Reading Court Cards: A Primer
Hello there! I’m Wisely, and I’ve been reading tarot for a few years now. It seems like a lot of beginning tarot readers have trouble with reading court cards, so I thought I’d detail how I read court cards in the hopes that it gives other people some help with reading them.
(Note: Tarot is a very unique experience and everyone reads the cards differently. If any of this sounds wrong to you, ignore it. There is nothing as unhealthy for a tarot reader as accepting another reader's techniques as gospel.)
First, we need to go over the basics of each card. Page, Knight, Queen, King. Each one represents a typical version of a person, so a child/young teen, an older teen/young adult, an adult feminine figure, and an adult masculine figure. In this way the courts can often represent people.
One way I found easy to build upon the court cards was to connect them back to the Major Arcana, since I was already so familiar with those cards. My way is this: consider each court as a smaller part of a whole Major card. The Pages are all parts of the Fool, the Knights are all parts of the Chariot, the Queens are all parts of the Empress, and the Kings are all parts of the Emperor. If you understand these Majors, then you're already well on your way to understanding the courts.
That brings us to the difference between the Majors and their corresponding court cards, and how each court works as a part of said Major. The way this works goes back to the suits. You need to be familiar with what each suit governs to understand their courts, so I'll quickly go over them here.
Cups: Governs emotions and relationships. Focuses on love. Water.
Pentacles: Governs the physical and work life. Focuses on sustainability. Earth.
Swords: Governs logic and combat. Focuses on knowledge. Air.
Wands: Governs the spiritual and sexuality. Focuses on progress. Fire.
With this in mind, the Page of Cups would be the emotional aspects of the Fool, while the Page of Wands would be the energetic aspects of the Fool. Considering them as parts of a whole can be useful for some learners, so feel free to try it and see if it helps you.
Let's run through the associations of a suit as connected with their cards. The Page is youthful and innocent, so the Page of Swords is trying to build a logical framework for themselves and building up their knowledge base and views of the world. They don't understand everything yet, but they're progressing. The Knight is actionable and lively, so the Knight of Swords rides forward decisively and uses their knowledge to move up in the world. The Queen is centered around those traditional (and sadly cisnormative) feminine associations, so the Queen of Swords tempers the emotions and looks at creative pursuits and relationships in a detached, sensible manner. Finally, the King is similarly centered around traditional masculine tarot associations, so the King of Swords acts somber and intensely rational, using their experience of the world to understand and control their life and their work.
The courts in each suit work the same way with whatever their suit is actually ruling over. All you have to do to read the court cards is combine the idea of what each court means on its own with what each suit means on its own.
Now, obviously I've talked a lot about the courts as people, because they can and will often be people in your life, and they'll sometimes even be yourself, but they won't always be someone you know or might meet. Court cards can also be advice (e.g. you might pull the Queen of Cups if the cards are telling you to be more emotionally aware or intuitive) or they can simply be details of a situation (e.g. you might pull the Knight of Wands if things are moving quickly and energetically, maybe even too much so, in your life). It's up to your intuition, the card placements, and the context of the other cards to figure out what they're telling you, but hopefully with this guide you'll have an easier time of understanding them. Thanks for reading.
