AUTHOR’S NOTE: In Tarot Architect, Lon Milo DuQuette describes the Ace of Wands as the “Seed of Will” that carries the blueprint for purposeful action. I decided to extend this concept into the rest of the Aces.

The Ace of Cups suggests the “Seed of Compassion;” the Ace of Swords the “Seed of Insight;” and the Ace of Pentacles the “Seed of Experience.” As with all “origin” allegories, this seed-state appears as a dormant preparatory phase that is gravid with potential but has not yet matured into opportunity. Whenever I see an Ace in a reading, I think “Here is a promise that must be cultivated before anything useful can be made of it, a latent condition that must be ‘triggered’ through some kind of targeted stimulus.”

There is a tendency among less-experienced tarot readers to handle the Aces in the same way they interpret the Fool: a first step or new beginning that offers a chance to grow beyond present circumstances. While there are similarities, my take on it is that this optimism is premature; the Ace represents the impulse or inspiration behind stepping out in a new direction, but it is too soon to “count your chickens” since without a boost the initiative may be still-born. An Ace can open a door for us but we must still walk through it under our own power.

I very seldom see an Ace in a spread as undesirable even when complicated by reversal or compromised by ill-dignity. It is potency in its purest “root” form that we can either max out or screw up through our own action or inaction as proposed by the subsequent cards in the reading. In other words, the situation is in our hands to “make-or-break.” The fruit is not yet ripe enough to harvest, but we must closely monitor its progress or we could miss our chance for fulfillment.

In his lengthy dissertation about the numerology of the “Naples Arrangement” in The Book of Thoth, Aleister Crowley described the advent of the Ace in abstract terms as :

“Thus appears The Point, which has ‘neither parts nor magnitude, but only position’. But position does not mean anything at all unless there is something else, some other position with which it can be compared. One has to describe it. The only way to do this is to have another Point, and that means that one must invent the number Two, making possible The Line.”

Upon receiving an Ace in a spread, we must envision our own unbroken “line” to the destination with the help of the following cards or we may have trouble getting out of the starting gate. The message is one of anticipation but not yet of movement toward the goal, which requires a focused act (Wands); a motivating emotion (Cups); a productive thought (Swords) or a sense of firmness (Pentacles) to jump-start its realization. The satisfaction inherent in an Ace is not a simple matter of holding out our hand and waiting for the bounty to drop. If we ignore proactive engagement with and propagation of its growth, we could be waiting a long time for that to happen, and rumors of its imminent arrival might well translate into “never.”

As George Carlin once advised, “Ya gotta wanna.”