Here are my notes from our Saturday morning session with Marcia Masino, the author of the Easy Tarot Guide. She talked about the correlation between the four suits of the Minor Arcana and the four cardinal virtues.
Four historical virtues and four suits
Puts an inspirational overlay, spiritual overlay on minor arcana, and streamlines the major arcana. So what you’ve got is wands fortitude, cups faith, swords justice, pentacles charity. One word for each suit. It’s a spiritual core.
Triumphs or tests. Get messages for ourselves connected with the four suits.
Pull out your four suits. You’re going to work with parner or by yourself.
Start w/suit of wands face down, shuffle, pick one: ask a question what’s the message, what’s the challenge I’m looking at?
In your handout you’ll see the first page says the suit of wands. What we’re looking for is the historical virtue through wands: courage. Fortitude. Bravery. When you start to rolodex the suit of wands in your heads, it’s going to divide into the other two words: triumphs or tests. Down at the bottom of page on you’ll see the triumph cards. This has to do with the wands being expressed in a triumphant maner. Sometimes when there’s a lovely card we say, oh, but we don’t really celebrate it as much as we could. On the other hand youo might have pulled the test cards. I’ve categorized the test cards into different challenges. Where courage might be needed. What I would like to say to you at this point is 5, 7, 9, 10 more of testing: a challenge for courage, to remain steadfast, etc. Ten: a challenge to remove unnecessary burdens in your life. I would like you to explore what the two of you see with and for each other.
Do you have the COURAGE to accept the message. Do you have the courage to shine like the queen of wands. Do you have the courage to be comfortable as a leader. Do you have the courage of the 8 of wands, to go with passion. Ten of wands has to do with leaving burdens behind. Do you have the courage to do that? So I’m really working with streamlining this to get at the essence. You can take the concept of courage and move it thorugh the entire suit. What I did on the printout are simply suggestions. To tie it in to the different cards. Astrology: If you are a fire sign person working with the moon, always a challenge, if your progressed chart is moved into a fire sign, if you’ve done a solar return and fire is strong in the chart, take this message to that level too. It can be the courage to be that Aries rebel or the courage to be that leonine capacity to shine. In the seconf part of the lecture we’re going to do a whole self reading. Focus on dift aspects of self including the soul, and talk about the queen sin relationship to the soul part of yourself. The wands is the power of courage to work with a specific energy frame called radiance. Fire has to do with radiance. The courage to be radiant, to radiate out, to be of the sun.
The next suit is cups. Now you’re going to want to get a cups message. The virtue connected to the cups is faith. Faith in love. The capacity to flow with it. Strong Cancerian, Piscean, Scorpion, there’s another message in it for you too. Shuffle and draw one cups card.
This is a message about your relationship to faith.
The sacred chalice of cups symbolizes faith. Only those with perfect faith and a pure heart could glimpse the grail. It shows up so much in the suit of cups, actually depicts or describes different kinds of things, faith in different kinds of things: faith in love, and faith in the mysteries. We’re going to talk about the triumphs and the tests. Ace of Cups a particular quality of faith: faith in miracles. Four of cups faith in spiritual guidance and vision. If you received four of cups, you particular expression of faith is faith in spiritual guidance, faith in your visions. What good is having visions if you don’t have faith in them, and the faith to flow with them – the other concept connected with water is flow. Faith and flow. Same with love. You’re either going to flow iwht it or you’re going to block it. Four of Cups: it’s important to have visions and to have faith in your vision. Five of cups: faith that you are being tested and that time will bring solutions and challenges. A number of people got 7: faith in the true vision and love from the higher self. 8: Faith in your soul quest, believing that you have a soul quest and the faith to follow it. Page: Faith in the relationship with the soul. As we work with dream interpretation, messages from the cards, synchronicity, that for me is a relationship with the soul. The page of cups symbolizes faith in that relationship. I have faith in that reality. We have the faith, and we have to flow with it. The soul speaks to us in tarot readings, and our choise to flow with it is the relationship.
Queen of Cps: Faith in the tarot.
King of Cups: Faith in the tarot.
Queen represents the soul, not as aware, King as conscious mind, more aware.
Ace: faith in miracles
2: faith in relationships love and partnering
3: faith in creativity and self expression.
