Minor Arcana
The Minor Arcana are the 56 tarot cards divided into four suits: Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. Each suit runs from Ace to Ten plus four court cards, and together they describe everyday events, feelings and decisions.
Also known as: pip cards
If the Major Arcana are the chapters of a life, the Minor Arcana are its days. Each suit holds fourteen cards: an Ace, the numbered cards Two to Ten, and four court cards, Page, Knight, Queen and King. The suits broadly match today’s playing cards: Wands with Clubs, Cups with Hearts, Swords with Spades and Pentacles with Diamonds.
Each suit has a theme: Wands for energy and ambition, Cups for feelings and relationships, Swords for thought and conflict, Pentacles for work, money and the material world. In the Rider–Waite–Smith deck every numbered card shows a scene, an idea Pamela Colman Smith drew partly from the fifteenth-century Sola Busca deck.
Numbers carry meaning too. Aces are beginnings, Twos choice and balance, Threes growth, Fours stability, Fives challenge, Sixes harmony, Sevens reflection, Eights movement, Nines near-completion and Tens the full cycle. Combine number and suit and you have the card’s core message: the Three of Cups is growth in friendship and celebration.
It is easy to treat the Minor Arcana as less important. In practice they show where your choices actually live, in conversations, habits and daily decisions, which is where most change begins.