Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Tag: Knight of Pentacles

  • Our Court Card for 2021

    Our Court Card for 2021

    You may already be familiar with the technique of working out which Major Arcana card will apply to the incoming year, but if not, I’ll give you a quick resumé on how to calculate it:

    Take all the digits in the incoming year and add them together. If the answer comes to 22 or less (The Fool having the value of 22 because nothing will add up to zero), simply select the Major Arcana card with that number and you are good to go. If all the digits added together comes to a figure larger than 22, then you must add those digits together to arrive at a figure of 22 or less.

    This year we are adding 2 + 0 + 2+ 1 = 5 and therefore Major Arcana card V will be our guide for 2021 – a Hierophant year for us all next year! Goddess knows how that might manifest for us in the UK – Covid19 AND Brexit hitting us a double whammy. Can hardly wait … *rolls her eyes so far back in her head that she can see the nape of her neck*

    You can also do a similar thing with Court Cards!

    A few years ago, I came up with a fun way to work with the Court Cards by looking at one’s personal details and the incoming year, but this can be expanded upon to working out which court card will be everyone’s guide for 2021.

    Take a look HERE to see how to calculate your personal guide for 2021 – and to see who is EVERYBODY’S companion in 2021!

    Since our Major Arcana card is 5, our Court Card for the year is also card 5, and in the table of court card numbers that you will find in the link above, this means that we are entering a Knight of Pentacles year.

    Knight of Pentacles from the Druidcraft Tarot
    Knight of Pentacles from the Druidcraft Tarot

    This makes sense to me because the Knight of Pentacles is the one of the adventurous knights who is compelled to remain closer to home than his brethern. Although he shares their questing and adventurous spirit, he revolves around his home base – whether he likes it or not.

    What this means for us is that while we too may want to let rip and run amok in hot countries and get a bit of sun on our bones (a la Knight of Wands!), Covid restrictions (and maybe even Brexit restrictions?) will keep us more local than we might like.

    Knights are risk-takers, even the Knight of Pentacles, so be alert to risks around your health, your home and your finances. I’m not saying DON’T take risks, but maybe only gamble with what you can afford to lose?

    How do you interpret the Knight of Pentacles and how do you see his energies affecting us all in 2021?

    How does the Knight of Pentacles interact with your own personal court card guardian for 2021 card for 2021?

  • Full Moon | March | Virgo

    It’s that time of the month again, when the moon becomes full and we turn our attentions to the Court Card that bathes in its glorious light!  Yes, on 5 March, our Full Moon rides again!
    This month, the sun sign is Pisces and so our full moon lands in the opposite sign, Virgo.

    In Tarot, Virgo is represented by the Knight of Pentacles.


    I’ve saddled up a small collection of Knights for you to peruse.  Feel free to run your hands lovingly over their fetlocks…

    Consider first the Knight of Pentacles from the Alexander Daniloff Tarot.

    In warm shades of russet and gold, he proudly sports an enormous hat and announces that he is an Earth sign by gently holding his coin like a trophy against his torso.

    He carries no weapon, just a money bag at his belt.  His only concession to his military rank is his shield and his helmet.  Items purely for defence.

    Let’s take another look at that hat.  It would not look out of place on the redoubtable Dowager Countess of Grantham:

    It features some outstanding feathers – reminding us that Knights have an airy and unpredictable component.  However, when married to the solidness of Earth, they don’t sit comfortably together.

    He can find his Knightly duties a little tough: He is called to be adventurous and an explorer, but he’d really rather do his exploring a little closer to home.  ‘Why try to conquer outer space when we have not yet understood our oceans?’ thinks this Knight.

    In the Druidcraft we see him, almost shy, peeping over his shield as he rests his sword arm on his horse’s flank.  He’s in no rush to go anywhere.

    He is slow to anger or rouse to passion, but once his heart is engaged, he will not be swayed from his course.  He represents dogged determination and slow but steady progress.

    Of all the Knights that might set off looking for you, the Knight of Pentacles is the guy that WILL find you.  Yes, long after the Knights of Wands and Swords have galloped off on a new quest, long after the Knight of Cups rededicates his ballad to another fair maiden, no matter how long it takes, he’ll be there.

    In Lo Scarabeo’s The Tarot of The Masters, his keyword is ‘Responsibility’.

