One number, four suits
The Fives in tarot
Loss, conflict and the break in the pattern. The hardest number in the minors.
Five disrupts the four. Every Five in the deck is a difficulty, and taken together they are the clearest evidence that the numbers mean something rather than being decoration.
Five of Cups is grief with two cups still standing behind the figure, who is not looking at them. Five of Pentacles is exclusion and cold, walking past a lit window. Five of Swords is a victory that cost the relationships in the room. Five of Wands is the least serious of them: scrappy, competitive, and survivable.
Fives are also the fixed-sign decans, which is a fair joke at the expense of the fixed signs: the deck gives the point of maximum resistance to the signs least willing to move.
The four Fives
The same idea in four elements. Reading them side by side is the fastest way to see what the number is doing and what the suit is doing.
Five of WandsWands · Fire read the full meaningconflict, competition, friction
Five of CupsCups · Water read the full meaninggrief, loss, regret
Five of SwordsSwords · Air read the full meaninghollow victory, conflict, hostility
Five of PentaclesPentacles · Earth read the full meaninghardship, insecurity, exclusion
The rest of the sequence
Ace through Ten, then the four court ranks. Reading down this list is reading the minor arcana as one story.
Number crossed with element
This is the whole trick to the minor arcana. Forty numbered cards look like forty things to memorise and are really ten numbers crossed with four suits. Learn what a Five does and what Cups are, and the Five of Cups is constructible before you have ever read its page.
The lesson on the numbers, Ace through Ten teaches the sequence properly, and the one on the court cards covers the sixteen that need their own study.