← Encyclopedia of Tarot · lesson 105/121
Court cards
The court cards are the sixteen figures of the Minor Arcana: a Page, a Knight, a Queen and a King in each of the four suits. They are the people of the tarot. In a reading they can stand for someone in the querent's life, for a role the querent is playing, or for a quality they are being invited to develop — and part of the reader's skill is deciding which.
The four ranks
Each rank tends to carry its own way of holding the suit's element:
- Page — the learner and messenger: curiosity, beginnings, news, a fresh or youthful approach.
- Knight — the one in motion: pursuit, action, a cause or a change carried forward, sometimes to excess.
- Queen — mastery from within: care, understanding, the suit's quality lived and offered to others.
- King — mastery in the world: authority, responsibility, the suit's quality directed and governed.
Put rank and suit together and a character appears. The Page of Cups is a dreamy, open-hearted beginner; the Knight of Swords charges in with an argument; the Queen of Pentacles looks after people in practical ways; the King of Wands leads by vision and nerve.
People, roles and aspects of self
Older practice read the courts mainly as people, sorted by age, sex and colouring: Waite gives Wands to very fair people, Cups to those with light brown hair, Swords to those with dark brown hair and grey or hazel eyes, and Pentacles to the very dark — while adding that temperament may be a better guide than looks. Modern readers usually loosen this. Rank and gender in the pictures are taken as symbols, so a Queen can describe a man and a Page an adult. A court card may also describe the querent's own manner in the situation, or an approach that would help.
The Golden Dawn courts
The Golden Dawn named its courts differently, and the difference matters when reading its texts. Its King is the mounted figure that the Rider–Waite–Smith deck calls the Knight; its Prince, shown in a chariot, is the Rider–Waite–Smith King; and its Princess is the Page. The Queen is the Queen in both.
It also gave each court an element of its own, combined with the suit's: the Rider–Waite–Smith Knight is Fire, the Queen Water, the King Air and the Page Earth. So the Knight of Wands is "Fire of Fire", the Queen of Cups "Water of Water", and the Page of Pentacles "Earth of Earth". The Knights, Queens and Kings were also given spans of the zodiac, each running from the last decan of one sign into the next. These are the Golden Dawn's attributions, which many English-language readers follow.
In a reading
When a court card appears, a reader may ask: is this someone the querent knows, is it the querent, or is it a way of acting? The surrounding cards and the question often settle it. A spread with many courts was read by the Golden Dawn as "society, meeting with many people" — a situation with a lot of people in it. A court card is also the usual choice of significator.