One number, four suits
The Tens in tarot
The end of the line for the suit, for better or worse.
A Ten is completion, and completion is only good if you wanted the thing that got completed.
Ten of Cups is the rainbow over the family, the deck's most straightforwardly happy card. Ten of Pentacles is generational wealth, the house, the dogs, the old man watching. Ten of Wands is carrying ten staves you cannot see over. Ten of Swords is face down with all ten swords in your back, and a sunrise behind you.
Two suits end in fulfilment and two end in exhaustion or ruin. Read a Ten as a cycle finishing: whatever comes next is an Ace, and the deck is quite serious about that.
The four Tens
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.
Ten of WandsWands · Fire read the full meaningburden, overwhelm, overcommitment
Ten of CupsCups · Water read the full meaningfamily, fulfilment, harmony
Ten of SwordsSwords · Air read the full meaningrock bottom, betrayal, ruin
Ten of PentaclesPentacles · Earth read the full meaninglegacy, family wealth, lasting security
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.