I was recently contacted by a lovely person on Facebook, Arthur, who asked about Court cards and links to other cards that shared the same numbers….
Traditionally, of course, Court cards are not numbered, but if they WERE numbered they could follow straight on from the Ten, resulting in:
11 Page
12 Knight
13 Queen
14 King
If there IS a correlation between the Courts and their Major Arcana numbers, this would mean that:
Pages have a link to XI Justice
Knights have a link XII The Hanged Man
Queens link to XIII Death
Kings link to XIV Temperance
Honestly? If I sat for a long time, I would probably be able to come up with reasonable strands that could reasonably link those cards together, but my gut feeling is that it would be like hammering square pegs into round holes to force things to fit.
Something else to consider, you COULD also knock off the first ‘1’ and say that:
Pages link to I The Magician
Knights link to II The High Priestess
Queens link to III The Empress
Kings link to IV The Emperor
This feels a lot more attractive because of the Queens/Empress and Kings/Emperor links, but really does Knight energy have terribly much in common with your understanding and interpretation of The High Priestess? Do the nascent Pages have the mature, transformative power of The Magician?
Possibly.
BUT – what about abandoning the Major Arcana as the comparison and replacing it with the beginnings of the Minor Arcana? After all, the Major Arcana originated from a different source to the Minor Arcana, so it makes more sense that the Courts would have common grounds with those beginner Minor cards.
Pages would then link to their suit’s Ace
Knights would then link to the Two
Queens to the Three
Kings to the Four
When you make THESE associations, it feels much more natural – the potential offered by the Ace is also present in the little Page, the vacillations of the Knight can echo the dilemmas/choices present in the Two, the creative source of the Queen can be found in the Three and the stabilising force of the King can be recognised in the Four.
What if you opted to use it ALL?!
What if Pages shared a link between The Magician AND the Aces?
Knights were linked between The High Priestess AND the Twos?
Queens would share commonality with The Empress AND the Threes
Kings would have common ground with The Emperor AND the Fours
I think this could work, if you fancied the idea, but it would be vital to remember that just because an apple is red and so is a cherry it doesn’t make them the same thing at all! They can have a common touching point in their colour and in that they are fruit, but they taste completely different. And so it is with a Page and The Magician – they can link through their ‘potential’ as can the Page and the Ace, but they are not the same taste at all 😀
My over-riding consideration for the accepting the validity of linking the Courts to other cards through the use of numbers is whether it makes sense for YOU. What does it bring to YOUR understanding of the reading? How does it help YOUR client? And can you apply the links consistently?
I can see that if out that if a spread contained, for example, a lot of Twos AND a lot of Knights then it makes sense to drill down into whatever dichotomy your client faces.
But enough of what *I* think, what do YOU think?
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 ….