Category: Queens

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.

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

Alison Cross
Stop being confused by court cards! Start being excited by the possibilities! Become a court card adventurer along with me 🙂 The Tarot’s Court Cards are my specialist area. They talk to me. Not LITERALLY though ….

26th April 2024
Tarot Court Cards: Nature or Nurture?

Photo by Ba Phi from Pexels | What makes us who we are – nature or nurure?

It’s a hotly contested subject in real life – do external forces such as environment and education fashion who you are or are you born with a predisposition to act/be a particular type of person? While the argument goes on, it is currently accepted that much of who we are, mentally and physically, and what we do as adults is a combination of our nature and our nurture.

So, how do these factors manifest in our Court Cards?

Our cards come with only two pieces of information, the rank and the suit. Which of these represents our card’s nature and which represents our nurture?

The RANK (Page, Knight, Queen, King etc) shows us the NATURE of the card while the SUIT (Swords, Cups, Pentacles, Wands etc) gives us the NURTURE, the environment that the character must function within.

Consider the Queen of Wands – she is a Queen by nature, but she must function in a Wands environment. How does someone who is by nature caring and empathetic function in an environment where assertion/aggression, adventure, courage and ambition are ways of life?

The answer is: with difficulty.

Here’s an example to consider:

Picture the scene *does the wavy hands thing* we’re in a play park: A group of parents is sitting on benches chatting amongst themselves while their children explore all the exciting features – they are on swings, they are sliding down chutes, they are climbing over the frames, they are chasing each other.

Suddenly a wail rises through the conversations and laughter and the parents turn to see who is crying. A small child stands in tears, with knees scraped and bloodied after tumbling off the slide.

This child’s parent is a Queen of Wands type.

The challenge that the parent faces is – do I kiss the knee and make sympathetic noises, give cuddles and dab away the tears (which would be Queenly) or do I encourage the child to shirk off the minor upset and run back to join in with the game again (Wands)?

A healthy Queen of Wands knows when to kiss the knee and when to chivvy the child along.

In my forthcoming book, Genetics of the Tarot Court (yeah, it’s not catchy, still working on a title), the Queen of Wands lies on the same axis as another three court cards who face equally challenging integrations of their nature and nurture.

I hope that you’ll enjoy finding out who they are and the challenges that they face.

Out in November!

Alison Cross
Stop being confused by court cards! Start being excited by the possibilities! Become a court card adventurer along with me 🙂 The Tarot’s Court Cards are my specialist area. They talk to me. Not LITERALLY though ….

27th September 2019
The Guardians of the Autumn Equinox

Today is the Autumn Equinox and the ringing of this celestial alarm clock that tells us that the sun is heading south across the equator and that our nights will, once again, be drawing in.

Interestingly, the period where the hours of almost equal light and darkness takes place (for me here in Scotland, anyway) on the 25^thof September, but hey, what’s a couple of days between friends?

At the end of July, I presented at TABI’s Tarot Conference in Birmingham, on working with court cards. Today I want to share with you a snippet of the work that we worked through at Conference: using the 16 courts as Guardians to the festivals on the Wheel of the Year.

The Guardians of the Autumn Equinox are The Queen of Cups and the Knight of Cups. This abundance of watery energy means that this is a wonderful time of year for focussing on our relationships – with others and with ourselves. It is also a perfect time to pay attention to our dreams and our drive to create – art, books, music, children.

The Queen of Cups offers us the gift of empathy, love (all aspects of it), and letting your emotional core influence all aspects of your life in a way that you might be reticent to do at other times of the year.

Her challenge to us is to recognise when we turn that emotional connection with others into something that is selfish or manipulative.

She asks:

Where can you improve your relationships with family, friends and colleagues
Consider your self-care – are you investing sufficient time and resources?
Are you aware of areas where you may be pushing emotional buttons to get your own way?

The Knight offers us a slightly different focus for the relationships in our orbit. His knightly nature is associated with the element of air, so he brings in a more cerebral note to his Guardianship and it can be used to support the Queen – if her emotionally orientated approach is not improving the connection with someone that you hope for, try flavouring your approach by adding a dash of Knightly logic, common sense or even double-check that you’re successfully communicating exactly what you mean!

The Knight’s challenge to us is different from his Queen’s: The Knight cares about his journey sincerely and with his whole heart. He’s not some fly-by-night to take-off in a fit of pique or hubris. The Knight’s challenge to us is to ensure that our questing and challenging nature pursues a worthwhile goal. When he is an active card, we should not be pushed out of our adventure by our need to maintain strong relationships with people. For example, you are going off to college (your worthwhile goal, right?) and your excitement is overshadowed by concerns about relationships that will be strained by your new adventure. A little sadness is healthy, but deciding not to go or amending your choices because you don’t want to upset your boyfriend is not.

He asks:

Are you willing to introduce adventure to your relationships?
Where are others proving challenging?
How well are you communicating with those around you?

If this kind of approach to working with the courts sounds like fun, why not sign up for my newsletter and get first notifications on when my court card e-book is going to be available? In it we look at the elemental DNA of the cards and how that helps us find other information that can be useful in interpreting court cards!

Alison Cross
Stop being confused by court cards! Start being excited by the possibilities! Become a court card adventurer along with me 🙂 The Tarot’s Court Cards are my specialist area. They talk to me. Not LITERALLY though ….

23rd September 2019
The Essential Tarot Queen

So the Knights are clanking around in their armour, fighting for whomever they agree with THIS week….the Pages are running upstairs and downstairs, all excited at the newness of the world in which they find themselves. What about the Tarot Queens – where do they find themselves historically in this box of jewels that we call the Tarot Court?

Back in the day, women were handy to have around in much the same way as it’s good to have all your chessmen on the board: Daughters were useful for marrying off into strategic alliances, wives were good for bringing legitimate offspring to the game.

Valued as equals? Not really.

If you read through the lists of Queens from late Medieval to mid Renaissance Europe, there were very few who ruled alone, by design. Oh sure, there were some exceptions (Elizabeth I).

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Alison Cross

Stop being confused by court cards! Start being excited by the possibilities! Become a court card adventurer along with me 🙂 The Tarot’s Court Cards are my specialist area. They talk to me. Not LITERALLY though ….

17th February 2014
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!

Alison Cross

Stop being confused by court cards! Start being excited by the possibilities! Become a court card adventurer along with me 🙂 The Tarot’s Court Cards are my specialist area. They talk to me. Not LITERALLY though ….

6th September 2012
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.

Alison Cross
Stop being confused by court cards! Start being excited by the possibilities! Become a court card adventurer along with me 🙂 The Tarot’s Court Cards are my specialist area. They talk to me. Not LITERALLY though ….

14th May 2012
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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Alison Cross

Stop being confused by court cards! Start being excited by the possibilities! Become a court card adventurer along with me 🙂 The Tarot’s Court Cards are my specialist area. They talk to me. Not LITERALLY though ….

27th February 2012
The Many Faces of Angie

No need to Google, it’s Atelier Versace, darling

Here she is – the immaculate A-list movie star.

I *know*. Look at her wrists and arms.

Thin.

That woman needs a box of Cadbury’s finest confectionary or at least a cople of packets of Tunnocks Caramel Wafers Fed-Exed to her immediately….

Aaaanyway…..

Let’s take a look at the many faces of our Angie…..
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