Amplifiers | The Rabbit Tarot

King of Tulips – sweeeeeet!

Each of us has our own ideas about what kind of character a particular court card represents – whether it’s Pages representing tentative beginnings or whether they urge us to develop a lighter and more playful approach…well, it’s up to you.

And sometimes, no matter how deft our character studies are, no matter that you explain that the Queen of Wands is really Jolene (as sung by Dolly P), your sitter cannot not acknowledge or recognise the person or those traits within themselves.

Something that you can do that can jolt the matter into a different orbit is introduce a card from an Oracle to act as an amplifier for your Court Card.

This week we are looking at Animal Courts and here we have the King of Tulips from the Rabbit Tarot by Nakisha VanderHoeven (Tulips equating to the suit of Cups in this deck).  While I love the artwork in Nakisha’s deck, it is not really terribly heavy on the symbolism to help us with this King’s characteristics.

I really need to dig in to what I know about the King of Cups in other decks here – so the King of Tulips is someone who understands someone’s emotional make up, but he himself is not driven by his emotions – so he’s diplomatic. An unhealthy King of Tulips (ie in reversed position) may possibly even manipulate people’s emotions to get what he wants. 

Of course, what you say in your actual reading will be affected by the surrounding cards.

Now, if your Client hasn’t recognised the King of Tulips as being significant to the question under consideration, and everyone’s a little stumped as to what in the heck he’s doing in the reading, you can pull on your Big Girl Pants and add an amplifier card from another deck. I know, it’s risky!

But when you’re at this point in a reading, with a client shaking their head in confusion, you have nothing to lose and simply surrender, giving yourself over to the cards and what they say. 

One of my favourite non-Tarots for using as an amplifier card is the Dreaming in Colour deck by Mindy Summers – a luminous deck where the lush fractal images vibrate with colour.  Each card is allocated an concept – from Aggression through Family and Passion to Temptation and Withdrawal.

By adding one of these cards to your Court Card in question, you can add an additional interpretative layer to your work.

As you can see, the card drawn to act as amplifier for the King of Tulips is Withdrawal.

To me it looks as if the image is sinking into the sea, like a sunset….

Have failures in diplomacy led to this character trying to take a back seat.  Has it all become too much for him to handle? Whomever he is, he is withdrawing either into himself, or from the situation, or from the client. Maybe that’s why your client doesn’t recognise these energies? The King has pulled back or disengaged in some way?

When I select an Oracle to work in this way, I’m looking at the qualities of both cards and figuring how they would interact with what I already know about the Court Card in question.  Is it typical behaviour? Is it unusual behaviour? What else is the amplifier adding to what I know?

We know that the King of Tulips does have a significant emotional component, but is able to over-ride his watery Cuppy influences for the sake of being a successful (and fiery) King.  Is he withdrawing either his Cups energies (his caring, altruistic side) to allow his more dynamic Kingly energies to suffuse the situation to help move things along – or vice versa?

And what of the idea of sunset – we know that the sun will rise again tomorrow, will the King of Tulips try again? Probably 😉

Y’see – it brings another set of qualities to the table and stops Court Card interpretation from becoming stale and one-dimensional.

Have you used an Oracle card as an amplifier? What do you think of the idea? What Oracles do you recommend for this approach?