What order are your suits in?

[quietly]

I've seen posts on here about the different ways people put a deck's cards in order, but the question is usually focused on what's "right", and less on why they choose it. But of course as with anything tarot, there's a "common" and there's a "taught in [such and such tradition]" but there's generally not a "right"... and a whole lot of variability in between.

So! I'm curious to know what you, personally, prefer as the natural order of the suits, and why you feel that way. When you consider the suits of a deck, what progression just feels right to you, and can you pin down some of why that is?

Bonus questions:

Have you changed your approach since first learning?

If you have any decks where wands are air and swords are fire, does that change the order for you? (Or vice versa, for folks for whom swords are fire by default.)

Do you associate certain elements with certain seasons? If so, which ones? And is this related to how you arrange the suit orders?

Bonus bonus question: Do you have a preferential order of playing card suits?

 

[Sulis]

These are the correspondences I use:

Swords - Air, thoughts, spring, beginnings, East.
Wands - Fire, actions, summer, South
Cups - Water, emotions, feelings, Autumn, West.
Coins / Disks / Pentacles - Earth, manifesting, material world, Winter, North.

Those correspondences work for me.

 

[Padma]

When putting the deck back in order, I follow the order they are listed in, in the little white book (LWB) that comes with that specific deck.

So for instance, if they list Wands first, then Cups, Then Swords, then Pents, that is the order they go in, after the Majors are put back in order. Majors are always first and on top of the deck.

ETA I don't know if I have understood the question correctly. You did mean what order does one put them in when re-ordering the deck, right?

 

[Barleywine]

I invariably default to Wands = Fire, Cups = Water, Swords = Air and Pentacles = Earth. When I reassemble a deck, I do it in that order, and when I get a deck that's ordered differently, I just reorder it according to my custom. If a deck creator rejiggers the alignment and I intend to use the deck for reading, I simply ignore that and apply my usual associations. I've been doing things that way since 1972, and I'm of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of tarot correspondences (unless, of course, I decide to mess with them myself ).

 

[MysticMoonlight]

These are the correspondences I use:

Swords - Air, thoughts, spring, beginnings, East.
Wands - Fire, actions, summer, South
Cups - Water, emotions, feelings, Autumn, West.
Coins / Disks / Pentacles - Earth, manifesting, material world, Winter, North.

Those correspondences work for me.

Ditto this, to a T.

 

[rwcarter]

I generally order my decks this way:

• Majors (Fool to World)
• Pentacles (Ace to King)
• Swords (Ace to King)
• Cups (Ace to King)
• Wands (Ace to King)

But if I'm planning on using the deck in conjunction with its LWB or companion book, I'll order the cards in whatever way they're listed there.


Rodney

 

[Grizabella]

I don't re-order my decks. If I did, I wouldn't put the suits in any specific order. I don't think it matters, really.

 

[Barleywine]

I don't re-order my decks. If I did, I wouldn't put the suits in any specific order. I don't think it matters, really.

I do it when I'm going to have to pull specific cards out for study purposes, like in a workshop or presentation setting. Otherwise, I keep all of them thoroughly randomized for my public readings. Another situation is when I'm reconstructing a spread for comment in the Your Readings sub-forum. I keep one RWS deck in order since it saves time not having to dig through for the right cards.

 

[AJ]

for many years I thought of swords as information
cups as thoughts on that information
wands as acting on the information
coins as outcome of the knowledge/thought/actions.

When I began working with the Thoth, its suits began with wands/cups/swords/discs

The only time I ever order a deck is when it arrives (lots of brand new decks are missing a card or have two of something) or when trading or selling so mostly it is a moot point to me.

 

[blackroseivy]

I'm a down-from-the-top, Majors-first, Minors-second gal too. I have the Minors go from Ace to King, I think Wands-fire, Cups-water, Pents-Earth and Swords-Air. This to me goes clockwise from the South through to the East. Just usual, Air-mental, Wands-spirit, Cups-emotions, Earth-physical, to put it very simply. I keep my Visconti decks in order, as they are rarely if ever used for reading. Big cards to read with! Plus I prefer scenes, maybe that's plebian of me but repeating suit symbols only force me to bring to mind whatever it is that the RWS indicates on any given card.