Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Tag: Knight

  • Meet the Thoths!

    Got that tiger by the tail?

    I’m sorry, but in my head the theme from the Flinstones started playing as I typed that blog title! And it is deeply inappropriate because the elegant Thoth Courts are about as far away from Barney and Betty Rubble as you can get!

    The Thoth deck, created by Aleister Crowley (rhymes with Holy) and Frieda, Lady Harris*, is one of the most beautiful and well thought-through decks in the Tarot universe.  Crowley was a Golden Dawner – and one of its most colourful characters.  Once referred to by the press as ‘the wickedest man in the world’ he was, I think, just 50 years ahead of his time.  Today he would be hanging out with Lady Gaga and regularly papped for all the Celebrity pages in newspapers.

    Prince of Wands
    F1 Champion

    But for all his over-the-top antics (chiselling off a discrete fig leaf from Oscar Wilde’s tombstone, for example), he was utterly sincere in his Great Work.  Cajoled (and paid) into creating a Tarot by Lady Harris the two of them hammered out this magnificent deck.  If you get a chance to read their correspondece, please do.

    In line with Golden Dawn thought, we see a change in the Court Card structure.  There are no Pages and Kings in this deck, instead we have Princesses and Princes.

    In the RWS we have a court that is structured like this:  The Page is the lowest rank….then Knight….then Queen….then King.  The story *I* tell myself about them is that the King and Queen have two children – the Knight is older and taking on some of The Firm’s responsibilities and the Page is really just learning her place in the world.

    She can pack quite
    a punch with that Wand!

    Other people have a slightly different story – the King and Queen are right up there at the top of the pack, the Page is not their child, but just a Page, a little servant; the Knight is not their son, just a courtier.  A very FLASHY courtier though.

    But the structure is the same – Page, Knight, Queen, King.

    Not so in the Thoth.

    In Crowley’s story, the Knight is the Consort for the Queen.  The Queen being the old King’s daughter. The Prince is the Son of the Queen and the Knight.  The Princess is won by the Prince and set upon her mother’s throne. Crowley says: ‘She thus awakens the Eld of the old king, who becomes a Knight and so renews the cycle.’

    Explosive Knights!

    ‘She is not only the perfect maiden,’ continues Crowley ‘but (also) the lamenting widow’  of the Prince.

    I know.  It’s like an episode of the real Game of Thrones.

    This transformation of King into Knight, Knight and Queen unity, the production of a Prince, the son’s union with his Princess sister, his transformation itno the Knight, her morphing into Queen…..it’s hugely dynamic and exciting, much more so than the static positions of the RWS, don’t you think?

    What makes it so hideously confusing is that the Knights are on horseback – just as they are in the RWS – and it is SO easy to lapse into thinking of them as Ye Olde Waite Knight.

    The Prince is the son of the Knight and Queen.   A Prince is ALWAYS a Queen’s son – that’s one lynch-pin that will keep your Thoth Tarot Arcana from tumbling into mental disarray when you start to use it!

    The Knight and Queen of Cups
    Prince and Princess of Cups

    *Calling herself Lady Frieda Harris was just a little affectation that she took for herself.  According to Lon Milo DuQuette in his book Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot (and I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you are planning on a bit of Thoth Dabbling) the correct way to address this estranged wife of a Baronet is Frieda, Lady Harris.  She should only have been calling herself Lady Frieda Harris if her father had had the title.  Debretts? Who needs it. You’re welcome 🙂

    Knight and Queen of Disks

    Princess and Prince of Disks

    Can you spot Tyrion Lannister?!
    Look at the colours in these cards – aren’t they magnificent?  These colourways didn’t just happen by chance….but that’s a story for another day 🙂
    Knight and Queen of Swords

    Princess and Prince of Swords

    All images from the Thoth Tarot, published by US GAmes Systems, words – Aleister Crowley, art Lady Frieda Harris.

    Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot – Lon Milo DuQuette



    All the Thoth resources on Amazon UK

  • And it’s Good Knight from him!

    There are lots of spreads that you can do to mark the passing stages of the moon.  Last night was a full moon, so I thought about whose personality energies would be now lessening their grip on me from here to the Dark Moon.

    Of course, when it’s the Dark Moon, I’ll be looking to see whose energies are going to become more powerful as we draw towards the next Full Moon.  There are lots of variations on this reading theme, but that’s the two that we’ll initially be looking at.

    The card drawn was The Knight of Cups.  And here he is;

    Copyright info:  Published by US Games
    Words/Art – A E Waite/Pamela Colman-Smith
    You can buy it here:   
                                                                                         
    This is one of two Knights in the Rider Waite Smith deck that I’d quite like to give a damn good shake. Look at him, trotting around totally absorbed by the Cup in his grasp.  I could smack him.
    His character is similar to the river that runs through the card: it slowly twists and turns through the countryside.  It meanders.  The Knight of Cups meanders.  This is a Knight who is in grave danger of disappearing up his own ass if he doesn’t rouse himself from the adoration of his Cup to some kind of action.  
    He’s a Knight – the Knights are not supposed to demonstrate the maturity of their Kings and Queens.  It’s their job to QUEST and to seek for that elusive THING and he’s seeking something in that Cups of his.  
    Frankly, I’m tired of looking for The Knight of Cups Thing.  You know The Thing.  The Thing that will Make You Emotionally Fulfilled.  If you’re lucky, you won’t know what I’m talking about – but if you’re at the Knight stage of anything, you’ll know just what I mean 🙂
    As a member of the Cups family, you would think that this chap is all about those Watery traits (the fish on his tabard, the waves on his horse’s bridle) such as love, compassion, warmth….but as a Knight, he also has a lot of intellectual, logical Airy energy blowing around too (check out those wings on his helmet and spurs) and for me, this Watery/Airy combination manifests in a character who is more interested in examining  his own experience of emotions than anyone else’s.  Looking again at the river in the card, I can confirm that point of view by the almost arid landscape that is clearly not much nourished by the water that runs through it.
    This is a guy who will lovingly compose a ballad for you, but only really for the pleasure of hearing himself sing!  He will sweep you off for a weekend to Paris, but forget to buy Euros….. Oh don’t get me wrong – he will declare his undying love and genuinely mean it.  Until he doesn’t and you’re dumped unceremoniously from a great height.  And he’s off again on his Great Quest…. do you recognise him?!
    So from now until the moon becomes dark, the disengaged emotional pleasures of the Knight of Cups ebbs from my life as does his dilly-dallying abstractedness.  Thank goodness!
    I wonder whose energies will take his place?!