Imagine you’re rolling along giving an otherwise insightful Tarot reading, when suddenly your flow is derailed by a dreaded Court Card, that’s turned up in the reading. And now you panic not knowing what this Court Card represents for your Querent (Client) or their reading. If you stumble over reading the Royals, Tarot’s perplexing Court Cards, you are not alone. Tarot’s 16 Court Cards are indeed the most dreaded to interpret of all the 78 cards known to traditional Tarot decks.
What Makes Court Cards Perplexing to Interpret?
The unpopularity of Court Cards stems from confusion over the existence of several accepted methods to interpret them. For Court Cards can be considered to represent an actual person, a personality trait being expressed, or a situation in the Querent’s life.
Then to increase the level of difficulty, there’s the perplexing dilemma for the Tarot Reader of knowing which of the three interpretation methods they should choose in any given reading.
Who Are These Court Card People Anyway?
The Court cards represent people who are members of a royal medieval court and, as such, are often shown dressed in period costumery indicative of their title.
Each of the 4 suits of Tarot (Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles) possess one each, a Page, a Knight, a Queen, and a King. The images of the 4 Court Cards of the same title can be depicted very similarly across the suits, apart from their suit emblem (a cup, a wand, a sword, or a pentacle).
Typical Imagery Depicted on Court Cards
The Pages are most often depicted as a youth standing while holding up and pondering their suit’s emblem. The Knights are depicted as a young adult astride a horse or some other steed pridefully wielding their suit’s emblem. And the Queens and Kings are mature adults who wear a crown and are often seated on a thrown displaying their suit’s emblem.
Do I Need to Know Tarot Suit Correspondences to Read Court Cards?
When interpreting Court Cards, it’s important to first keep in mind the designated correspondences of each suit. This will serve you well when using any of the methods of interpreting a Court Card.
Cups – relate to emotions, relationships, creativity, and intuition.
Wands – relate to projects, work, inspiration, passion.
Swords – relate to communication, thought, struggle, and action.
Pentacles – relate to business, career, finances, and health.
Interpreting Court Cards as People
Though not my favored method of interpreting Court Cards, they can be interpreted to represent the Querent or a specific person in the Querent’s life.
Much has been written about how to interpret a Court Card based on the color of skin, eyes, and hair of the person pictured on the Court Card. This may have been useful among the more homogenized citizenry of 15th century European countries. But due to mobilization in modern civilization, I feel this makes the eye/skin/hair color method no longer useful.
Then there are the traditional age and gender rules for interpreting the Court Cards which, depending on the deck used, may also be useless. For some new Queer friendly Tarot decks may depict reimagined gender roles, such as a male Queen or a female Knight or King.
Nonetheless, below lists the traditional age and gender Rules for Court Cards:
Pages – represent a youth of either gender under 18 years of age.
Knights – represent an adult male between 18 and 30 years of age.
Queens – represent a mature female over 30 years of age.
Kings – represent a mature male over 30 years of age.
If you are going to use the actual Person method of interpreting Court Cards, I suggest you choose a Court Card with a similar appearance to represent the Querent (a significator card). Then remove it from the deck so any Court Card showing up in the reading will not represent the Querent.
Interpreting Court Cards as Personality Traits
A Court Card can represent a specific type of personality that either the Querent, or a person in the Querent’s life is expressing at the time. Many have equated one each of the 16 Myers-Briggs personalities to a specific Court Card.
If you are not familiar with the 16 Myers-Briggs personalities, not to worry, you can instead assign a Court Card to represent the personality of a family member or friend. Then when you see a Court Card come up in a reading, it will depict the personality trait of the person you have assigned to it.
Interpreting Court Cards as Situations
A Court Card can represent a past, current, or future situation in the Querent’s life regarding their reading question. Here it helps to know the correspondences of each court member. Then combine it with their suit’s correspondences.
Pages
Pages are considered messengers, thus a Page in a reading may denote a message or news relating to their suit’s correspondences is on the horizon.
Page of Cups – a message or news regarding a relationship or partnership
Page of Wands – a message or news regarding work or a project
Page of Swords – a message or news regarding a contract or communication
Page of Pentacles – a message or news regarding a business venture or health concern
Knights
Knights are generally seen as passionately and actively carrying out an important mission for their Queen.
Knight of Cups – a romantic or other relationship mission
Knight of Wands – a project or work mission
Knight of Swords – a communication, legal, or offensive mission
Knight of Pentacles – a business, finance, or health mission
Queens
Queens are considered to embody their suit’s correspondences.
Queen of Cups – an emotional, relationship, or creative situation
Queen of Wands – a project or work situation
Queen of Swords – a struggle, legal, contractual, or communication situation
Queen of Pentacles – a career, financial, or health situation
Kings
Kings are considered to represent figures of authority in control of their suit’s correspondences. In this case, the Querent’s situation may call for either more or less control of the suit’s correspondences.
King of Cups – in control of emotions
King of Wands – in control of work or projects
King of Swords – in control of communications, contractual, or legal concerns
King of Pentacles – in control of business, career, finances, or health
How Do I Know Which Interpretation Method to Use?
After becoming aware of the three methods of interpreting Court Cards, there’s the burning question of; how do I know which method to use in a reading?
According to “Tarot Maven,” Barbara Moore, the trick to knowing which method to use to interpret a Court Card, is to choose which method you will use prior to initiating the reading. Then the Universe will cause the appropriate Court Card to show up for the answer the Querent’s question.
It might seem an even better deterrent for confusion to simply choose a single interpretation method for all current and future readings you will give. But alas, one method may not always apply to the specific question the Querent has put forth for the reading or the spread position the Court Card occupies. In this case, you will need to rely on your intuition as to which method to use for a Court Card in a specific reading.
Summing Up
What we’ve uncovered here, is the number one rule for interpreting Tarot’s elusive Royals, is there are no concrete rules. You can choose beforehand either the Person, Personality Trait, or Situation interpretation method as your consistent method for all Court Cards in a reading. And there may be several in one reading!
Conversely, you can be flexible and switch back in forth between interpretation methods depending on what fits best for the reading question and the spread position a Court Card shows up in.
The set choice of interpretation method technique leaves less space for confusion, but being flexible in mixing methods technique gives more space for your intuition to kick in. The choice is always yours.
I hope you will give each of these three valid techniques for interpreting Court Cards a try and see which works best for you. Happy Taroting!
Note: To book a professional Tarot reading with Jeannette see our Book a Reading page.
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