The two colors divide into four suits, two for each color.
Red splits into Hearts, which represent emotions and easy triumph, and Diamonds, which represent energy and the reward for positive action taken. Of the two, Hearts are generally more positive.
Black splits into Clubs, which represent effort and toil and the need to act, and Spades, which represent serious trouble. Of the two, Spades are more negative.
At a glance it is clear that Hearts tend to be antithetical to Spades, while Clubs and Diamonds complement each other.
Hearts signify love, family, emotion, religion, art, philosophy, nourishment, miracles, celebrations, gifts. They give freely (out of the goodness of their heart, you may say). They are connected to the home environment, and by analogy to the inner side of the individual. They are also connected to warm climates and the sea and all bodies of water. They are also erratic and lazy. They are associated with the clergy and with nobility.
Spades are the opposite. Whereas Hearts give freely, Spades take away easily. They represent obstacles, enmity, obstructions to the querent’s desires, restriction, punishment and all things that are either bad for the querent (sickness) or are neutral to positive but cause pain or are associated with it(medicine, the legal system, the state). In a word, all those things that create a rigid armor of rules and punishments that keep the individual from getting what he wants. They are associated with cold climates and the mountain, and with hostile environments in general. They are connected with the army and with the state as a means of threatening the citizens.
Hearts are Spades cannot be reconciled. They represent two opposite modes of existence: pure bliss and pure pain, heaven and hell. When only Hearts and Spades litter the reading, you have either miracles or tragedies, depending on which one prevails.
Clubs and Diamonds are the conciliation of the pure redness of Hearts and the pure blackness of Spades. They represent toil and rewards. Toil implies difficulties and the need for action (but also the possibility of action), while rewards imply some action, or they wouldn’t be rewards, but gifts (Hearts).
Clubs are associated with action, physical activity, the physical body, and with the world “out there”, as opposed to the inner reality of the Hearts. They symbolize vegetation and growth, both in plants and in humans, and they stand for the countryside and for the peasantry or with the common folk, those who need to work to get by. They also are a symbol of other people outside of the querent’s family, as an extension of the idea of “out there”. Usually, Clubs are friends or more distant relatives. Clubs are different from Spades because the latter often signify obstacles that are either impossible or very hard to plough through, while Clubs put the accent on action, and therefore on the turning of something from an obstacle into a resource. If Spades are a wall that confines the querent, Clubs are a steep slope to climb.
Diamonds show the rewards reaped from the toil of the Clubs. They signify money, energy (because money can be transformed into anything that money buys, just like energy can be transformed into anything that is made of energy). They also signify the mind and progress, inventions, etc. They are associated with the city and with merchants and the bourgeoisie. They differ from Hearts, the other red suit, because although they are still connected with some sort of inner side of the querent, it is more practical and aimed at achieving the goods of this world. It is inventiveness rather than contemplation, science rather than philosophy or religion.
