Tarot Tip #10 - The Court Cards

During my many years teaching tarot I’ve found that for many people, the court cards are the most difficult cards to learn.  If you are one of those people who have difficulty with them, you’ll want to pay special attention to this tip!

     You see, there’s a special trick I’ve used for years to make it easy to remember and read the court cards in the tarot deck.  This is important as the court cards represent all the people in your life, or the life of your client.

     To start with, each of the suits has a King, Queen, Knight, and Page.  Kings are adult, responsible, men.  Queens are women.  Knights are young men who have not yet assumed the responsibilities of manhood.  Pages are pre-adolescent children, or anyone acting like a child.

     The four suites of the tarot are wands, pentacles, swords and cups.  Wands represent the element fire, pentacles are earth, swords are air, and cups are water.

     So here’s part one of my ‘trick’.  I let the element describe the person the card represents.  For example, if the card is a Queen of Wands, I read it as a ‘fiery woman, if it’s a King of Swords, I read it as an intellectual man, and so on.  The better I understand the elements, the easier it is to do this.

     The fire element (wands) in a person makes them very idealistic and physically oriented.  The earth element (pentacles) makes them very materialistic and good with money and things.  The air element (swords) makes them very smart and social too, and the water element (cups) makes them very emotional and often psychic.

     Now here’s the second part of my ‘trick’.  I think about each one of the court cards and look for a person in my own life who is a good representative of that card.  If there’s no one in my life that fits a particular card, I think of a movie or television character, or a character in a book that does.  Mentally connecting that person or character to a specific court card now gives me the ability to go a lot deeper into the personality that I can now associate with the card.

      Here’s an example, using a popular figure.  Everyone knows the TV and movie personality, ‘The Rock’.  As soon as you think of him you conjure up an image of a very physical, idealistic, powerful man who fearlessly jumps in to take action wherever it’s needed.  The Rock is a great example of a King of Wands.  Of course, the more you know about the character of the person you are using as a ‘template’ for any card, the more you will understand that particular court card. You’ll be able to draw on that understanding to give real depth to your readings.

     Give it a shot.  You’ll have to come up with 16 people to be templates for the characters of the court cards in your deck.  You’ll be amazed at how much easier it suddenly is to talk about the people in your client’s life, that show up in their reading.

     In my next tip I’m going to talk about another stumbling block a lot of tarot reader’s have when reading the court cards – that is, how to read them when they are inverted.