Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Category: Kings

  • Archetype Cards by Caroline Myss

    Archetype Cards by Caroline Myss

    The Archetype Cards is a set of 78 cards, created by intuitive healer and the Archetype Empress herself, Caroline Myss.

    I’ve had these cards for years (OMG bought them in 2007!) and each time I have tried to work with them, it just all seemed too hard and too complex to not only figure out my active archetypes, but what to do with that information when I had worked it all out. And if I can’t use it? What’s the point.

    But in the past year I have watched so many of Caroline’s Youtube videos on spirituality and her new series on these very archetypes, so I thought I would dig in again.

    What do you need to know? There are loads of archetypes – many more than this deck can conceive, but there are 6 blank cards for you to add in your own, if you feel that some behaviour pattern in you isn’t represented by one of the existing cards.

    We all have four basic archetypes – the Victim, the Prostitute, the Saboteur and the Child. There are several variations on the Child archetype – Eternal, Wounded, Orphan, Nature, Magical, Divine and Dependent. There isn’t actually a card for the Dependent Child though, so that’s a bit of a shame – still, one can use a blank Archetype card to create one.

    Although I am working with the cards on a personal level, I thought that it would be fun to compare her King, Queen and Knight cards with our understanding of our tarot Kings, Queens and Knights. Myss doesn’t have a Page card in her deck and I didn’t want to appropriate one of the other cards to stand in for it; so it will have to remain a mystery for a little while longer.

    And if it works for you – it’s more information that you can add to bring an additional nuance to your Court Card interpretations.

    King Archetype card by Caroline Myss

    Light Attributes would equate to the tarot’s Kings rightsides up whereas Shadow Attributes could apply to reversed cards. I like the idea of each King showing ‘enlightened, benevolent leadership. Benefiting those in your charge.’ So for the King of Cups, that would be in the field of relationships, the King of Swords that would be in the field of thinking and logic, the King of Pentacles in the field of ownership and for the King of Wands it would be in the realm of passion.

    The Shadow side of ‘Excessive feelings of entitlement. Rulership without restraint.’ That’s nice information to tuck away for using with a King card.

    When we take a look at the Queen archetype, we have the description ‘Radiates the regal feminine.’ I’m not sure what that means – but it is an appearance, charisma attribute. She ‘uses her benevolent authority to protect others.’ So the King brings benefits to people, the Queen protects people. Her Shadow side is that she ‘Becomes arrogant when authority is challenged. Controlling and demanding.’

    The Knight in the Archetypes card is quite a different animal to that of the tarot, I think. Each of the four Knights holds something of this ‘loyalty, romance and chivalry’. The Knight of Pentacles is loyal, the Knight of Cups is romantic and the Knight of Wands or Swords would fit the Chivalric standard. As a reversed Knight, do the tarot’s Knights show ‘allegiance to a destructive ruler or principle? Does he have ‘romantic delusions’? Yes, the Pentacles Knight reversed could show misplaced loyalty rather than a lack of loyalty, the Knight of Cups could have romantic delusions and those Knights of Wands and Swords could have an allegiance/commitment to the wrong sort of action, the wrong sort of thinking. And when I say ‘wrong’ I mean that it is currently detrimental to the situation in hand, rather than ‘wrong’ altogether

    And as for the Pages … I think they might be derivatives of the various Child cards, but I’ll need to look into that more closely and probably give it a post of its own.

    Do you use the Archetype cards? I’d love to know how you use them! This is an affiliate link, if you want to buy them from Amazon.

    Buy Caroline Myss’ Archetype Cards on Amazon

  • The King of Wands | The Tarot’s Bridge Card

    The King of Wands | Rider Waite Smith | Tarot Thrones
    Last week I shared A E Waite’s thoughts on the King of Wands being the card that bridges the Major Arcana to the Minor Arcana.  I could almost hear Waite’s derisive snort as he lowered himself to talk about the Minors.  Well, his loss is our gain!
    I thought today we could take a look and see just how powerful the King of Wands can be as a bridge card and came up with a little spread purely for his use.
    First, procure your  deck’s King of Wands card.

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  • The Essential Tarot King

    The Essential Tarot King

    And so we arrive at The Kings.  After reading about the lives of the other ranks in the Tarot court, you might think that The Kings of the Tarot Court are free to do what they want, erm, any old time:

    You might want to don a pair of sun glasses before you watch this video, because: acid house.

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  • The King and Queen of Pentacles | Druidcraft Tarot

    The King and Queen of Pentacles | Druidcraft Tarot

    We’ve looked at all the other couples of the Court, now we turn our attention to the final Royal Mr and Mrs: The King and Queen of Pentacles, depicted here in the DruidCraft Tarot (Philip & Stephanie Carr-Gomm and Will Worthington).

    As the Pentacles govern the North, Winter, Midnight, the Winter Solstice and Earth (in my system), I find these cards excellent representations of these mystical, wintery feelings.

    Both are dressed in green in red, but whereas the Queen is in mainly red with a green hood and cloak, the King is in green with a red cloak – nicely yin and yang.

    Are you rather surprised that the Queen is depicted out of doors while the King is holed up, nice and cosy in the great hall – the fire roaring away behind him with the hog on the spit?  The Queen is, after all, associated with the nurturing and growth aspects of a suit – why have the King all toasty and warm?

