Musings of a beginner - About the pips

Migdal93

So, I have started my journey with tarot this month, so I feel like a "tabula rasa", which I believe it's good. At the same time, the pips made me scared (made an earlier thread about that and got some amazing help) so today I started to think and research a bit about the cups, coins, wands and the swords.

These are some basic impressions I had, but I wanted to share them for two reasons - 1, other beginners might find them helpful, 2, others can join in and share a bit of their impressions as well. I think that by discussing the pips we can all get new insights!

So I used the elements, my intuition and some first impressions. (Earth for coins, water for cups, air for swords and fire for wands. My first language is portuguese and I'm translating this from my notes so apologies is some words feel weird.)

My meaning for:

Earth - Solidity, stability, strenght of character and thought. The earth is the mother, so feminine energy comes into play.

Water - Fluidity, speed (high or low), hidden danger (the sea can be calm or angry). Life sustenance. Simple things, good things, effectiveness.

Air - Volatile, invisibility, light, can be gentle or ferocious (I'm thinking a good breeze or a hurricane.) , "A change of air", beginnings or memories of the past (air carries scent, scent triggers memories.)

Fire - Destruction, renovation (for some reason when I think of fire Shiva ALWAYS comes to my mind.) strenght and sometimes agressiveness. Can be incontrolable. "Fenix", something devastating. Lots of energy.

About the suits -

Coins - They are solid, shiny, wanted. If well used, can bring lots of happines and peace. If not, can bring sadness, feelings of failure, pain (can be used in relation to money, but I don't think we should ONLY think of that). This phrase I took from a website - Can be solid as the earth, but coins circulate like the air.

Cups - Security (the liquid stays inside the glass, secured, unless something happens to it and it spills), something within our reach (we can always hold cups in our hands), (A toast? Happines, and accomplishment, both.)

Swords - Agression, security, to explore new places and things (since you feel secure with it), conflict (causes pain), "rips" good things and bad things as well, courage, strategy (to be able to use it).

Wands (so here in Brazil, the wands are read as paus. Paus means wood, sticks. But a wand reminds me of magic. So there are actually two meanings for this one.) - Wands (stick): Order, strenght, authority, natural order of things (since it's made of wood). Wands: At the same time, they were used by mages and such as channels of energy and spells. So they could also mean something magic, occult, surprising.

Hope this can be of use to someone! I'm using numerology together with all this and I feel that it completes the picture perfectly.
 

Onaorkal

I love your approach! And I agree with your keywords and ideas, it makes a lot of sense to me! :)