The four suits and their elements

Each suit belongs to one of the four classical elements, and each element is a part of life.

• Wands · Fire: will, energy, ambition, creativity. In this deck, parasitic plants and orchids: mistletoes, broomrapes, dodders, witchweed. Fire is energy capture, and these plants have solved energy by tapping someone else’s roots.
• Cups · Water: feeling, bonds, appetite, love, grief. Here, parasites of water and blood: flukes, tapeworms, the guinea worm. They travel through the waters we drink and the blood we share.
• Swords · Air: thought, conflict, decision, truth. Here, wasps and bees (Hymenoptera), many of them parasitoids that paralyze, cut, and redesign their hosts with surgical precision.
• Pentacles · Earth: the body, money, work, time. Here, parasitic fungi: rusts, smuts, ergot, the honey fungus that can cover a mountainside. Earth is the quiet accounting underground.

When a spread is mostly one suit, the reading is mostly about that part of life. Lots of Cups: this is about feelings and relationships. Lots of Swords: thinking, arguing, deciding. No Pentacles at all: maybe the material side is not the issue, or it is being ignored. Count the suits before you read the cards one by one.