I'm about to Rant about Court Cards

magpie9

I Never use the courts to define physical appearance, and rarely to define sex. They're good for personality, viewpoint, etc. and sometimes as a way of responding to a problem, or defining one.
 

Thirteen

Tryska said:
it seems to vary from tradition to tradition, book to book as to which cards are what.
One of the many headaches with Court Cards. Each deck creator has their own opinion on which court should be which Zodiac sign.

I've found there's one of two ways to handle it:

1) Do what the deck says--so if one Deck has the King/Cups as Cancer, then when you use that deck, he's Cancer. If another deck has him as Pisces, then when you use that deck, he's Pisces.

2) Decide for yourself and no matter which deck you use, stick to your own rules. You think King/Cups should be Scorpio, and so that's what he is no matter what deck you use.

**This does NOT mean that a every Scorpio has to be the King of Cups. It just means that it helps in a reading. You see the King/Cups and you say to your querent, "Is there a Scorpio in your life?"**

The purpose of applying Zodiac to court cards is just to help with figuring out who a court card may stand for in a person's life.

The only caveat I'd put forth is that it's usually a good idea to keep to Earth signs for Pents, Water signs for Cups, etc. If you start to really mix and match, you get confused and end up with signs missing.

As for Physical appearence, that's a really old and outdated interpetation of the Courts and I know very few readers who still use it.

HOWEVER, now that there are decks with interracial images, I do find that my querents do feel drawn, sometimes, to certain cards in certain decks. For example, I have one deck where the Queen of Wands is a beautiful, Nubian Queen, and I remember one African-American querent of mine who loved that card and felt it was hers.

Which is the other rule I always go for--if the querent feels a connection to a card, it's theirs. So when I did a reading with that deck for that querent, and the Queen of Wands came up, I'd say, "There you are!" :)
 

jmd

Personally if, in a specific reading, the physical characteristics of a depicted card shone forth as of some importance, then I would make use of that detail.

In other words, to paraphrase Thirteen (mutatis mutandis), this does NOT mean that a every King of Cups refers to a man with traits as depicted on the deck being used - but neither does it mean that a court card does not reflect physical characteristics of an intended person within the context of the reading at hand.

After all, when reading, one allows as much (and as little) of the card to instruct the narrative as is pertinent - if physical characteristic it be, then allow it to be. If not, then focus on what does appear to the imaginative mind as significant.
 

Tryska

Thirteen said:
One of the many headaches with Court Cards. Each deck creator has their own opinion on which court should be which Zodiac sign.

I've found there's one of two ways to handle it:

1) Do what the deck says--so if one Deck has the King/Cups as Cancer, then when you use that deck, he's Cancer. If another deck has him as Pisces, then when you use that deck, he's Pisces.

2) Decide for yourself and no matter which deck you use, stick to your own rules. You think King/Cups should be Scorpio, and so that's what he is no matter what deck you use.

**This does NOT mean that a every Scorpio has to be the King of Cups. It just means that it helps in a reading. You see the King/Cups and you say to your querent, "Is there a Scorpio in your life?"**

The purpose of applying Zodiac to court cards is just to help with figuring out who a court card may stand for in a person's life.

The only caveat I'd put forth is that it's usually a good idea to keep to Earth signs for Pents, Water signs for Cups, etc. If you start to really mix and match, you get confused and end up with signs missing.


13 - you know after my last response I was jsut thinking about throwing all the different authors takes out, and going with my own interpretation, based on the Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable signs for each suit. SO i guess Option#2.

Seems like back in the day, when I first started reading, intuitively that's the way I wanted to go, but I let books, and such dissuade me. I think it's time to start honoring instinct again.
 

mollymawk

There is a tradition for using Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable for the Courts. Several, actually.