    I think that the King has been depicted like this because the King of Pentacles also represents the luxury of success.  This is the Druidcraft equivalent of the big corner office and if they had been invented, the King of Pentacles would have been wearing red braces and smoking a fat Havana cigar.

    He is Earth and Fire (Pentacles and a King) which can be VERY productive if the energies are handled correctly – too much fire and the Pentacles energy hardens and shatters.  Controlled fire, as in a kiln, can create much that is useful and luxurious.

    The oak leaves oh his shield, by his side, tell us that he’s a wise, strong and a slow to react sort of a chap.

    His bare foot rests on a plinth that depicts a goat – Capricorn – although I tend to think of him as a Taurean character – what do you think?

    The Queen sits in a similar pose to her husband and she plays on her bodrum drum with a snow-white bone – simple and effective.  It feels to me, looking at these two characters side by side, that he is more interested in high status and symbols of success (heck, even his BEARD looks fancy!) than his good lady wife, who is content to play her music outdoors to the audience of a single bemused hare.

    The hare halts as he hops past, his winter coat contrasting against the greening grass.  Hares are prolific breeders – a nod to the Queen of Pentacles ability to create (on many levels!)

    At her feet are snowdrops – the earliest herald of Spring – and the dark silhouette of a naked tree shivers behind her.  Yet she doesn’t look cold.  She is at home here.  In her element.  The Queen is Water and Earth – the creative pulse of our planet.

    While the King rests his feet on a Capricorn goat, the Queen’s throne is decorated with the Taurean bull.  What do you think of these associations – do you have them the other way around?

    Both these royals are barefoot – this keeps them close to their native element, the earth, and keeps them grounded and in tune with their roots.

    The sky behind both seem to be at the liminal stages of either dawn or dusk.  I choose to see the King at dusk and the Queen at dawn. These threshold periods are important magically and just as the King presides over the dusk and the Queen the dawn, between them they oversee our safety through the dark of the night, and also the dark of the winter.

    As a pair, depicted this way, neither of them seem particularly bothered about the other – but they appear relaxed in each other’s company.  The other way around, their heads incline towards each other, with the Queen looking a bit more interested in the comfortable surroundings of her hubby.  The King, on the other hand, continues to gaze out at us as if to say ‘yeah, I knew she couldn’t stay out there in the cold for ever.’

    What do you think of the King and Queen of Pentacles?

    Update 24/4/19 – there is an updated V3 of Druidcraft Tarot available to buy – larger box means larger accompanying book!

  • Court Couples | King and Queen of Swords

    Court Couples | King and Queen of Swords

    The Fey Tarot published by Lo Scarabeo is one of my favourites, even though it’s jam-packed with fairies, I confess.  I find that it’s a great deck to read with, especially if you’re a RWS devotee.

    Today I’m presenting the King and Queen of Swords to you *sweeps a long, low bow*…..

    I’m a little bit in love with this King of Swords, if I’m honest.

    Even though the wind buffets him relentlessly, blowing the autumnal leaves hither and thither, he remains at his post.  The scars of battle (life? love?) have marked him and even on his throne he is clad for conflict.

    His hands are encased in armour- even his finger tips – can he no longer feel anything (emotionally? physically?)  Does he need to remember that you don’t need your armour at all times, that sometimes it’s safe to let yourself be exposed? Even if it leads to more wounds?

    His consort is the Queen of Swords.  Her hair tumbles around her face and shoulders like water and she gazes out at us with a serious demeanor.  Unlike the king who is in some desolate wilderness, she is in a built-up area – civilisation.   And indeed this Queen is erudite, witty, clever and – I suspect – an excellent dancer and chess player.

    If the eyes are windows to the soul, what are the windows in this card? The eyes of the soul?  Although she is beautiful, her blue lips and skin tone make her chilly-looking – ‘Noli Mi Tangere‘

    Does she look like the sort of woman that the King needs to cuddle up to?!

    Maybe her sword, emblazoned onto her third eye, cuts her off from the King.  Introspective and thoughtful, I can imagine the verbal traps that she could set for him (‘what do you mean my bum doesn’t look big in THIS? Are you saying that it looks big in other things?’)

    Even when you switch the King and Queen around, there’s not much change in the tension between them, is there?

    The Fey Tarot has colours allocated to the suits and Swords are allocated red – something that I associate more with Wands, to be honest.  The passion of red doesn’t really suit the cerebral approach of the Swords family – but here, I think it works on these two cards.  I think their love of order and of duty – doing The Right Thing, just because it IS the right thing – doesn’t mean that they don’t have strong passions – far from it.  And the red border reminds me that they are passionate people.

    But I wonder where that leaves them?

    Perhaps if I got into full Queen of Wands mode, I could persuade him to come down from that throne and step out of his armour?!

    The Fey Tarot is published by Lo Scarabeo,  accompanying book by Riccardo Minetti, artwork by Maria Agham.

    King | Queen | Swords | Fey Tarot | Tarot Thrones

  • Meet The Wands

    I always find it helpful to familiarise myself with the kingdom of a particular suit – looking at the countryside, the inhabitants of the cards, getting a handful of keywords together that best represent the suit….and then taking a look at the ruling family to see how these virtues and vices manifest in the various characters.

    Today’s deck is the DruidCraft Tarot and when I look at the Wands in this deck, I see high summer.  I see hilly landscapes, some of them verdant and some of them quite parched looking. I see victory, conflict, fires, distance, expansiveness, burden, defence, passion.

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