Suit order - how do you order the minor suits?

[FindYourSovereignty]

@BradGad posted in a different thread his suit order and it got me curious….
 

I’ve been ordering mine

 

1. Wands - insight from Spirit
2. Cups - emotion to act on the insight
3. Swords - communication of the insight
4. Pentacles - manifestation of the insight

 

How do you order the minor suits and why?

 

 

[Misterei]

4 hours ago, FindYourSovereignty said:

@BradGad posted in a different thread his suit order and it got me curious….
 

I’ve been ordering mine

 

1. Wands - insight from Spirit
2. Cups - emotion to act on the insight
3. Swords - communication of the insight
4. Pentacles - manifestation of the insight

 

How do you order the minor suits and why?

LOL another topic that vexes me!

 

If we go from subtle to dense"

1. air / swords
2. fire / batons
3. water / cups
4. earth / coins

If we go by energetic anatomy

1. swords / mental body
2. Cups / emotional (astral body)
3. wands / pranic body or vital body
4. coins / physical body

If we go by season:

1. winter / swords
2. spring / coins
3. summer / batons
4. fall / cups

I have no order for the suits, personally. There are too many possibilities!

Edited May 7, 2023 by Misterei

[FindYourSovereignty]

3 hours ago, Misterei said:

LOL another topic that vexes me

😊

 

3 hours ago, Misterei said:

If we go from subtle to dense"

1. air / swords
2. fire / batons
3. water / cups
4. earth / coins

If we go by energetic anatomy

1. swords / mental body
2. Cups / emotional (astral body)
3. wands / pranic body or vital body
4. coins / physical body

If we go by season:

1. winter / swords
2. spring / coins
3. summer / batons
4. fall / cups

I have no order for the suits, personally. There are too many possibilities!

You are right! So many possibilities! I guess whatever approach one will take will simply be the tool they apply and excel with because it works for them. Thank you for sharing. 

[gregory]

Once you have ordered them to your taste - how do you use that when reading ? I happen to go with personal preference, but that's just basically how I put them away in their boxes... ) Looking at this careful reasoning I am slightly embarrassed.

[DanielJUK]

This is really unimportant to me as an issue in tarot but an interesting discussion nonetheless. I just keep all my decks in a random shuffled order all the time

However, recently I had to write out an index for a deck here and debated with myself so much about which order to write out the index in!

It goes Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles in Waite's Pictorial Key (credit: gregory for bringing that up in the other thread) but it can be any order you like!

 

11 hours ago, Misterei said:

LOL another topic that vexes me!

 

If we go from subtle to dense"

1. air / swords
2. fire / batons
3. water / cups
4. earth / coins

If we go by energetic anatomy

1. swords / mental body
2. Cups / emotional (astral body)
3. wands / pranic body or vital body
4. coins / physical body

If we go by season:

1. winter / swords
2. spring / coins
3. summer / batons
4. fall / cups

I have no order for the suits, personally. There are too many possibilities!

 

I love these different orders! But Seasons are another "not agreed upon" tarot topic! 😆That's a whole new thread. A lot of people also read them as Wands = Spring, Cups = Summer, Pentacles = Autumn and Swords = Winter. Some decks specify the seasons in their systems.

 

[gregory]

I like Cups first, just because. Then wands, swords, pentacles. What can this MEAN ?

[FindYourSovereignty]

2 hours ago, gregory said:

Once you have ordered them to your taste - how do you use that when reading ? I happen to go with personal preference, but that's just basically how I put them away in their boxes...

Yes, actually, I do put them in their boxes this way when I have a deck in order, which isn’t really very often, but certainly when it first arrived and I am admiring the art. 😍

 

My interest evolves around timing and flow. The stage something might be in. With Wands I am receiving, with Cups I am feeling something about what I received and these feelings initiate me talking about it, Swords; and then my words manifest into my reality, Pentacles. The cycle starts all over again or keeps rolling along, however one wants to look at it.

 

 

[FindYourSovereignty]

1 hour ago, DanielJUK said:

I just keep all my decks in a random shuffled order all the time

Me, too! I never think to go reorder my decks unless I am considering releasing them. 
 

1 hour ago, gregory said:

I like Cups first, just because. Then wands, swords, pentacles. What can this MEAN ?

