Tarot suits

The tarot suits are the four series that organize the Minor Arcana: coins, cups, swords and batons in the Tarot de Marseille, renamed Pentacles, Cups, Swords and Wands in the Rider-Waite-Smith. The French word for suit, couleur, literally means “color,” but here it refers to a family of cards, like hearts or spades in an ordinary deck, not to a hue. The occult tradition links each suit to an element and to an area of life, with variations from one school to another.