    The Knight of Pentacles can be a frustrated character – someone who longs to travel, but who is somehow prevented from doing so, either by home commitments, lack of finances or even health issues.

    Or he might be someone far from home who longs for the delights of her own fireside.

    This character is stubborn, the least flexible of the Knights, practical and single-minded in a way that the other, more exciting Knights are not.

    He directs us to:

    • Take on an adventure – even a tiny one!
    • Follow one project through to the end!
    • Explore new ways to make your money work harder (but not high risk!)
    • Try a new type of exercise – nothing too fast-moving!

    Sorry that it’s been a whole MONTH since I last posted.  I am still here reading and writing like mad.  I’m hoping that you’ll still drop by Thrones for a comfy chair and a coffee.  Maybe even Eccles cakes …

  • The 8 Marriages and 7 Husbands of Elizabeth Taylor

    King and Queen of Wands

    One of the side effects of living as Elizabeth Taylor for a week (other than really sore eyes from too much mascara and eye-liner) was an unhealthy interest in her many husbands.  And bourbon.

    Why not, suggested a friend, write about her husbands and relate them to various Tarot court cards? Why not, indeed.  

    Elizabeth Taylor’s love life is the stuff of legend – death, divorce, adultery – all seen through the lens of a newly born media merry-go-round.

    Mine is exactly the same – apart from the death, adultery and celebrity, of course.

    There’s a lot to get through – shall we just dive in?

    (more…)

  • Lammas Blog Hop | My favourite Pentacle….

    Welcome to the OTHER Game of Thrones!

    My Tarot blog concentrates on the 16 characters of the Tarot Court and my goal is to help demystify these cards and ensure that readers have a wealth of ideas to draw upon when the cards arise during a reading.  And to have a bit of fun with them too!

    If you’re interested in improving your relationship with the Tarot Court, please click to follow Tarot Thrones…over there on the right hand side.

    You may be here because you are hopping from Christiane’s blog to Joanne’s blog or vice versa for the Lammas Tarot Blog Hop or you may have just wandered here via a tweet or facebook.  Whichever path you have followed to find me, I am very glad to see you!

    In this Blog Hop, we were to look at our favourite Pentacle card. Because my blog focuses entirely on Court Cards, I’m keeping within that structure and limiting myself to choosing from the four courts (how very Pentacly!).  It’s a no-brainer – it’s got to be the Knight of Pentacles for me.  And my favourite image of him is this one, from the Pamela Colman-Smith Commemorative set issued by US Games Systems.

    I hold my hands up – I admit it, in the past I have been easily seduced into bed by the fiesty Knight of Wands….intellectually challenged by the prickly Knight of Swords and utterly charmed by the romance of the Knight of Cups.  At a party, the Knight of Pentacles probably wouldn’t have got a second glance from me.  Although I might have sent him off to the bar to bring me back a drink.

    And yet, as I get older, I appreciate more and more the qualities of the Knight of Pentacles.

    I love the practical streak that allows him to carry out so many small jobs with a quiet confidence that leaves the blustering Knight of Wands weakly reaching for his wallet.

    The Knight of Pentacles has an intimate knowledge of valves and screws and the workings of machines.  He may put on a show of being reluctant to help out, but his fingers dance over the various cogs or screws.  The Knight of Swords, on the other hand,  frantically flicks through the instruction manual looking for clues as to what needs tweaking.  Or thumped with a hammer.

    And the Knight of Cups?

    Let me share a story with you.  When my son was born, 12 years ago this very week, there were another three women in the ward whose babies arrived soon after mine.  Their husbands brought them bouquets of blooms that scented the ward with tendrils of scent from exotic lands…..armfuls of red roses in crackling sellophane sleeves and gas-filled balloons that bobbed up to ceiling height when they escaped their boxes, trailing ribbons and perspex bubbles with either a blue or pink teddy bear inside.

    Beautiful.

    What did I get?

    An inkjet printer for my computer.

    Practical.  And the source of much hilarity amongst the new sleep-deprived mothers.