Now the Cups coming first is something I could connect with now that I am putting my heart and feelings first. 😁  
 

As always, this will be personal preference and has many options available for consideration. I was original going to say that my choice will be around energy flow, however, everything is energy so… there’s that. 🤣🤷🏻‍♀️

For me it means where I am at in the process.

 

 

[Misterei]

On 5/8/2023 at 2:44 AM, DanielJUK said:

I love these different orders! But Seasons are another "not agreed upon" tarot topic! 😆That's a whole new thread. A lot of people also read them as Wands = Spring, Cups = Summer, Pentacles = Autumn and Swords = Winter. Some decks specify the seasons in their systems.

@DanielJUK Yeah. As most of my practice - my seasons are based on astrology. Fixed sign of the suit's element goes to the season (ie.fixed fire is Leo which is July ... so summer for batons)

 

LOL but then if we go to @FindYourSovereignty other thread about elements and suits ... it could ALL get very dicey. Like if you take batons as earth or air for example. God help us!

 

Suit order vexed me because of my instructional manuals. I wanted to put the suits in a consistent order for my students. But alas ... there are too many ways of ordering the suits ... poor dear students just have to deal with this bit of chaos ... I usually go swords, wands, cups, coins for the card meanings ...  get the difficult cards out of the way and end on a happy note 😇

[Libra 58]

I always sort them in alphabetical order like Cups,Swords, Pentacles and Wands.

If they are in Swedish I sort them after their Swedish names.

[Rodney]

My inclination is to order them A-K, Pentacles, Swords, Cups, Wands, probably because one of the books I referenced way back in 1991 ordered them that way. And it just stuck. 

 

Sometimes I will put them in the same order as the LWB regardless of what that order is.

 

If I buy a used deck and it's not in some kind of order, I will go to my default order to make sure the deck is complete. I will do the same if I'm going to sell/trade a deck. Because I'm an experimentalist when it comes to tarot, I will re-order decks that I've been experimenting with. Other than that, once I've used a deck for a reading, it generally stays in random order.

[Kellian]

Sheeplike, I sort - when I do sort - in the order that the author of the LWB of my first deck used: Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles. But thinking about it, it makes sense to me because it aligns with how I approach much of my life now: the spark - the wish - the thinking about approach - the doing the work.

[Therese]

On 5/25/2023 at 2:01 AM, Kellian said:

Sheeplike, I sort - when I do sort - in the order that the author of the LWB of my first deck used: Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles. But thinking about it, it makes sense to me because it aligns with how I approach much of my life now: the spark - the wish - the thinking about approach - the doing the work.

 

Same for me. And (I think it is the most common view?) for me too: wands=spring, cups=summer, coins=autumn, swords=air. 

[Rodney]

I have a number of incomplete decks that are being used to help people create their own Frankendeckens. Last night I finished ordering the cards in 41 different decks so that they're all in the same order, even changing the order that some decks had been in. Now it should be easy to see whether a particular card is available in a particular deck. I stuck with the order I've already mentioned - Majors, Pentacles, Swords, Cups, and Wands.

[Grizabella]

I don't order mine.  I just keep them all in random order as they came in whatever reading I did with a deck last.  Like I've described in another topic, after a reading I deal the cards into 4 or 5 piles to really randomize the deck and then I put them away for the next reading I'll do with that deck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FindYourSovereignty]

On 5/26/2023 at 10:31 AM, Rodney said:

Frankendeckens. Last night I finished ordering the cards in 41 different decks so that they're all in the same order, even changing the order that some decks had been in.

This sounds fun and amazing. 41 decks! 😳 😊

 

4 hours ago, Grizabella said:

after a reading I deal the cards into 4 or 5 piles to really randomize the deck and then I put them away for the next reading I'll do with that deck.

 

I like this and think I am going to try it. Thank you for sharing.

 

 

[Guest]

Default: Wands -> Cups -> Swords -> Pentacles

 

But whenever I re-order the cards of a specific deck, I follow the suit succession in which they were originally arranged, which the LWB/companion book usually mirrors. 

[Silverlotus]

I've never really thought about how I reorder a deck, but looking through my decks it seems like I always order Majors, Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles. It just feels right to have Pentacles last since they are the most grounded (and the suit that feels most me). Wands feels like it needs to be first, but it also feels like it shouldn't be next to the Swords since there is just too much... conflict between them. Cups tempers that.