4: faith in spiritual guidance and vision6: faith in family, six of cups.
5: fiath tested, faith in time
6:
7: faith in the true vision and love from the higher self
8: faith in soul quest and purpose
9: faith in abundance.
10: faith in generations, faith in continuity, faith in marriage, relationship, and that which was established strongly over time.
3: faith in abundance and creativity. If you’re a writer or an artist, faith that reativity will come and you’ll be celebrated for it.
If it’s reversed, troublesome, problematic, the flow isn’t there.
Those that are strong water signs, the gift is the challenge.
Definition of faith: I think faith is such a personal realtionship between one’s self and one’s higher self. The hierophant comes to mind. For me it’s the transcendent self, being able to trust the transcendent self. It’s a knowing that there’s a higher purpose, a divine plan, that one can trust what one is seeing in a tarot reading. It’s the capacity to move out of ego plane into transcendent plane, aka the Fool. The ability to know there’s more than what we see and that we’re being guided by the tarot oversoul, and all we need to do is tune into it. All these kinds of messages are coming at us all the time. These messages are being transmitted to us and we can have faith in ourselves to follow through with the messages. The other side of this is we can choose to tune into that and it will move you forward.
Now it’s time for your swords message. Let me tell you where I got to the swords. Traditionaly in the renaissance mediaval times, Justice … On your page in your text Justice and Truth are the themes for the suit of swords. They embody integrity or the lack of it. Justice means to treat yourself as you would treat others. Conscious recognition and acceptance of your self worth. There’s a lot of injustice in the swords cards because people are out of touch with their own integrity. If you have a problem with your personal integrity, moving out of alighnment, the swords will be troubling. Shuffle, fan, pull your card.
Pentacles: benevolence, prosperity, sharing the wealth
Break
Take the four cards that have presented themselves to you and integrate them.
Wands represent fortitude: My King of Wands represents my courage to be a leader.
Cups represents faith. My Prince of Cups represents my faith in love.
Swords represents justice. My seven of swords represents the state of balance between the “real” me and the face I show to the world.
Pentacles represents charity, benevolance and prosperity. My Nine of Pentacles represents my charity with my creations.
How did that work for you?
Pentacles has to do with crystallization into form. The energetics one more time: Wands radiance, Cups flow, Swords balance (horizontal and vertical, spirit and matter), Pentacles crystallization and form.
As I was moving around the room, there were court cards: three out of four cards were court cards, and one number. I place those on the tree of life.
The nine of swords for me, in integrity, there has been a huge emotional lesson around staying in integrity against adversity. The person hasn’t created her problems, but she has encountered those problems. Up out of mourning she has moved forward. The ten of swords has to do with deflation, in an inflated dramatic part of life. Sometimes we build a sorrowful part of life even bigger. The swords come in like a big balloon and pop it, so it deflates. Whatever the injustice was, it dissolves. It disintegrates. Then there’s the opportunity to move beyond it, to move forward. You take the integrity, you take the new balance, and you move forward.
For me, integrity is the high priestess. She’s in perfect alignment with energy. Putting that into action would be the justice card. Fighting the battles in life from the standpoint of integrity could be strength. Each Major would be a different piece. The devil in terms of integrity would be … my feel with that is the devil has to do with the shadow that hides the integrity. The struggle that we have is what births a relationship with integrity. Whether it’s fear, uncertainty, the part of us that is struggling is the part of us that’s already in integrity. The star card is in perfect integrity also.
The next part of the hour we have left
We’ll spend learning a new reading using the court cards and the aces. The whole self reading based on ancient pattern of circles, cycles of life, with a dot in the center, the quintessence of the essential self. You may want to explore a stuck or spent aspect or department of life. It offers self-awareness ego, subconscious, body (expression action and doing) and the soul. The court represents character traits and identity, distinct aspects of our complete or whole self.
The missing suit is the key. If you are missing pentacles, than everything that reading is describing, is pentacles. Labors of love, benevolence toward self or others. If cups are missing the key to integrating this reading or manifesting it is faith. If the wands are missing, courage is missing. Courage is the key piece to bringing this reading into fruition. If swords are missing, then balance, actions with integrity, is the key piece to the expression of this message.
