Tarot and the Elements - Fire and Air?

Thanks, Ariel! Glad to know it's not just me! I don't actually resonate as much with the Marseille and Italian decks (at least not the ones I've seen) as some of the more modern ones, but it's good to know I can always go that way later if I choose.

For now I'm going with the Aquarian Tarot because of some existing past associations and--most importantly--I really DO resonate with its artwork. It's a gorgeous deck, and I have a strong emotional response to it.

I'll be studying the most common card meanings, but once I internalize those at least somewhat (it feels important to tap into the collective consciousness surrounding them), I plan on bringing my intuition into play when I interpret the cards. So it's good to know you can do readings (and magic!) without incorporating the elemental associations if you don't want to.

Thank you again!

That's an age old controversy. Some modern tarot decks actually swap fire and air associations to have swords be fire and wands be air. I tend to read with more antique decks. I personally don't attribute the magical elements to the tarot suits too much when I read, but sometimes I do when working magic. Since the ancient Marseille and Italian decks don't have any obvious elemental correspondences in the pictures it's very easy to work with them using any elemental correspondence I like, or none at all. The magical attributions to the tarot were really "standardized" by MacGregor Mathers and AE Waite around the turn of the 20th Century, and now most tarot readers don't even know that they are a fairly recent thing, and not an ancient way of looking at the Tarot at all. BB