Minor Arcana Made Simple: Suits, Numbers and Courts

The Minor Arcana is simpler than it looks: four suits, ten numbered cards in each, and four court cards. Learn what each suit stands for and what each number means, and you can read all 56 cards without memorising them one by one. That is exactly how I teach it in my tarot course.

Many of my online students join from Singapore, often after a long workday, and the first thing they tell me is that the Minor Arcana feels like a wall of cards. I want to show you that it is really a small grid you can carry in your head.

Why the Minor Arcana Feels Hard at First

Most beginners fall in love with the Major Arcana first. The Fool, the Star, the Moon: these cards are dramatic, and they carry big themes. Then you open the rest of the deck and see 56 more cards, and it feels like starting over.

The problem is not the cards. It is the method. If you try to learn each card as a separate story, you will tire quickly and confuse them. If you learn the structure, the meanings start to assemble themselves.

Think of the Minor Arcana as the everyday layer of a reading. The Major Arcana speaks to the larger chapters of life. The Minor Arcana speaks to the conversations, decisions, moods and tasks inside those chapters. That is why it matters so much in practice.

The Four Suits: Four Areas of Everyday Life

Each suit is linked with an element in the tradition and points to a particular area of experience. When a suit shows up often in a spread, it tells you where the reflection is centred.

• Wands (Fire): energy, drive, creativity, ambition, new ideas and the spark to begin something.
• Cups (Water): feelings, relationships, connection, intuition and what we value emotionally.
• Swords (Air): thoughts, communication, decisions, truth-telling and mental tension.
• Pentacles (Earth): work, money matters, the body's routines, home, time and practical effort.

A simple exercise I give students: shuffle the deck, pull five Minor Arcana cards, and before thinking about numbers at all, name only the suits. "Two Cups, two Swords, one Pentacle" already tells you this is mostly about feelings and thinking, with a practical thread running through. You have read the spread at a high level in seconds.

The Numbers: A Story That Runs from Ace to Ten

The numbered cards follow a cycle. Once you know it, you can apply it to every suit. Here is the version I use in class:

1. Ace: a seed, an opening, raw potential.
2. Two: a choice, a pairing, finding balance.
3. Three: first growth, collaboration, early results.
4. Four: stability, structure, sometimes standing still.
5. Five: disruption, challenge, something unsettled.
6. Six: adjustment, generosity, moving on from difficulty.
7. Seven: assessment, patience, testing your position.
8. Eight: movement, effort, momentum or feeling stuck in a pattern.
9. Nine: near completion, a peak, what you have built up.
10. Ten: the end of a cycle, fullness, sometimes too much.

Now combine the two. The Five of Cups is disruption in the area of feelings: a disappointment, something you are mourning. The Five of Pentacles is disruption in the practical world: feeling left out in the cold, short of resources. The Five of Wands is disruption of energy: friction, competing ambitions. You did not need to memorise three meanings. You built them.

The Court Cards: People, Roles and Ways of Acting

The court cards confuse students more than anything else in the deck. Each suit has a Page, Knight, Queen and King. I teach them as ways of expressing the suit, rather than as fixed people.

• Page: the learner. Curious, open, still finding their feet with this suit's energy.
• Knight: the mover. Active, sometimes impulsive, carrying the suit's energy forward fast.
• Queen: the inner master. She holds the suit's energy with depth and care.
• King: the outer master. He directs the suit's energy with authority and responsibility.

So the Queen of Swords is someone who thinks clearly and speaks honestly from experience. The Knight of Cups is a romantic, an idealist who follows his feelings. The Page of Pentacles is a student of practical skills, perhaps starting a new job or course.

In a reading, a court card might point to another person, to a part of you, or to an attitude the situation asks for. I encourage students to ask, "Who is acting like this right now?" and let the context answer.

How a Tarot Course Helps You Put It All Together

You can learn the grid from a page like this one. What a good tarot course adds is practice with feedback. Reading alone, it is easy to fall back on keywords and miss the conversation between cards.

In my classes, we work in short, repeated rounds:

• Pulling three cards and naming suits, then numbers, then the full meaning.
• Comparing the same number across all four suits, side by side.
• Sorting the 16 court cards by role, then by suit, until they stop feeling like strangers.
• Writing a short journal entry after each practice reading, so your own language for the cards develops.

Students also learn the ethics of reading. Tarot is a reflective practice and a tradition with a rich symbolic language. It is not a fixed prediction and not a substitute for professional advice on health, legal or financial questions. A thoughtful reader helps someone look at their situation more clearly and decide their own next step.

Three Common Beginner Mistakes

Reading every card as a fortune

Minor Arcana cards often describe a mood or a moment, not an outcome. The Three of Swords can simply describe a hurtful conversation you are still thinking about. Read it as a mirror, not a verdict.

Ignoring the pattern of the spread

Before you read individual cards, count the suits and notice repeated numbers. Three Eights in a spread speaks loudly about movement and effort, whatever the suits are.

Locking the court cards to one meaning

If you decide the King of Pentacles is always "an older wealthy man", you will miss half the readings where he simply asks you to take steady responsibility for your own resources.

A Simple Daily Practice to Learn the Minor Arcana

You do not need hours. Ten quiet minutes each morning is enough to build fluency within a few weeks.

1. Separate the 56 Minor Arcana cards from the Majors.
2. Draw one card and say its suit and number aloud.
3. Build its meaning from the grid: "Seven, so assessment, in Wands, so energy and ambition."
4. Look at the image and notice one detail that adds to or changes your reading.
5. Write one line in a notebook about where this theme might show up in your day.
6. In the evening, glance back at your line and notice what you observed.

This last step is about reflection, not proof. The aim is to deepen your relationship with the symbols so that, when you read for others, the meanings come naturally and kindly.

Where to Go Next

Once the suits, numbers and courts feel familiar, the whole deck opens up. You will notice that a reading begins to flow like a conversation rather than a list of definitions. That is the moment many students tell me tarot finally "clicked".

If you want guided practice, structured lessons and a small group to read with, a course is the fastest way forward. We cover the Major and Minor Arcana, spreads, ethical reading and how to build your own reflective style.

Dr S Pujah teaches in person in Dubai and online for students across Abu Dhabi, the GCC and Singapore.

When you are ready to take the next step, you can see the tarot course and the other courses I teach and choose the one that fits your rhythm.