Thoth Court Cards — Remembering the dates

faery dust*

Hi lovely people of AT!

As always... when I run out of answers, I turn to this forum. So here I am again, asking for your guidance.

According to Crowley, each of the court cards may represent a person whose zodiac decan belongs to a specific card. For example, if you are born on August 12, the Prince of Wands may represent your personality.

My question is, is there a formula by which one can remember/calculate which court card is attributed to which zodiac decan/time period ? or are there some clues hidden in the cards (like the small cards) that I am missing?

My goal is to be able to calculate which court card represents a person based on when their birthday is without having to consult any charts and tables (and just using my mind!).

I know this might be asking for too much, but I thought if anyone can shed some light it would be you guys!

Thanks in advance <3
 

Nemia

The Tabula Mundi is the only deck I know that connects minors including court cards and decans visually.

I think your best chance is to study the connections until you know them by heart. For the minors, knowing the Chaldean order of the planets (I use the mnemo work simsumm to remember them, written SJMSVMM for Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon) helps, as does remembering that 2,3,4 are cardinal, 5,6,7 are fixed and 8,9,10 are mutable signs.

If you know then that the zodiac starts with Mars in Aries you can count forward in your head (difficult IMO) or on a piece of paper (easier) to make your own list. But you know you have three decans in each sign, and the planet rulers keep to the Chaldean order.

With time, you get to know the atmosphere each planet imbues to the card anyway.

And for the Court cards? I think it's easiest if you know the middle decan because it suits the elemental association. And then you just go one step back to the sign before it.

Just look at the Queen of Disks, you can see she's associated with Sagittarius. So you know she rules the first and second decan of Sagittarius. Now you simply go backwards on the zodiac and you know that she also rules the last decan of the sign before Sagittarius which is Scorpio.

But as far as I understand is, there is no way around learning the "main" cards associated with each court card. That's not difficult because you know the elements.

They court cards run around the zodiac in the order Queen, Prince, Knight. Fourt times, obviously. Remember they start with Aries - Queen of Wands. and then you count on in the zodiac (Taurus, Gemini, Cancer...) and the order of court cards (Queen, Prince, Knight, Queen..) So you get Taurus - Prince of Disks. Gemini - Knight of Swords.

And to fine the border-crossing last decan of the earlier sign, you just go one step back into another element. So the Knight of swords doesn't only rule the first two decans of Gemini but also the last decan of Taurus.

I'm sorry I know of no easier system.
 

Zephyros

Nemia is correct, and there's no end to how specific you can get, and much of it is just dry memory work. Each decan relates to a date span, and each Court is assigned to three decans. You can go by the dominant sign of each Court, but if a person may have traits relating to the more specific span set out by the decan. Me, for example, I was born under the second decan of the Prince of Disks, Mercury in Taurus (Five of Disks). Someone who was born a few days before me would fall under Venus in Aries (Four of Wands) and our attributes would be different, not to mention our actual sun signs. I'm a Taurus, they would be Aries.

So it can be a bit unwieldy, since every Court spans from the middle-ish of one sign to the middle-ish of the next. Some cards do have some clue as to their attributions, for example the Prince of Disks is riding a bull while the Prince of Wands a lion, the Knight of Cups has a crab in his cup and the Queen of Disks has a ram next to her. But it doesn't appear on all of them, and some take some guesswork. The Knight of Wands is dominated by Sagittarius but I can't find any apparent clue that gives this away. Same for the Prince of Swords.
 

Nemia

I waited for you to answer first since you understand so much more than I do. I'm the same decan btw. Worry, worry, worry...
 

Barleywine

I agree all around with the above. Since I'm more of a "visual" guy, I took one of the excellent decan "wheel" charts posted a while ago by Richard and color-coded and annotated it to have everything on one page. As an astrologer I already had a good handle on the seasonal association of the signs, so it was just a matter of memorizing the order of the "decan" cards (2, 3 and 4 are cardinal, etc.) and their tie-in to the court cards (Queens are predominantly cardinal, etc). To be honest, though, I still pull out this "cheat sheet" when not in a public reading situation.
 

magicjack

I have to have a cheat sheet just to tell me what the dates are of the 12 signs. Having said that I'm pretty good at what is cardinal fixed and mutable ect.... It does take some memory skills unless your really good at your astrology. But getting back to your original question, the "wheel" that Barleywine is referring to is the best I have seen. (I can't remember where you can find it) . There is a guy on Youtube that is really good at the Thoth deck and explains this in detail and the minors associated with the courts as well as the decans and is really good at explaining who they are. I don't have a link so you will have to search for DavidH071 on Youtube. I'm pretty sure he has the chart somewhere on his website. He goes thru the whole deck but his court cards are especially good.

Just to add, you can always write the signs on your cards.
 

Zephyros

I did end up putting the decans plus their corresponding cards on the Courts. There used to be a nifty table on supertarot, but now it can only be found on the Wayback Machine

https://web.archive.org/web/20121015112237/http://supertarot.co.uk/astrology/attributions.htm

And the best place I know of to find Richard's wheel is here (tooting my own horn here, sorry)

http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=257054

Richard, the member who made it, made an improved diagram based on the one Robert Wang used in his book.
 

magicjack

Thanks for tooting your horn!
 

Nemia

Yes, Zephyros, your explanation of the Thoth court cards is the best I ever read. Kol hakavod.

I found this wheel helpful:

http://blog.virgovault.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/tarotwheel.jpg

and I copied it for myself. I colour-coded the elements and added the sephirot in the colour of each element - 8 disks gets a הוד written in brown colour etc.

Writing it all down by hand and as much as possible by heart really helps to understand it. IMO that's better than any formula.