suit assoication question

I'm on exercise 2, suit association, this exercise has me lay cards ace through 10, and i'm to describe 3 key words that best represent the suit. okay no problem. however in doing this a huge question came up, that 2 of the suits to me makes no sense according to the images. I am wandering if anyone else had noticed this, could someone please explain.

Suit of Cups and the suit of swords

Swords, I see all water in this suit, from 2 to 10 all cards depict water, in various ways, very strong emotions, you have tears, rain, rivers, puddles, ocean, lakes, lots of sadness, internal conflict, the people in the cards are either blindfolded or have their back turned, suffering, and with people gleeing in others suffering, this is a mean suit, that hurts peoples internally or externally. lots of cruelty here to, bondage, trapped, murder, etc. this suit reminds me of S and M almost like the role playing of dominatrix and submissive. I see so much emotion in this suit that to me the element would be Water not air, this suit is a roller coaster ride, you either enjoy it, or you hate it.

Cups, I see on water on the ace, all other cards don't have water, however there is a lot happiness, joy, love, relationship,. then there is tons of pondering, thinking, choices, Clouds in the 4 and the 7 which to me is the mind/thinking, pie in the sky thought, so to me this suit would represent Air not water.

What are your thoughts, really would like to know, why I see this conflict in these suit elements.

Interesting question, TeaBiscuts. There really is a lot of overlap between the suits. Thoughts give rise to emotions and vice-versa. As Crowley states in The Book of Thoth, "The relation between these Four Elements.....is extraordinarily complex.....; they change with every application of thought to their meaning." Waite tries to dodge the Element issue by suggesting that the illustrations are merely derived from common divinatory meanings associated with exoteric decks. Rachel Pollack associates some of the negativity in the suit of Swords to "the stormy side of Air."

LRichard said:

Interesting question, TeaBiscuts. There really is a lot of overlap between the suits. Thoughts give rise to emotions and vice-versa. As Crowley states in The Book of Thoth, "The relation between these Four Elements.....is extraordinarily complex.....; they change with every application of thought to their meaning." Waite tries to dodge the Element issue by suggesting that the illustrations are merely derived from common divinatory meanings associated with exoteric decks. Rachel Pollack associates some of the negativity in the suit of Swords to "the stormy side of Air."

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yeah and here is another thought, I just went through every card in the suit of SWORDS - this is a very ABUSIVE suit, why do I say that, well it is depicting all forms of abuse right down to the abuser/bully who inflicts abuse onto others and gets a rise out of it due to their lack of compassion and empathy, to make themselves feel better, by hurting someone. why do I say this, I was married for ten year in an abusive relationship, it took 3 year of council-ling to undo the emotional damage. from ace - 10 shows all the stages of emotion, physical, mental abuse that your forced to live, in the 6 of swords it show you leaving, then in 7 is show your return to it,through manipulation,head games, steeling your emotions and identity, thoughts,etc., then in the 8 of swords your back to bound/trapped into it, and not sure how to get out/leave, the 10 shows the only way out, and a good major of victims can say the abuser tries to kill them if they leave, " if I can't have you nobody else will" the vicious cycle of abuse. it also show self abuse, and all the emotions that arise from it, which is the water element, when someone is abused you feel depressed, turmoil, sadness, feel like you can never do any right to please, no saying anything right, your constantly put down, criticized etc. just think of what that does to a person. it even show the heart break in the 3 of swords, these are all very strong emotions in this suit. also with the 10 of Swords, you feel completely dead inside, beaten down (swords in the back), that there's nothing left to fight back with, so you just give up/die you can't take anymore abuse.

added: the Suit of Cups is everything you want and wish for it to be, you sit and think, ponder,make choices, decisions, you envision/imagine, what you want/how it is to be / to have the happy ever after. the 4 of cups to me is while you sit and ponder your missing other options that are available to you, 7 of cups are all the choices being offered, which one are you going to make as your next step, are you going to leave/or stay, what's really holding you to stay in the abusive relationship, money, house. then in the 8 of cups, you take a stroll, to clear your head, relax, so you can make a final decision then you come to 9 of cups, there you sit all please and happy with yourself, the light came on, your thinking a ha, I've made the right choice, he looks a bit smug if i'd say so...lol then you move into the 10 completely satisfied on your choices happy ending, so you hope anyways for now.

so I feel that the suite of Cups is Air and Suit of Swords is Water,
Thank you for your response.

please respond. I sure would like to hear other opinions on these 2 suits.

LRichard said:

As Crowley states in The Book of Thoth, "The relation between these Four Elements.....is extraordinarily complex.....; they change with every application of thought to their meaning."

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I find your comment very interesting, okay trying not to read to much into this. I am getting a weird feeling here or indirect message, that I need to buy the Thoth deck, well my first deck tarot of the Vampyres is inspired by Thoth ( found that out by wolfyjames in the study group, and then I'm intuitively following what Crowley says. weird. okay maybe I shouldn't go there yet, till I learn this deck first. oh no, thinking of buying another deck. I'm doing the suit of cups right now over a deck lol.

There are three different kinds of water in alchemy... distilled water, hard water, and the" royal water" nitric acid. Then there is the medium of water as Solvent. Water as solvent absolute is SO4... sulfuric acid - VITRIOL.

