’ meanings (you’ll probably have your own ideas about these, which I hope you’ll share in the comments!) but more to get you looking at your own cards through this lens. The best place to start understanding the elements in tarot is by linking the four suits of the minor arcana - so that’s the wands, swords, cups and pentacles cards - to their corresponding elements. If you use a deck like the Wild Unknown, for example, you might struggle to find elemental symbols, whereas others (like the Rider Waite Smith or the Shadowscapes I’ve used throughout this post) are rich in visual clues. Here I’m just focusing on the four ‘classical’ elements that I use in my own tarot practice.Īlso, I’m aware that every deck is different and some depict the elements far more than others. Some people add a fifth and even a sixth element to this system, others work with an entirely different set of elements.

There are plenty of approaches you can take here.

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Symbols of the 4 elements