AUTHOR’S NOTE: If asked by a tarot beginner to identify the least tedious way to become more familiar with reading the cards, my advice (other than “practice, practice, practice”) would be to acquire a fundamental understanding of each card (no more than one or two keywords similar to the way Lenormand cards are read) and a thorough grasp of the interaction between the four classical elements: Fire, Water, Air and Earth.

Although it presumes a working knowledge of rank, suit and number that is almost identical to common playing cards, basic interpretation of any tarot card in a spread demands only a modicum of card-specific savvy that can be picked up on-the-fly; elemental properties require very little in the way of memorization; and together they provide all that is needed to get off to a solid start. (Trustworthy beginner’s books offer suitable “training wheels” for this purpose; I would be wary of online “presenters” who may know little more than the seeker and create a “blind-leading-the-blind” scenario.)

The court and pip cards are already sorted into the four subcategories of Wands (Fire); Cups (Water); Swords (Air) and Pentacles (Earth), so all that remains is to brush up on traditional rank, suit and number theory, then slowly accumulate a vocabulary of core meanings to build into that structure. Starting with inclusive generalities and narrowing them down to specifics through practical application is a surefire way to come up with a personal inventory of reliable definitions without having to look up everything in the middle of a reading. I prefer this gradual approach to just throwing the whole thing wide-open to intuitive guesswork and winging it; my style is to work from a foundation of baseline knowledge and augment that with a storyteller’s nod to inspiration, imagination and ingenuity, with intuition a distant fourth since all-too-often it comes from “where the Sun don’t shine.”

For example, knowing that Three is a number of growth, expansion and opportunity and that the suit of Cups has to do with emotional matters, you can draw the conclusion that this can be a very enthusiastic relationship card, while the 5 of Cups is burdened with the disruptive Five that can put the emotions into a tailspin and derail the smooth progress of the relationship.

With the court cards, the main thing to know is the four levels of maturity that run from Page (“wet behind the ears”); to Knight (competent and potent in action); to Queen (settled and stable); to King (decisive and authoritative). Adding the elements to the equation adjusts the attitudinal and behavioral complexion of each court card. These qualities can also be applied to the querent’s own state-of-mind regarding the situation rather than to other people involved in its development.

The Major Arcana (aka “trump cards”) can be brought into this model by association. The broad archetypal descriptions for the 22 trumps outstrip the more mundane meanings of the court and pip cards, while elemental alignment can be achieved via astrological correspondence for 19 of them and direct elemental correlation for the other three. There are twelve zodiacal trumps that adopt the element of the associated sign; seven planetary trumps to which we can apply the element of the sign that each planet rules; and three primary-element trumps – the Fool, the Hanged Man and Judgement – that are linked to Air, Water and Fire respectively.

The key objective with the Major Arcana is to comprehend the philosophical and psychological archetypes they represent; their elemental attributes are secondary to their functional characteristics and are mainly of use when relating them to the courts and pips for specific purposes.