Lee
LOL! I hate to disappoint my friend Umbrae, but we are not in disagreement. Either he has misread my post or, more likely, I was unclear.Umbrae said:Learn not by suits….
Lee?
I'm not recommending writing down specific meanings for each card, although you can certainly do that if you want to, and if you want to do it by suits or by numbers, it matters not to me.
I was merely suggesting writing down a meaning for each suit, and a meaning for each number, and don't write down the combination of the suit and the number; rather, do the combination in your head while you're looking at the card.
By all means, lay out the 2's, the 3's, etc. In fact, if you'd like to determine the meanings of the numbers from the corresponding majors, then lay out the Bateleur with the Aces, the Popess with the 2's, etc.
Also, by the way, just because most people define the suits with the elements, it doesn't mean you have to. You could define the swords as conflict, the cups as sustenance, etc. You could define the upright suits one way, and then define them entirely differently for the reversed suits, so then you would end up with eight suits, in effect (I stole this idea from John Gilbert).
And another by-the-way, for the majors, I think the best thing is to look at the card itself and pay attention to what the people are doing. You can get a lot of mileage out of assigning meanings to certain factors such as (and these are just examples, you can define them as you like):
Is the person looking right (conscious awareness) or left (intuitive awareness)?
Are they standing (active) or sitting (passive)?
Are they clothed (employing a persona) or nude (revealing their truth)?
None of these suggestions are original with me, it's all stuff others have said in the past.
-- Lee