The one I use goes like this, based on Waite's cards, providing that's the type of pack I'm reading with. If it's any help, use it, or base a design of your own on it, because different tarot creators do use different systems:

Cardinal (new beginnings, new life) - Queens
Fixed (order, stability) - Kings
Mutable (change, movement) - Knights

Cardinal Fire - Aries, Queen of Wands
Fixed Fire - Leo, King of Wands
Mutable Fire - Sag, Knight of Wands

Cardinal Water - Cancer, Queen of Cups
Fixed Water - Scorpio, King of Cups
Mutable Water - Pisces, Knight of Cups

Cardinal Air - Libra, Queen of Swords
Fixed Air - Aquarius, King of Swords
Mutable Air - Gemini, Knight of Swords

Cardinal Earth - Capricorn, Queen of Discs
Fixed Earth - Taurus, King of Discs
Mutable Earth - Virgo, Knight of Discs

As for changing your own significator (if you use one), it certainly can make sense in astrological terms. Your birth chart won't change, but if you've moved to somewhere far away from your place of birth, or the planets are transitting over major points in your chart, the emphasis can certainly switch. Or even if you're just in a different state of mind to your usual one given the question.

I'd hate to try to pin it down to physical description, too. It might work once in a while, but it seems awfully limiting, and mind-meltingly shallow (You will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger....)

Cheers -
MM
 

Tryska

interesting take on the Queens as Cardinal and kings as fixed.

That's soemthing i've been toying with too. Hate to go with the patriarchal idea of making Kings cardinal jsut cuz.

But in the end i thought Kings as Cardinal since they are the active external principle of the Suit, and Queens as fixed, since they are the internal, "passive" principle. They may not choose to lead, but they don't follow. *lol*

I'll have to think on this more.
 

jmd

For those who use the broad range of physical characteristics as broad descriptions, there is nothing 'mind-meltingly shallow' about it, any more than trying to pin it down to twelve astrological signs overlayed onto twelve of the sixteen court cards would be.

A 'tallish' person of 'darker complexion'-type reading may have become as caricatured as the Death card appearing in each and (nearly) every Hollywood-type film featuring Tarot, but that takes away not an iota of the merit of a manner of reading that see physical similarity as worthy of informing the reading at hand.

As in so many other places, let's not throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater due to mis-appropriated caricatured parodied stereotype.
 

katarin

Using suits to narrow down physical appearance is the most valid when you're exposed to only one culture (narrow array of people) or all different complexions *equally*. But realistically that's not the case. In the West at least where I am, it's 90% caucasians with brown hair. But in suits, this 90% of people will only show up 25% (1 of 4) of the time...75% of court cards will be almost irrelevant. For other people of other backgrounds it's the same situation. There is nothing wrong with assigning physical characteristics to court cards but you have to change things so it suits your own demographics
 

mystical_symphony

court cards and physical traits.

I find that court cards describe people's physical attributes only slightly. There are so many more elements about a person that the court card could be describing, such as what their astrological sign is (air, fire, earth, water), personality type, their relationship to the quarant, etc. Rarely, I have found, do court cards ever describe someone's physical characteristics alone. I find that court cards more often depict a person's personality.

Hope this helps. :)
 

jmd

It perhaps should be mentioned that I tend to predominantly use Court Cards as reflecting personality dispositions (as my various posts and writings on Court cards and the MBTI, from the 1980s onwards, perhaps also shows).

Nonetheless, I have responded in this thread to, specifically, the opening question with regards to whether "people find interpreting Court Cards as people with specific features ( ie light hair, light eyes/ Dark hair, dark eyes) based on their Suit accurate?", with a further note that Tryska finds this irritating.

Even when seeing in the cards some physical attribute or reflection, it is not necessarily a matter of taking each and every part as reflecting the individual in question. For example, a sense for the Phlegmatic temperament may be depicted by a strong-bodied person, or of a Sanguine as a blue-eyed person (even though the person may not actually have blue eyes).

This is, in any case, consistent with views of body-types and dispositions that have a long history of depicting temperament. As such, Court cards can be viewed in a manner that shows well enough the differences between 'typical' bodily characteristics as reflected in the phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric and melancholic types.

Certainly, contra many suggestions made here and elsewhere, there is nothing astrological in the depictions of the sixteen court cards as such, except by the addition of assumed astrological imagery overlayed by those who adopt either a GD or equivalent viewpoint (I am not here arguing against adopting such a view - only placing it in contrast to the opening misgivings of physical characteristics of depicted individuals). In any case, the astrologically oriented depiction will often itself take as a basis a stereo-typical caricature of what a person born under the respective sign is often described as!