Minors…

Minors. These pesky minors. Coming from a french tradition, I have seen in my life a lot of people using the Tarot de Marseille with only the major arcana. And I must admit, that’s what I did for a long time too. For the minors, the typical responses vary from “too complicated”, or “they’re just playing cards”,  to “the majors are rich enough for readings”.

All this might be true, and I’m convinced the majors are so great in symbolism that they’re sufficient in most cases. However, I’m not going to argue these points, is that reason enough to reject them? 

In my opinion, they can be very useful sometimes, especially when we want to clarify a reading with practical details or reply to additional questions when a them has been discussed. As can be deducted from this, I usually keep my decks separated between majors and minors.

On the argument that the minors are too complicated, I would say that by selecting a numerological system to interpret them, we can reduce that complication by a lot, leaving us with a logical system instead of remembering definitions for every card.

The minor arcana is very similar in structure to playing cards, and are probably a direct correlation to them. We have one more court card per suit, otherwise the structure is identical. 

So, we can certainly read them like we would read playing cards. That would give us the advantage to be able to use the same system for playing cards and Tarot. Playing cards are easy to find when needed if we cannot use a Tarot deck. And that would also allow us to add the equivalent of the minor arcana to a Tarot deck that has only the major arcana. In that case, we could do a reading with majors only, and complete it with playing cards for additional questions or to give more details.  

There are several systems available to read playing cards or the minors. For instance, we could approach the pips, or numbered cards, as the emanation of the equivalent major arcana expressed in the qualities of the suit. A nice system where the Tarot is self contained, without having recourse to numerology, … It’s quite nice for self development. But for a practical approach, where we need details on a situation, I find it to be too generic.

Many numerological systems exist, and I’m quite sure most of them are good. There are many books using this approach. The best advice is always to select one, to get familiar with it and to stick with it. 

For a long time, asI said earlier, I must admit that I read with majors only. A few years ago, I started using the system described in Dawn Jackson’s now defunct hedgewytchery web site, Rules are simple, it does the job for me.

The first rule says that red cards are good, black cards are bad. We can easily extend this rule to mean red is yes and black is no, or red means warm and black means cold. Flexibility is always important, these rules are not written in stone. Of course, for instance, a black card surrounded by red will be less bad than if it was surrounded by black. Common sense prevails of course.

The second rule describes the suits.

Cups are the equivalent of hearts. With cups, we drink and celebrate. We’re basically talking about love, friendship, family and friends.

Deniers are the equivalent of diamonds. They represent money, wealth, means and ends. They also represent the physical body.

Bâtons are the equivalent of  clubs. They represent work, physical activities, callings and plans.

Epées are the equivalent of spades. They represent the troubles that plague us.

Third, we can consider that 1 is a little, 10 is a lot. And when having several cards, we can look at the rhythm, are the numbers increasing or decreasing? Rapidly or slowly? Warming up or cooling down?

These 3 rules should be sufficient in many readings. Just ask a question, put 3 cards down, and look at the rhythm, that should give you a reply.

If more information is needed, the hedgewythchery site described a rhyme that could be used to further define the numbers. Here it is verbatim.

 

An Ace brings beginnings, 

And Two gives exchange, 

Three shows things growing, 

But Four does not change.

 Five is the body, Its health and its stead, 

Six shows a path 

That the Seeker shall tread. 

Seven brings troubles 

That Fate has assigned,

 While Eight shows ideas

 And thoughts in the mind. 

Nine heralds changes,

 And Ten is the end, 

While Kings are the symbols Of power and men. 

Queens are the emblems Of women and truth, 

A Knave is a message, A girl, or a youth.

 

If we extend this rhyme to the minor arcana, we can consider the Valet the same way, as a message, a girl or a youth. It could also be an apprentice.

The Cavalier can be seen as a young adult, someone active in its respective suit.

Let’s take an example, and we will apply to it successively the different rules.

The question I asked was “how will be my next tarot meetup?”

We get red, black, red. We could say that the mood will be warm, will cool down in the middle of the meeting and will warm up again by the end.

We start with an concrete opportunity, a message to start, on which we apply some work to get it concrete. Of course, it seems normal that the warm feeling at the beginning with that opportunity turns into something colder. The intensity increases, and we certainly need to keep a cool head to work on whatever we’ll do in the meeting. Work that’s going to give something that will be stable. When the work is done, of course, the mood will turn warm again, with a nice increase of intensity. Aftermath of the work, the cups show a contentment, with new plans coming. 

If we were looking at the equivalent majors, we would get quite a similar message. A beginning that we work on like le Bateleur, showing our prowess, to get it under grip and control like l’Empereur would be doing. And we end up with Justice in the realm of the cups, a just and balanced contentment.

Of course there is more to the system, we can look at definitions per card, or how to apply them to different life areas. But what I have described should be sufficient to give very precise readings without having too much to remember.