The Suit of Wands

I’m going to take a pause on the major arcana cards here and talk about the design and thought behind the lower arcana or “pip” cards.

In the Tarot De Marseille tradition these cards are not individually illustrated as they are in later Rider Waite Smith versions of the Tarot. This older style of depicting the suits goes back at least to the 14th century and is the basis of Tarocchi Cards which predate Tarot (maybe). Just as with a deck of modern playing cards, the pips for a tempo or rhythm that builds and subsides from Ace - X. Each suit can be appreciated as an interwoven fugue of symbols that ebb and flow to form a way of thought, a way of seeing vs a singular idea or destination.