Alchemically speaking, would that be the Squaring of the water? With the Quintessence being salt?

Yup, don' miss the point - Cups are the tool of worked EARTH that the magician needs to MASTER water,.. They do not "symbolize" water. They are not anologies for water. Liquid can only be defined by a container.

Now, the key is not to confuse the Cup, with the Grail.

brightcrazystar said:

Yup, don' miss the point - Cups are the tool of worked EARTH that the magician needs to MASTER water,.. They do not "symbolize" water. They are not anologies for water. Liquid can only be defined by a container.

Now, the key is not to confuse the Cup, with the Grail.

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may I call you - BrightStar - you have brought an interesting point to light, let me explain, A friend gave me this book The complete tarot reader, cause I was having trouble understanding the pictorial key to tarot. this book has been most helpful. Exercise 1 a) developing suit association - which your to assign an element (air,water,earth,fire) to the suits. exercise 1 b) you then to assign season.

so without using outside influences just going by what you see in the cards, I am having trouble with assigning the seasons, just as you said above when I look at the suit of cups I see the season as Fall, look at the 3 of cups, that is depicting a celebration of harvesting, this reminds of the druids/pagan's Sabbath, which brings me to see this card as earthy, not as much as air as I first thought. or is the suit both air/earth. the suit of coins looks to me as the season summer,fire/ earth , on the 9 of coins grapes are ripe, and in they are IRL ripe at the end of summer close to fall, and the 7 of coins those are beans, they are ready in summer to be picked. the suit of wands I see spring and earth. with the suit of swords as already said to me is water and the season winter.

Bottom line that I trying to get at is I really like your method/knowledge and would like you to help me figure out a good association of suit element and season. I have read few other post you've made, I really enjoyed your insight, some were complicated at first to understand, like your astrology, but I like it. what deck do you use, where did you learn all that stuff. I need to figure out these associations so I can move on the exercise 2 Exploring Elemental Interactions.

added: I am getting a bit fustrated here, I am finding this deck to contradict itself too much, so far with the cards - elements, seasons, etc. and yet this deck is for beginners, most of the cards are show more than one element and same for the suits....whaaaaa I want a deck that it's like this. yet easy to learn.....

Added: My suit association at this stage, following the books instructions. with my keywords to represent the suit, and the books keywords for season.

Wands - active, spring, earth - burdens, arguments, success - new growth and beginnings
Cups - passive, fall, air/earth - celebrations, thinking, choices - harvesting and preparing
Coins - active, summer, fire- work, achievements, security - fullness and abundance
Swords - active, winter, water -conflict, suffering, sadness - dormancy and conservation

The Seasons are not attributed to a suit. The seasonal attributions, of the minor arcanum are done this way.

Spring
2,3,4, Wands (Aries)
5,6,7 Pents (Taurus)
8,9,10 Swords (Gemini)

Summer
2,3,4 Cups (Cancer)
5,6,7 Wands (Leo)
8,9,10 Pents (Virgo)

Fall
2,3,4 Swords (Libra)
5,6,7 Cups (Scorpio)
8,9,10 Wands (Sagittarius)

Winter
2,3,4 Pents (Capricorn)
5,6,7 Swords (Aquarius)
8,9,10 Cups (Pisces)

The reasons for this are each has a attribute that is to a decan of the signs of the zodiac. The genera formula, which you can verify above is this"

2,3,4 of a suit is cardinal of the zodiacal element
5,6,7 of a suit is fixed of the zodiacal element
8,9,10 of a suit is mutable of the zodiacal element

The admixture is also done by some of the court cards, but no card represents an entire sign of the zodiac. The Aces represent the prime archetypal element, in the unity of the Crown of the tree of life. Each of the Pip cards (2-10) has a planetary energy expressed in the element which makes it a particular aspect of the element.

The Ace therefore represents that FORCE of the 2,3,4 Cardinal sign in it's total Aspect, and thus the Equinox, or solstice as the case may be. The page represents the "cross quarter" holidays, "mid-spring (Beltane), mid-summer (Lugnasadh), mid-fall (Samhain), Midwinter (Imbolc) of the element that is in the MIDDLE of the season, so even though people attribute summer to FIRE, it is the Water based soltice, and it's HEART is fire - which impregnanates the Virgo earth to bring forth the bounty of the fall. which sees the return of the rains, so the fruit grow full, which survives the pruning of the AIR based equinox - where all the blight would been cut away.

The seasons in the Rider Waite deck map to agriculture because the Sepher Raziel, which purports to be the text where humanity is given the secrets of agriculture, which is what enabled them to build any civilization in a fixed location, for better or worse (look at 5,6,7 of disks).

OOOOHHHHHH thank you so much BrightStar, would it be okay if you be my mentor, wow thanks for the response back now it makes sense, muchly appreciated...you and I think very much alike, however you have more knowledge of the tarot than I, I so what to learn from you.

added: I am looking at the 5,6,7, of coins/disks I so see it thanks, so then basically it would be better to learn astrology with this deck? I'm not into agriculture lol... maybe I should trade my deck with someone to get a more appropriate deck for me like Thoth. lol

added: Okay

The Aces represent the prime archetypal element, in the unity of the Crown of the tree of life.

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what element would I then assign to the aces?

Swords - water