Every tarot deck holds its minor cards in four suits, and every deck maker eventually has to decide what to call them. In the Wildfire Tarot, they are Embers, Tides, Winds and Stones.
Why four suits at all
Underneath the different names, tarot decks have used the same structure for centuries: four suits, each carrying the voice of one element, together standing in for the whole of a life. Fire for will and instinct. Water for feeling and connection. Air for thought and communication. Earth for body, resources and the ground beneath your feet. Traditional decks often call these suits Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. The Wildfire Tarot keeps the same four elemental voices and gives them new names, ones that describe the element itself rather than an object that once represented it.
Renaming a suit does not change what it means. A cup and a tide are both still water. But a name can change how quickly a card reaches you, and Embers, Tides, Winds and Stones feel immediate: you know what an ember does before anyone explains it to you.
Embers, Tides, Winds and Stones
Embers carry fire: passion, drive, creativity, the spark that gets something started. When Embers show up in a reading, they usually point to energy, desire or a beginning that wants to be acted on.
Tides carry water: emotion, intuition, relationships, the ebb and flow between people. Tides cards tend to speak to the heart of a matter rather than the logic of it.
Winds carry air: thoughts, words, decisions, the stories we tell ourselves. Where Winds appear, a reading is usually asking you to look at what you are thinking, and whether it is actually true.
Stones carry earth: the body, money, home, the practical and physical. Stones cards ground a reading back into daily life, into what can actually be built, held or touched.
Reading them together
A spread rarely speaks in just one suit. A card from Embers next to one from Stones might be asking how a spark of desire could actually be grounded into something real. Tides beside Winds might be asking whether your feelings and your thoughts are telling the same story, or two different ones. A hand made up of mostly one suit is its own kind of message too: a spread heavy with Stones might be nudging you toward the practical and physical, while a hand full of Tides asks you to stop reasoning your way through something and simply feel it instead. Part of the pleasure of tarot is watching these four voices talk to each other across a spread, rather than reading any single card alone.
A deck built to be lived with
The four suits sit inside a fuller deck: 78 cards altogether, the major arcana alongside the minors, each one illustrated to sit quietly on a shelf as much as in a reading. It has been slow, careful work, and it is still unfolding.
If you would like to be among the first to know when the Wildfire Tarot is ready to come home with you, join the Wildfire list. I will share it there before anywhere else.
Sending so much love,
Bryony 💗