    But I had that printer for YEARS and every time I used it, I thought of the day that my son was born and wondered how long the bouquets of flowers lasted 🙂

    This Knight is loyal, hard-working (check out those immaculately ploughed furrows!), strong and resilient.  But he’s not yet got that outward mastery of The King – the Knight can also be unbearably stubborn (see: outright refusal to read the operating instructions  before using an appliance), unable to pay you a compliment without some irritated prompting from yourself and he is totally bamboozled by your need to own more than one pair of black high heels.

    And if you decide to have A Deep Conversation one morning in bed as you both sup your cups of tea – good luck!  A ‘Deep Conversation’ for the Knight of Pentacles is one that is held down a mine-shaft.

    I once heard it said that the Knights of Wands and Swords would be the first into battle, followed by the Knight of Cups (who is probably composing a sonnet in his head about the war as he canters towards the fighting).

    And the Knight of Pentacles?  He would be the last to venture into the fight, but once he was there, he would be the last to leave it.

    And the only one to buy you a printer for your computer….

     

  • Knight of Pentacles | Dan Donche | Darkana Tarot

    This Knight of Pentacles certainly differs from most other Knight of Pentacles that I’ve seen, and I like him all the better for it!


    Dan Donche, the artist behind this forthcoming Darkana deck (and smarty-pants GENIUS behind the hilariously Inappropriate Tarot Readings) hasn’t done the LWB for his deck yet, so I’m just going to go with my own thoughts about this guy and you can tell me what you think.

    Pentacles is the suit usually associated with the element of Earth and all the Knights are associated with the element of Air. So he’s a mixture of Earth and Air – traditionally, that’s a mix that doesn’t sit comfortably together.  You can read more about the rules of Elemental Dignities on Paul Hughes-Barlow’s Super Tarot website here.

    So, for me, this guy has a conflict between how he thinks (Fast and Airy, like a Knight) and how he acts (slow, dependable and Earthy, like a Pentacle)



    His head moves faster than the rest of him! 

    Dan has his Knight of Pentacles on a motorbike – by far and away the speediest Knight of Pentacles I’ve seen for some time! I’m not sure what sort of bike it is, but it looks kind of vintage to me, so I’m going for a cafe racer style.

    These date from around the 1960s but are getting pretty popular again….but they are not the fastest bikes on the planet.  And, for me, that steed quite suits the Knight of Pentacles. 

    I’m not sure what Dan’s other Knights might be doing – but I’m wondering whether they might be on other motorbikes – maybe a blue Japanese sports’ bike, like a Suzuki for the Knight of Swords, a sleek scarlet Italian Ducati for the Knight of Wands……maybe the Knight of Cups could be on a dirt bike?!  

    The point being – the Cups and the Pentacles guys would be on the slower machines, with the Wands and Swords guys on the madly fast machines.  Maybe? Well, we’ll see soon enough!  rubs hands together*  Can’t wait to see!

    I absolutely love Dan’s chosen artwork style for this deck – a sort of grunge, graffiti style that reminds me a great deal of Banksy’s work. Here’s an example of one of Banksy’s stenciled graffiti works in London:

    Snort:  Banksy

    With ‘snort’ a white trail of paint was followed through the streets of the capital which ended here, at the drug-taking copper.  Witty and politically pointed.

    Dan says: “The Darkana Tarot Deck combines a modern grunge style with non-traditional tarot symbolism. Every image is personally designed by me……this deck is everything I want to convey.

    “Most decks end up being representations of the Rider-Waite deck, which doesn’t offer a lot in the way of new, groundbreaking material out there. It is my opinion that the best tarot decks challenge current views and inspire. One way I seek to do that is by using more modern symbolism with clever artistic techniques, all packaged into a current style that’s both rich in context and appealing.”


    Sounds great doesn’t it?!

    Dan has keywords on the bottom left corner of his card – for this Knight it is Stubborn Obsessive.  The stubbornness is undoubtedly a Pentacles trait…..and obsessiveness – could be Airy?  According to the Golden Dawn attributions, two thirds of the Knight of Pentacles astrological associations are with Virgo (the other third is in Leo).  And Virgo is pretty obsessive! 

    The Court Cards can be associated with different Astrological signs – lots of different systems exist and if you want to use one, just pick one and learn it!  

    If you would like to see more of Dan’s forthcoming deck – or even donate a few shekels to help him get it published – you can see more here

    So – what do YOU think of this Knight of Pentacles?