New Tarot Suits

I set myself a task the other day, to try and come up with possible new suits for the Tarot. This was not an easy task, because the way I see the Tarot, is that it is by definition iconic and universal. But I think it is a useful exercise for understanding the tarot, and it is also a good way to tease more meaning out of the existing suits.

Every thing that exists in the universe ought to be able to be expressed in some way by one or more concepts of the tarot. In the case of the "suits" every iconic concept you can think of should be able to be finessed into the four existing tarot suits. Any dichotomy you can think of, should be expressible in terms of the suits of tarots.

What I noticed about the tarot, however, was that there are sometimes trinities that seem marginalized. That is to say, I wanted to see if I could imagine how a pseudo-Hindu worldview might be expressed, specifically the Hindu trinity: Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer. Of course, I have no background in Hinduism, but that hasn't stopped me from attempting to conceptualize how such a trinity might function in a variety of contexts, one of which is the Tarot. I am not ashamed that I take elements of a religion I know little about as seeds for my own ideas.

And here's how that relates to the Tarot. I see in the tarot the creative aspect expressed in the suits of cups and pentacles, while I see a destructive aspect in the suits of swords and wands. This idea is probably strongest in the suit of cups, which is associated with water and creation. Cups are also often expressed as hearts, and the secret meaning of the suit is the womb, and other female reproductive organs. So in this light, we can interpret the other suits as creative or not, and a pattern does seem to emerge. The "red suits" are creative, while the "black suits" are destructive. (Keep in mind that individual cards and individual cases can be reversed, so while the card might be a creative card, in context, its meaning is not always creative, or can be creative in a negative way.) Pentacles are a symbol of industry and production, so while they don't spontaneously generate spiritual matter, they are just as much about creation and growth as the suit of cups, because they take existing matter and add value and meaning to it.

Meanwhile, its not hard to make the connection between swords and destruction (though swords can have other, positive meanings in certain contexts). So I won't say anything more about swords.

Wands are less clearly about destruction, except that they are expressed as clubs, which suggests that they are another kind of weapon used for subjugation and/or destruction. A club is a weapon born of inequality, used by a superior knight against his unarmed servant; or used by a peasant mob that cannot afford or is not legally permitted to use edged weapons. Wands are also sometimes interpreted as torches, especially when the tarot suits are compared to the elements, since wands seem to be stuck with fire. And wands are sometimes represented as a shepherd's staff or crook, implying a connection to the pastoral life. Of the four suits, wands are probably the closest to being associated with the Sustaining power of Vishnu. So if my goal was to express the creative, sustaining, and destroying aspects in the tarot, perhaps I have my answer in this:

cups create

wands sustain

swords destroy

But what about pentacles? If I throw pentacles onto the creative side of the scale, doesn't that leave the tarot unbalanced? Well here's the thing about the tarot. To be useful, the tarot must be balanced so that whatever you input into it, you will receive a meaningful answer. So pentacles can be placed in either the creative or the sustaining category, and it depends on the context of the reading whether they are tipped into one or the other. Likewise, wands can be destructive in some cases, but their primary function is to sustain. If we place both pentacles and wands into the Sustaining category, then we have a system that is balanced at first, but can react to the inputs of the reading. So wands, normally sustaining, can become destructive (fire, club, weapon), while pentacles, also normally sustaining (stability, posterity, equilibrium, trade, barter, system, bureaucracy), can become productive (building, creating, buying, adding value, growing, earning interest, aging as wine or cheese). So we end up with something like this:

cups create

pentacles sustain (or create)

wands sustain (or destroy)

swords destroy

All of this is just one aspect through which to view the tarot, and there are many others. But now that I've established this pattern of creation and destruction, I start to wonder how I might go about adding purely sustaining suits. That is, I want to create suits that can be taken as unambiguously sustaining, with no suggestion of creation or destruction. Unfortunately, I really don't think this is possible. What ends up happening when I try to create new sustaining suits, is that I design alternatives for wands and pentacles. And maybe this is not a bad thing. Maybe alternate tarot decks could be created in which pentacles and wands are much more likely to be taken as Sustaining suits.

For example, I came up with the suit of Bands. The suit of bands is supposed to represent a binding together. It includes the idea of ropes and strings, and even textiles and clothing. It might appear in a modern-style playing card deck as Ribbons, or possibly Knots. Bands can represent defense, in that they are equated with clothing, which can be equated with armor. Some cultures in history even made armor out of tightly wound rope or twine. The problem with Bands as a suit is that it starts to overlap with Pentacles. Pentacles include discs, which can be interpreted as shields, which is a similar concept to the armor of Bands. Pentacles also include signs warding against spirits, which is once again reflected in Bands. Pentacles can be used to bind and control elemental spirits, and so can Bands. Finally, pentacles have been interpreted as Rings, and what is a ring except for a metal band?

So I'm throwing out Bands as a brand-new suit, but keeping it as a useful alternate reading for Pentacles.

I still want to see if I can't create entirely new suits to add to the tarot, though, whether to make it five or six suits, I don't know if I can say.

My next thought was whether I could create a hybrid between two of the suits. First I thought of the black suits, and how they are both weapons: swords and staves. So what other kind of weapon would make for a decent new suit? How about an axe? An axe is made of both wood and metal. But an axe is pretty warlike, not exactly fitting as a sustaining suit. So what if I go with hatchets instead? In fact, what if I go with cross-hatches, or just plain crosses? Hatchets represent the woodsman, but could also represent some kind of wood-carving tool.

As a profession, here's how the woodcutter might fit into the tarot:

swords = spears = nomads and hunter-gatherers

(hatches = hatchets = woodcutters, guides, hermits)

wands = crooks = shepherds and ranchers

cups = bushels = farmers

pentacles = coins = city-dwellers and merchants

So this is a possible method of creating new suits out of hybrids of existing suits, but I feel like a bit of a fraud using this method, since I really haven't created anything new in terms of meaning. A hatchet reading could just as easily come up by having a sword and a wand card come up in succession.