✦ The 56 Cards of Everyday Magic ✦
Minor arcana
The Minor Arcana mirrors the rhythms of everyday life — the emotions, choices, challenges and moments of grace that shape our inner world, told through four elemental suits.
Four suits, four elements, four ways the world touches you. Fire that wants, water that feels, air that thinks, earth that builds. Choose any card to explore its full meaning.
The Suit of Wands
the spark of desire — creativity, career, and the courage to begin
The Suit of Cups
the language of the heart — love, friendship, dreams and healing
The Suit of Swords
the blade of the mind — decisions, struggles, and hard-won truth
The Suit of Pentacles
the harvest of patience — work, money, home and the body
Continue the Journey
Meet the 22 great archetypes, see how two cards speak together — or find the deck that is meant for your hands.
✦ Understanding ✦
What is the Minor Arcana?
The Minor Arcana — the “lesser mysteries” — are the 56 cards of the tarot that speak to daily life. Where the Major Arcana announces the great turning points of the soul, the Minor Arcana describes the texture of the days in between: the argument at breakfast, the offer letter, the friendship that warms or cools, the slow building of a home. A reading rich in Minor cards is a reading about what you can touch, choose, and change this week — which makes these 56 cards, for many readers, the most practical in the deck.
The four suits and their elements
Each suit carries one of the four classical elements. Wands burn with fire — ambition, creativity, career, the urge to act. Cups flow with water — emotion, intuition, love and healing. Swords cut with air — thought, truth, conflict and clarity. Pentacles stand on earth — money, work, health and everything you can hold. When one suit dominates a spread, the cards are telling you which realm of life is asking for attention.
Numbers and courts
Within each suit, the cards run Ace through Ten and then into the four court cards. The pips tell a story in numbers: Aces are seeds, fives are struggles, tens are completions. The courts — Page, Knight, Queen, King — are the suit’s personalities: the student, the crusader, the keeper, the master. Court cards may represent people in your life or faces of yourself; learning to tell which is one of the arts our complete guide to reading tarot teaches.
The SolsTarot deck
The cards on this page are painted for the SolsTarot deck in blush watercolor and antique gold — the same deck that turns in our Daily Card Draw and pairs up in the combination tool. If you are choosing a printed deck of your own, browse the tarot deck library — or let the Deck Finder listen to your answers and introduce you to yours.
✦ Questions ✦
Minor Arcana FAQ
Fifty-six — four suits of fourteen cards each: Ace through Ten plus four court cards (Page, Knight, Queen, King). With the 22 Major Arcana they complete the 78-card tarot deck.
Not less important — differently important. Majors describe the great arcs of life; Minors describe what is actually happening this week and what you can do about it. Most practical guidance in a reading comes from the Minor cards.
Wands are fire: passion, career and action. Cups are water: emotion, love and intuition. Swords are air: thought, truth and conflict. Pentacles are earth: money, work, health and home. A suit that dominates your spread names the realm of life asking for attention.
Sometimes — a Queen of Cups may be a nurturing woman in your life. Just as often they are faces of you: the Page is you learning, the Knight you pursuing, the Queen you tending, the King you mastering. Context and intuition decide.
The cards are underlining a single realm: all Wands, your ambitions are on fire; all Cups, the heart is running the show; all Swords, a battle of truth is being fought; all Pentacles, the material world needs tending. Read the suit before you read the cards.