Minor Arcana
Minor arcana cards symbolize archetypes associated with temporary situations in your day-to-day life that allow a little more wiggle room for change based on your choices.
Cups
The Suit of Cups deals with the emotional level of consciousness and is associated with love, feelings, relationships, and connections.
Positive Associations: Thinking with your heart rather than your head, and thus reflecting your spontaneous responses and your habitual reactions to situations. Cups are also linked to creativity, romanticism, fantasy, and imagination.
Negative Associations: Being overly emotional or completely disengaged and dispassionate, having unrealistic expectations, and fantasizing about what could be. There may be repressed emotions, an inability to truly express oneself, and a lack of creativity.
Pentacles
The Suit of Pentacles Tarot cards deal with the physical or external level of consciousness and thus mirror the outer situations of your health, finances, work, and creativity. They have to do with what we make of our outer surroundings – how we create it, shape it, transform it, and grow it. On a more esoteric level, Pentacles are associated with the ego, self-esteem, and self-image.
Positive Associations: Manifestation, realization, proof, and prosperity - covering material aspects of life, including work, business, trade, property, money, and other material possessions. Manifestation, realization, proof, and prosperity.
Negative Associations: Being possessive, greedy, and overly materialistic, over-indulging and not exercising, not effectively managing one's finances, and being overly focused on a career to the detriment of other life priorities. Often required to counteract these negative aspects is a return to nature to ground oneself and rediscover what is truly important.
Swords
The Suit of Swords Tarot cards deals with the mental level of consciousness centered around the mind and the intellect. Swords mirror the quality of mind present in your thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs. Often double-edged and in this way, the Suit of Swords symbolizes the fine balance between intellect and power and how these two elements can be used for good or evil. As such, the Swords must be balanced by spirit (Wands) and feeling (Cups) to have the most positive effect.
Positive Associations: Action, change, force, power, oppression, ambition, courage, and conflict. Action can be constructive and/or destructive.
Negative Associations: Anger, guilt, harsh judgment, a lack of compassion, and verbal and mental abuse.
Wands
The Suit of Wands Tarot card meanings is associated with primal energy, spirituality, inspiration, determination, strength, intuition, creativity, ambition and expansion, original thought, and the seeds through which life springs forth.
Positive Associations: These cards deal with the spiritual level of consciousness and mirror what is important to you at the core of your being. They address what makes you tick – your personality, ego, enthusiasm, self-concept, and personal energy, both internal and external.
Negative Associations: Illusion, egotistical behavior, impulsiveness, a lack of direction or purpose, or feeling meaningless.
