Oh, would it be a good idea to know the basic principles of Kabbalah, the Hermetic Kabbalah of course, or would that be unnecessary to what I'm using it for?
Everything further will help you, but without the fundamental building blocks of the letters and the Tree, nothing else will make sense. So - one step at a time. It's like the astrology of the hermetic Tarot - it's not the deepest astrology, but you have to know the names of the signs and the planets, rulerships, the meaning of exaltation and detriment, etc. The mythology of the planets, e.g. why Mars means war, excitation, agitation, energy, etc. - is not technically astrology, but it helps bring it all together once you get the basic elements in place.
The only basic concept that can be grasped right away -at least it can be pictured - is that of emanation, and its corrollary, re-integration. The Tree of Life is a diagram of emanation, it is not static; so the way to view the four suits as four elements hermetically kabbalistically is to see them as a dynamic outpouring of that element in ten emanations. A pip card is not just a picture with fixed and closed meanings, but a point whose meaning is informed by the card that came before and the card that comes after. It is all in a circle, cycle, from the Fool to the Ten of Coins, and then to the Fool again. The letters - the paths between the Sephiroth - are the conduit of the emanations. That is the Golden Dawn teaching.
The emanation of the Sephiroth is sometimes portrayed as a lightning flash, from Kether to Malkuth; "climbing" the Tree back to the source, from Malkuth to Kether, can be found portrayed as a Serpent - the Serpent of Knowledge - in the Tree of Life.
It's best to learn with somebody - not least so that you feel confident pronouncing Hebrew words if you aren't comfortable with learning foreign pronounciation from books - but the best advice is to start with the simple building blocks, the bricks of the temple, first, and then to try to discern the meaning of the form that the architect has designed.