At a glance
- Identification point
- Four suits usually contain ten pips and four courts each.
Definition and identification
Each suit commonly contains ten numbered cards, from Ace to Ten, and four courts: fourteen times four gives fifty-six. Older pips often arrange repeated suit emblems; Rider–Waite–Smith supplies narrative scenes. Minor is a later esoteric grouping label, not a judgment that the subjects are unimportant. In games these cards also have ordinary playing and scoring functions.
Structure and reading rules
Court titles often include Page, Knight, Queen and King, while Thoth and newer redesigns use their own terminology. Number, suit and scene are separable layers of information. Record the actual card and visible details before consulting its guide. Do not automatically impose a narrative from an illustrated modern deck on an older pip card without that scene.
Concrete example
A Marseille Five of Coins displays five suit emblems, while Rider–Waite–Smith’s Five of Pentacles adds figures in snow and a patterned window. Compare arrangement, posture and possible resource themes. The shared number and suit do not make the images identical. Documenting their differences teaches more about the decks than memorizing a universal poverty keyword.
Historical context and limits
Waite’s text supports one modern deck, while museum objects document earlier suit-card forms. Courts may be discussed as story roles or styles of action without identifying a real person by gender or age. Metaphors of scarcity, competition or cooperation can support writing exercises, but cannot establish finances, health or another person’s actual attitude.
References & further reading
Historical sources document ideas and rules of their time, not empirical proof of predictive accuracy. Source notes identify the nature and scope of each reference.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot CardsInstitutional / reference source
Museum account of surviving fifteenth-century Italian game cards, preceding occult interpretation.
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910/1911)Primary / tradition source
Waite’s own account of images, layouts and meanings; evidence for one modern tradition.