Overall Card/Suit Order Preferences

jalaire

I'm currently working on the book that accompanies my deck, and it got me thinking about card and suit order. I would love to know what everyone's preferences are, and why you prefer them that way.

How do you like to order the suits?

How do you order the cards in each suit? Do you like them ascending or descending?
 

reall

:)) when writing my tarot book I find it easiest to present court cards after Majors
and then pips from 1 to 10, and for suits my order was CUPS, PENTACLES, WANDS,SWORDS not sure why?x.x :) probably by topic importance?:) lolz but astrologically speaking maybe more logic way would be; fire WANDS/WORK, earth PENTACLES/MONEY, air SWORDS/MIND, water CUPS/EMOTIONS?:) if you need any help ask!^^ looking forward to see your project completed!^^:))
 

AJ

When I first came to tarot I thought of the suits as:
Swords as information
Cups, thinking about that information,
Wands, taking action on that information
and Coins, the results of those three.

After I studied the Thoth I came to think of the order as:
Wands
Cups
Swords
Coins.

Long ago, on my blog I came to use these four suit names regardless of whatever the designer had used so I've have consistent labeling for searching my blog.

I order Ace to 10, but understand the system of 10 to Ace also.
 

SarahJoy

Majors first, of course.

Then, wands, cups, swords, pentacles. Within each suit, cards ordered from ace to king.
 

Barleywine

Majors first, then Courts as the second broadest in scope (I think they deserve their own "department"), and finally the Minors, in ascending order from the simplest to the most complex (Ace to Ten). Regarding the suit order, Fire (Wands), Water (Cups), Air (Swords) and Earth (Pentacles), for no other reason than that seems to be the most common order in the literature, and it's how I learned it.
 

jalaire

Majors first, then Courts as the second broadest in scope (I think they deserve their own "department"), and finally the Minors, in ascending order from the simplest to the most complex (Ace to Ten). Regarding the suit order, Fire (Wands), Water (Cups), Air (Swords) and Earth (Pentacles), for no other reason than that seems to be the most common order in the literature, and it's how I learned it.

I really like the idea of separating out the court cards; I'm going to have to experiment with that! :)

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For my actual deck they are going to be in laid out in the same order that A. E. Waite laid them out, since that is the way I learned it, and because my deck is very closely tied to that deck

Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles
King to Ace in descending order instead of ascending.

I was just curious as to what everyone's personal preferences were. :)
 

Barleywine

I really like the idea of separating out the court cards; I'm going to have to experiment with that! :)

That's how Aleister Crowley partitioned things in the Book of Thoth:

Part Two - Major Arcana (aka The Atu - Keys or Trumps)
Part Three - The Court Cards
Part IV - Minor Arcana (aka The Small Cards)

Don't ask me why he switched to Roman Numeral section titles so late in the book.
 

rachelcat

Just to add to the mix, other suit/element orders to consider are:

Lightest to heaviest elements--wands/fire, swords/air, cups/water, coins/earth

or

Astrological order of elements--wands/fire, coins/earth, cups/water, swords/air.

I think of the wands-cups-swords-coins order as kabbalistic: father, mother, son, daughter.

Not that I've given suit order any thought at all . . . :joke:
 

Barleywine

Another interesting variable I've explored is use of the elemental qualities for timing purposes: the more fluid or "lighter" an element, the sooner a predicted event is likely to occur. So, Wands (Fire is the most subtle of the elements) is soonest, followed by Swords/Air, Cups/Water and Pentacles/Earth. In practice, these relate - at least nominally as befits the nature of the question - to days, weeks, months and years.