Your Two Cents' Worth: Upgrading the Courts

Do the court cards need updating? If not, why not? If so ... how would you update them? Express yourself in the comments by Friday, August 3rd, and you'll be entered in a random drawing for our reviewer's copy of the new Necronomicon Tarot! (When leaving a comment, be sure to enter a working email address in the form -- otherwise, we won't be able to contact you!) The winner will be announced Saturday, August 4th!

Ah, the court cards.

Traditionalists delight in them, arguing that the court cards are tried and true. Some see them as fantasy figures, embodying qualities Westerners first encounter in childhood fairy tales: stern Kings, empathetic Queens, bold Knights, eager Pages. Others claim that royal titles help clients and readers alike adopt a more playful, childlike state of mind.

Revisionists like the idea of court cards, but yearn for a way to improve the court's ability to reflect contemporary roles.

- Shirley Gotthold's Transformational Tarot expands the courts to include the (awkwardly named) Teacher/Student, the Reformer, the Oracle, and the Sage.

- Joseph Earnest Martin's Quest Tarot strikes a more deliberate gender balance with its Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter.

- Catherine Cook and Dwariko von Sommaruga's Songs for the Journey Home abandons gender-based assumptions entirely, substituting functions: Innocence, Awakening, Creating, and Resolving.

- My own Bright Idea Deck associates the courts with four different problem-solving approaches: learning, doing, feeling, and controlling.

So ... how about it? Do you prefer traditional courts? (If so, why?) Do you know of a deck that has a clever way of redefining and revitalizing the court cards? Do you have a personal method for interpreting traditional courts that you feel inclined to share?

Tell us about it in the comments ... and you'll automagically be entered in a drawing for a new copy of Llewellyn's "just in time for Halloween" Necronomicon Tarot!

Comments

[Erin]

My interpretations court cards generally falls into three catagories: How I'm feeling at the moment, someone I'm going to meet, and since I work retail, a reversed court card usually means a unhappy customer I have to watch out for. (This happens alot in my daily readings.)

The traditional court card names do not offend me at all. I like medieval and fantasy stuff, so Knights and Pages, etc. are fine with me. Changing the court card names are ok, as long as I don't get confused as to which ones are which. For example, the Crowley Thoth has Knights=Kings, Queens, Princes=Knights, and Princesses=Pages, roughly. This corresponds with the traditional Golden Dawn interpretations (which has something to do with Cabala but would take me all day to explain). Crowley changed the names of the Kings to Knights (I have to look up why) and it confuses the living daylights out of readers until they are used to it.

I like gender bending in Court cards. It kind of balances out the cards, although Pages could mean anybody. The Fairytale Tarot has a female King of Swords (the fairytale is "The Maiden King"). Almost all of the Knights in the Mystic Fairy deck are female. The Knight of Swords in the Universal Fantasy and the Archeon tarots are female. The Archeon Tarot also has Pages renamed Heralds (since they are messangers much of the time) and many of them are female. But decks don't have to have gender bending. I still get the point anyway.

[Gayla]

I associate courts with people and personalities first in a reading and then expand as needed.

I think it might be a cool to add a personality or two to the courts...perhaps a lady in waiting or a few other nobel personalities such as a duke, earl or so forth...something to reflect the multi class levels of our society today.

To me, we can diversity all we want, but it hard to correct the perfection of the courts and their basic concept and meanings as they were originally designed.

[rachelcat]

I have been thinking about the courts issue for a while as a result of being a regular Thoth user and a recent study with the Universal Marseille book.

How to solve both the gender balance issue and the Thoth King-Knight issue? One way is to follow the Cary-Yale Visconti--a male and female knight and male and female page for each suit!

The solution I came up with is King, Queen, Knight, Lady, Page (or Father, Mother, Son, Daughter, Child). That way we have a mature man and woman, a young man and woman, and a child (to cover the child, student, and messages meanings for pages). I think Pages of Staves and Swords should be girls and Pages of Cups and Coins should be boys to show that they are still learning the lessons of their suits--it doesn't come to them naturally!

How does all this jibe with esoteric attributions (that I DO care about)? Well, I actually made a table that includes elemental, kabbalah, astrological, and keyword associations, along with animals, thrones, etc. that should appear on the cards (for these courts and aces). Obsessive or too much time on my hands at work? You decide!

[Anya Weber]

I like the World Spirit Tarot's designations of Seers (Pages), Seekers (Knights), Sages (Kings), and Sibyls (Queens). Those seem to be apt names for the ranks. Pages are young or new at something, just starting to See how their world works and what their place is in it. Knights/Seekers are always on a quest. And the Sage/Sibyl titles give equality to Kings and Queens and emphasize their qualitites of wisdom and mystery. Nice job, World Spirit creators!

[Patricia (a/k/a Roswila)]

I really like the Courts as Courts, or something closely analagous to them (King, Queen, Knight, Page). Maybe this is from having studied the RWS deck first over 30 years ago or maybe it's just my resistance to change (:-D). Though over the years I do keep adding layers and depths to my understanding of the Courts from the various innovations other new decks bring to these four (sometimes three) cards. Much like my relationship to the Tarot deck as a whole. The RWS acts as the basic structure, over/under/around/in which I add more information as I work with other decks. I think I've said in comments here before how when I look at any card in any deck, it's more like looking at transparent layers of several different decks' versions of that card. I do know I've mentioned before that I'm a Capricorn and what I just said is such a Cappy thing: First give me a basic structure (in Tarot the RWS), then I will/can take off to creative/different places.