The Four Suits In The Wild Unknown

[TheLoracular]

Rather than jumping into the Major Arcana or any specific card as the next topic, I decided to talk generally about the four suits.  Like any proper tarot, TWU uses the four classical elements and then has them embodied with the conventional Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles

The deck creator doesn't have anything to say on the suits in the official guidebook, letting normal conventions and our own intuitions guide us through the suits.  So I'm not going to get into the theorycraft of the elements either at this time and place.  Others are welcome too 🙂

The Wands

 

Having branches as very primal and nature-based wands completely fits with this deck.   Only the ace is flowering.   Only the 2 of Wands is black at the bases of the wands and lightness slowly appears as you follow upwards to the base.  These two cards have probably the most colorful backgrounds.  Almost all (but not all) of the wands are black: they are white, however, on the 7 and on the Daughter (Page) and Father (King) of Wands.   The 7 is also the only card in the suit that has a wand on fire and it seems especially significant.  

The Court Cards are represented as snakes and for me, they evoke wisdom, mystery and a sense of uneasy awe. as if I am in the presence of wise but dangerous beings who need to be shown respect. 

The Cups

 

Most of the cups are chalices (the 9 and 10 are handle-free mugs)  and the one on the Ace is the most ornate though more subtle than what you see in many other tarot decks.   There is very little actual water displayed; even in the Court Cards of swans, only the Son gives the impression of swimming to me.    There are more or less a balance of black cups, white cups with some artfully nuanced as both and neither.  It feels like there's a little more color spread throughout the suits than the Wands, especially at the beginning and end of the sequence.  The IV of Cups is probably my least favorite, simply in terms of imagery but there isn't a single card in the entire TWU deck that I find ugly (though a couple are disturbing) or boring. 

The Swords

 

The Swords are inescapably swords 🙂 but I did have trouble with the VI when quickly sorting them this morning.  The jumbled pile of black swords was too similar to the jumbled pile of black wands for me to recognize the difference in suits at first; I really do like the way most of the suit cards aren't labeled but it confused me for a good five minutes today.   The 3 of Swords does such an eerie job of depicting the general RWS-esque theme.  There are probably more visually unsettling cards in this suit for me than the others but it is the 'right' kind of feeling disturbed if that makes sense.  Every emotion specific cards like the 9 of Swords evokes?  It feels like it should especially if I am using this deck to look for deep inner stuff, no candy coating.   The Owls are as perfect for this Court as the Snakes for the Wands, the Swans for the Cups imo.
 

The Pentacles

 The are some very subtle cards in this suit, starting with the Ace.  I am glad that the Aces do have labels because I probably would not have guessed what card this was without that; I love it though.  I love that the pentacles, like the wands seem to have very little human involvement in how they are crafted.   The distribution of black-on-white, white-on-black, and those that aren't really either is about the same as the other suits but the 9 is particularly striking with a hint of gold.  I'm ambivalent about the Deer representing the suit but that might just be because imo the artist is simply better with the non-herbivore animals in her drawings.  She is still above and beyond anything I could draw myself to saying "I like her birds and snakes and even her rat better than her deer and horses" doesn't mean I think she sucks.  

But the deer don't give me the same "That is SPOT ON" feeling regarding the card in general, so of the four courts, the Pentacles is my least favorite.

 

And with that, I leave things to other people and their thoughts!

 

 

[Arania]

I get a softer feeling from the elements in this deck, as in the lifes of the animals the cardws represent change them with their essence and make them less harsh as they otherwise can be, without taming them.