How to Read Tarot Court Cards Intuitively
How to read Tarot court cards without anxiety or confusion. Read on, several methods follow and 1 or more of them is bound to work for you!
Grab your Tarot deck and separate out the 16 Court Cards. Now run through and have a look over all of them. Do any of them remind you of someone you know? To help identify these court card personalities look at:
- physical characteristics
- what the court card person is doing
- the environment they are in
- any animals or plants on the card
For example, this card looks, physically, like my friend Melody. She is not a child, but she has curly black hair and has a child like enthusiasm. And oh, she’s a Gemini, an air sign. See how this works?
It very much helps to have a deck like the Gaian, where there are photographs of real people or real people were used as models.
It’s also important to have people on the cards who are doing something. The court cards are probably some of the most static cards in the deck, often depicted as stone-like people sitting on thrones.
Go ahead and identify all the court cards in your deck. The people in your life that they correspond to can be living or dead, they can be celebrities or the kid down the street or the barista in the coffee shop.
It’s okay if you identify more than 1 Queen of Cups or any other court card.
After you’ve identified your Royal Court write them in your journal and think how the people you’ve identified in your court could help develop card meanings.
How to Read the Court Cards Using Their Job Titles
Like the members of a Royal Court, the court cards all have a role to play or a job to do that breaks down like this:
- Kings – the king, the master, the CEO, the leader. Kings use their mastery, experience and leadership to benefit the kingdom.
- Queens – the queen, the nurturer, the protector, the keeper of. Queens use control through loving presence to protect and nurture and grow the kingdom.
- Knights – the army, the police, the conqueror. Knights use active focused energy to fight for what’s right and expand the kingdom at the King’s direction.
- Page – the messenger, the apprentice, the curious one. Pages are seeking knowledge and communication, transmitting messages, and gathering information.
Using what you know about the Tarot suits, combine the court card job titles and suits and see what you come up with. These combinations can create a personality type, a job, a physical description, or even a situation.
Tarot Court Cards and Zodiac Signs
Another way to look at the court card roles combined with the suits is through astrology. You will often hear readers say a particular card might be a person who is a Leo, Aries, or Sagittarius, making the correspondence between the wands and the fire signs. A couple of things to keep in mind here. The Tarot court cards can correspond to Zodiac signs, but that doesn’t mean that sign is that person’s Sun sign. Remember everyone has a complex and unique chart with a sign for each of the planets. The person indicated by the court card could be exhibiting strong Leo characteristics, and it very well might show up in their chart as Leo Rising or 2 or 3 planets in Leo but not the sun. Just a finer point.
When I first started looking at court cards this way, I struggled with why the model was 4 x 4 in Tarot and 4 x 3 in astrology. I took a cards of truth class with Ernst Wilhelm, and in it he says the reason Tarot has an extra court card (4 court cards: K, Q, Kn, P) than the playing card deck (3 court cards: K, Q, P) is because of a mis-translation. I don’t remember what the mis-translation was but it lead to the insertion of an extra court card the Knight. Makes perfect sense to me. Ernst says he takes the Knights out of the deck when he reads Tarot. I haven’t gone that far, but it’s worth considering.
See the chart below for ways to associate the Tarot court cards with the Zodiac and astrology.
Kings – cardinal/sun
Queens – fixed/moon
Knights – nothing
Pages – mutable/mercury
| WANDS – spirited, enthusiastic, charismatic, hot headed, fast moving
fire |
CUPS – sensitive, psychic, emotional, relationship oriented
water |
SWORDS – intelligent, thinker, in their head, intellectual, teacher, judging, discerning
air |
PENTACLES – hands on, doer, planner, show me, realistic, practical
earth |
|
| KING – mastery, master, CEO, (wise, generous, gracious leadership), sun
cardinal |
ARIES | CANCER | LIBRA | CAPRICORN |
| QUEEN – protector, nurturer, feminine mastery, control through loving presence, moon
fixed |
LEO | SCORPIO | AQUARIUS | TAURUS |
| KNIGHT – outward expansion, aggressive efforts, conqueror, journeyman, mars | ||||
| PAGE – androgynous, young, beginner, scout, seeker, apprentice, messenger, mercury
mutable |
SAGITTARIUS | PISCES | GEMINI | VIRGO |
How to Read Tarot Court Cards Role Plus Element
Court card meanings can be derived from combining the role or job with the element. For example: Queen as nurturer combined with water relationship = the matriarch or keeper of the family (among other things). See the chart below for more examples. After looking over the chart, create your own chart in your journal with people you know or know of who exemplify the court cards.
| CUPS – sensitive, psychic, emotional, relationship oriented
water |
|
| KING – mastery, master, CEO, (wise, generous, gracious leadership), sun
cardinal |
psychologist |
| QUEEN – protector, nurturer, feminine mastery, control through loving presence, moon
fixed |
The Madonna or mommy dearest
Johnny Depp |
| KNIGHT – outward expansion, aggressive efforts, conqueror, journeyman, mars | Prince Charming |
| PAGE – androgynous, young, beginner, scout, seeker, apprentice, messenger, mercury
mutable |
Cupid |
If you are someone who likes categorizing – the court cards lend themselves to all sorts of categories beyond the ones we’ve already discussed. Another interesting way of looking at the court cards is through the Meyers Briggs personality types. If categorization isn’t your thing, don’t worry about it. Go with whatever technique to connect with the cards works for you.