Instinct Vs Intuition | The differences between Tarot Cups & Wands

Once you start down the road of Tarot reading you’ll hear the words ‘instinct’ and ‘intuition’ thrown around a lot. But, at first glance, it can be difficult to understand what the differences are between the two. 

Both are considered a ‘feeling’ but labelling them when they appear isn’t always as black and white as people make out. 

I want to talk you through the differences between these two core energies that we use frequently in both studying the meanings of the cards and practically when performing Tarot readings for the self and others. 

Let’s start with intuition. The mysterious, cosmic feeling that seems to strike us like lightning and pull us in the right direction. It’s a word heavily associated with Tarot reading because we often refer to reading without the help of a guidebook as ‘reading intuitively’. 

You’ve probably heard it in other contexts as well such as ‘women’s intuition’ or ‘allowing your intuition to guide you’. It is like an inner compass, it gives you an idea of which direction to travel, of which choices to make, of what should be done and what should be let go. 

However, it is not the energy that spurs you into action. This is where many people get confused. Intuition doesn’t take action, intuition informs you, it gives you an unconscious knowing so that you can feel confident to take action, but it does not light the fire that is needed for you to make a move.

Instinct is more primal. Your instinct is the driver and the motivator to get you to take action. A good example of this is the human fight-or-flight response. This is an instinctual energy that makes the body take action, there’s no time for thinking with instinct it is a synapse fire and off we go. 

In my opinion, instinct is a much trickier energy to deal with than intuition. Intuition feels magical and divine, like guidance from the universe. Instinct can be rooted in not just our natural, human reactions, but can also be motivated by learned behaviours and beliefs. 

The biggest challenge when working with instinctual energy is knowing whether it is coming from a place of power or a place of fear. We’ll explore this a little more when we dive into the Wands Tarot suit, but working with instinct can be a learning curve and it asks for a level of self awareness to ensure you’re acting in your own best interests. 

The Tarot suit of The Wands relates to the element of Fire. It’s the burning energy that fires us up, makes us take action, makes us feel powerful and fuels our movement.

We think of all of the Tarot as a series of cycles, one feeding into the next. Within each suit, we are looking at the cycles of individual human experiences. For the Wands, this human experience is our experience with instinct. 

Let’s have a look at what is happening in this cycle. 

The Ace to the Five of Wands shows us what happens when we get that sudden instinctual lightning bolt. The Ace of Wands is that gift of instinct, the handing of a wand to us from the heavens, to help us create whatever our heart desires. 

From that point on, we face a series of challenges as we try and learn to wield this power. We make mistakes, we do damage because we can’t channel it in the right direction.

In the Two of Wands, our instinct helps us decide between two viable options. In the Three of Wands, we’re encouraged to step into the unknown and take a bit of a risk to see what could happen. It’s an adventurous energy, something we experience a lot when instinct kicks in. Like when we finally take the jump when doing a bungee or skydive!

Right up until the Four of Wands, we’ve got a good handle on our instinct. It is serving us well, keeping us alive, keeping us moving. It feels fun, fills us with excitement and gets the adrenaline pumping but once we ‘level up’ in the Five of Wands, things start to slowly slip out of our control. 

From the Six all the way to the Ten of Wands, we start to feel the effects of overpowering instincts. Things start to feel less fun and more ‘urgent’. The pace has quickened and although we have a moment of respite in the Six of Wands, we soon start to feel like we are fighting an uphill battle. 

Our instincts are firing off whenever they sense danger, whenever we have a lot to think about or we have a big to-do list. Our instincts, due to their lack of direction and focus, are always on. This is often a place where anxiety breeds because the fight or flight reflex is always on. The signals to switch it on and off have fallen by the wayside and we now face an energetic imbalance that keeps us burning through our instinctive fuel leaving us feeling burned out and exhausted. 

The Tarot Cups represent the element of Water, they’re free-flowing, they’re fluid and changeable, cleansing and life-giving.

When we are in a cycle of Cups, we are faced with emotions, both welcome and challenging. Within this suit, we face things such as grief, nostalgia, guilt, joy, fulfilment, pride and more. It is the day to day ebbs and flows of the range of emotions we go through as humans navigating our normal lives. 

Intuition is always emotion based. It comes from the deepest depths of our psyche where our hidden emotions and beliefs are housed. That’s why Cups are also associated with intuition, because it’s almost always the case that our intuitive pulls are emotionally rooted. 

When we move through the Ace to the Five of Cups the journey is one that ends in a grief or sense of loss. In many ways, this first half of the suit’s cycle is where we start to build a relationship with our intuition.

The Ace of Cups offers us the gift of that first intuitive pull, the Two of Cups illustrates us choosing to partner with our intuition, the Three of Cups is us strengthening that link to intuitive knowing, Four of Cups is where we start to realise that our intuition isn’t there to fulfil our every wish but instead, guide us to do what is ‘best’ for us in that moment. 

This section ends with the Five of Cups, the first moment where our intuition has pulled us away from something we want in order to put us on a path that is better aligned. When we’re in this state we can feel a lot of grief and even resentment that our intuition doesn’t ‘agree’ with us, but this is just a learning point. 

The Six of Cups starts this ‘part two’ of the Cups cycle. We start to go back to our foundations, get back in touch with our inner child and open up to exploring deeper parts of ourselves to find answers and work towards a sense of peace and harmony. The Seven of Cups shows us the power and possibilities involved in working in alignment with intuition. We see many different paths we can take and we’re asked to trust intuition to lead us down the one that is going to be the best for you and who you are at this point in your journey. 

The Eight of Cups is a nice contrast to the Five of Cups as it shows the growth we’ve achieved. Instead of standing and dwelling on the things that aren’t right for us, we have the wisdom and strength to walk away and trust that something better lies ahead. This shows a level of trust in the intuition that we’ve not yet seen in the cycle. 

Finally in the Nine and Ten of Cups we start to see the ‘pay off’ of trusting and following intuition. We reach our desired goals, we are put in a position that offers us a great sense of pride and we feel like we can take a second to take a break from all the lessons and just enjoy the fruits of building this relationship with intuition.

The trickiest part of differentiating between instinct and intuition is knowing how each ‘feels’ when it shows up for you. And to make it extra difficult, it can feel different for everybody. 

For some, intuition may be a small voice whispering directions, for others, it feels more like a physical tug. 

Instinct though is often much more physical and less cerebral. There’s not a lot of thinking and if there is it feels very definitive and spur of the moment. 

The way I like to separate them is that intuition is like a guide, gentle but firm. Instinct is more like a coach, it tells you what to do, there’s no discussion, and it is more direct and assured. 

A great way of working on being able to tell the two apart is by using Tarot. Separate your cups and wands from your deck and ask the cards to help you make a decision about something. 

When you pull a card, right down how it makes you feel. Does it feel like gentle advice or more like a straight-talking friend who is telling you what the best course of action is?

*I have a free intuitive Tarot reading guide over in the freebies section if working on intuition is on your to-do list. Click here to sign-up and download the workbook!