Earthair Experimental Elemental Reading Method - Exercise 1

INTRODUCTION...Exercise 1

Have you ever considered that your court cards are stuck?

Take out Rider Waite if you have it, or your usual deck and lay out your Queens side by side.
Now image these ladies at a bus stop. How are they going to talk to each other, or you, if they are stuck drawn in one direction? The only way the Q of Swords and the Q of Wands are ever going to communicate face to face is if you turn one of them upside-down, and that's just defying gravity.

Try to arrange your cards so all the Queens can see each others faces.

Now arrange them so they are all facing in the same direction.

You've probably realised by now that you'll need to turn some on their sides,
or the more adventurous of you may have put them literally stacked on top of each other, face to face.

What if Q of Swords is thinking about a card above and behind her? What if she could turn around and point literally at what's bugging her? What if your reading of a card is so heavily influenced by the artist painting a court facing a certain way, that the deck can't say what it really wants to say?

Imagine a Queen wants to be in two different positions in the same spread, looking in different directions? What if she wants to look at herself in a mirror?

earthair said:

INTRODUCTION...Exercise 1

Have you ever considered that your court cards are stuck?

Click to expand...

You're raising some interesting points here.

I'm looking at my Egyptian Tarot Queens, and it's especially obvious there since all the figures in the deck are drawn in profile. It's possible to make them turn around, of course, and stand on their heads, or lie back or face down. Not very graceful, I must admit, and the rectangular shape doesn't make it any easier.

For me personally, there are ways around this limitation, though. In my spreads, the Court will always face towards what they're trying to say or are thinking about. Whatever they have their back to is what they're ignoring/not interested in. The cards that are directly above and below the Court are often connected to it. This, naturally, tends to limit the spread to a square, 4-cards-per-card narration. And, of course, if there are two or three similar personalities involved in a situation, the deck is forced to juggle the other 15 Courts to fill in for the remaining participants once the common significator has been taken.