Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Tag: tarot court cards

  • Say toodle-pip to……The King of Bells!

    Well, I don’t know about you, but the supermoon played havoc with my dreams!  I slept with the curtains open so that I could see the transit of her celestial silveriness as she walked the night sky……

    I took a great deal of care to select which deck I’d be using to receive the message about whose energies would be receding from me at this full moon because I knew it would be delivered IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

    Using a pendulum, I dowsed over all my decks to find which one I should use.  The pendulum started to swing in a to/fro motion over the Fairy Tarot by Antonio Lupatelli (published by Lo Scarabeo).

    TADAAAH!  The card drawn was the King of Bells.  This is the guy whose influence will be receding from my life from now until the New Moon.

    I have to admit, this is a deck that I don’t often refer to – it was gifted to me as a memento after a lovely TABI member died unexpectedly.  I shall never part with it, but in all honesty, I never read with it either.  It is a semi-illustrated pips deck – there are pips, but also a tiny vignette on each pip card.  I’m trying to get more into semi-illustrated pip decks, so maybe’s a good time to try harder with this deck – because it IS cute.

    The King of Bells is a glum-looking character, seated on his throne with his great sword pointing straight down.  Bells equates to Coins in the traditional suits and according to the LWB, he represents ‘the richness aquired through intelligent work.  Fairies’, says the book, ‘are rarely able to commit themselves to one single activity; but when they do, they often succeed – and  become rich men of property’.

    Well, it’s not just Fairies that have troubles with that! Here’s his non-Fairy counterpart!

    That’s  why he looks so glum – he’d rather be doing loads of other things, rather than amassing wealth!  But well done to him for sticking at it 🙂

    Maybe it’s just as well his influence is receding because I am not the sort of person who does well when stuck at the same thing day-in, day-out.  Well, there’s FACEBOOK of course – but that’s hardly work.  That’s LIFE!

    The single-pointed concentration of the King of Bells is never going to be my forte (or my fifty) and a little bit of me is relieved that I no longer have to try to shoe-horn myself into that particular high-heel.

    I’m a multi-tasker and I’m proud to have interests in lots of different fields – from designing and building websites for a wide variety of clients (from authors and artists to wedding planners and marinas!) and am working my way through a Wikipedia entry for a client,  to doing all the stuff required to run a home (albeit badly!) and attending art classes…… being interested in different things keeps me sparky!  And to be perfectly honest, I’m not motivated by the quest for the Mighty Dollar (Mighty Pound Coin doesn’t sound right) and this is the point where I have to admit it, I think.

    So I say, huzzah to the end of the King of Bells!!! Sure, I might not become rich doing what I do the way that I do it….but I am rich in many other respects – and feel blessed to be so!

    What about you – Are you happy multi-taskers or can you pull-focus down onto one area and master it like the King of Bells?

  • Page of Swords | The Lost Tarot of Nostradamus | John Matthews

    The Page of Swords
    AKA The Postulant of Stars

    Continuing my regular blog theme of having authors or artists talking about the Page of Swords in their latest or yet-to-be-published decks, nothing could be hotter off the press than this card! It’s so HOT that the image isn’t even completed yet!! Say hello to the Postulant of Stars from the forthcoming Lost Tarot of Nostradamus by John Matthews and Wil Kinghan.

    John Matthews took time out of his busy schedule to answer my questions about this card and the new deck:

    What inspired you to create this particular deck?

    Finding out about the manuscript discovered in the Rome library. When I showed the images to Wil we both said, almost in one breath, it’s a tarot….then we started researching the MS and what the illustrations might mean and found that it really was a tarot – a lost tarot indeed.

    How are the suits designated?

    As there was no real indication of what Nostradamus himself might have called the suits we designed them to reflect the way the cosmos was perceived in his life-time. So we ended up with Stars (Swords) Moons (Vessels) Suns (Staves) and Spheres (Coins). For the last one we used the writings of Johannes Kepler, who was the first to apply a geometric ordering to the universe. Each suit had its associations with alchemical metals and meaning to further deepen the correlatives.

    Are the pip cards in this deck going to be illustrated, un-illustrated or part-illustrated (like the Thoth)?

    Fully illustrated. I’m not a great fan of pip cards or partly illustrated ones. Here you get the full effect. There were enough images in the manuscript to fill every card with symbolism. It was fascinating researching it all and we were constantly amazed at how well it all fitted.

    This particular court card, the Postulant of Stars has a background of zodiac images – so is he going to apply himself to study the stars?

    All of the minor cards have zodiacal imagery as a background. There are connections between every one of the cards and the stars that empower them. This is something we picked up on from the original images.

    What’s your Court structure in this deck? Postulants…and then what?!

    Its actually quite complex. While we followed the general structure of Page, Knight, Queen, King, we had different names for the Court cards in each suite. In the Stars (Swords) we go from Postulant, Cardinal, Abbess, Pope, each one represented by contemporary religious figures from Nostradamus’ time. Then, in Suns (Wands). We have Page, Knight, Lady, Prince to reflect the courtly life of the Renaissance. Moons are connected to the occult and philosophy, so we have Neophyte, Initiate, Prophetess, Master. Finally, the suite of Spheres represents science and alchemy and we have Apprentice, Astronomer, Astrologer, Alchemist. In this way the courts reflect the entire world in which Nostradamus lived.

    How did you and Wil Kinghan create your cards? Do you direct every minute detail or does Wil just let rip with his imagination?

    Normally I would make detailed descriptions of what I felt should be on the cards (as with our other current project ‘The Steampunk Tarot’, also with Wil), but here every single piece of imagery on the cards was redrawn exactly from the original manuscript. We both sat down with the originals and studies them over a period of months, carefully selecting details that we felt reflected the current understanding of the Tarot. We also looked back to the oldest surviving meanings and often went to those rather than the later, post Golden Dawn, meanings. As I said, the imagery was remarkably consistent and convinced us we were right about Nostradamus’ intention of creation of a tarot. Unfortunately he died before he could do so, so we have, in a sense, finished it for him!

    Finally, as a wonderful addition, we asked my wife Caitlin to translate some of Nostradamus’ prophetic quatrains. Then we divided them into couplets and applies one to each card. Again, the imagery was amazingly consistent and we ended up with a very unusual extra part of the divinatory concept. Each reading enables you to create a ’new’ quatrain, which can be read as part of your answer….

    Tell me about the frame device – it’s very striking; what does it add to the deck?

    We wanted to make sure that each suit, and the Majors, were clearly distinguishable from each other, so Wil devised the frames which he built to reflect the meaning of each suit. Also they are of the alchemical metals which we tied into the suits – Gold for the Majors, Silver for Moons, Mercury for Stars, Copper for Suns and Lead for spheres.

    In all I think the deck reflects as far as possible the intention of Nostradamus if he had lived to finish the work he had begun.

    If you’d like to keep up with the deck’s development, John and Wil have a facebook page dedicated to it:  https://www.facebook.com/NostradamusTarot  and Wil’s got a facebook page of his own, which you can find here.

  • Beltane Tarot Blog Hop | Fire Tends To All

    Hello and welcome to the OTHER Game of Thrones!  This blog focuses exclusively on the Court Cards of the Tarot deck – hopefully making the Courts seem a little more fun and a lot less daunting!

    Today you may be here because you’re a regular visitor or because you’ve hopped here from Arwen’s Blog or backwards from Aisling’s blog through the Tarot Blog Hop – either way, I’m very pleased to see you 🙂

    If you want to join in the Court Card chat here on the blog, you can sign up to follow – just there to the right or you can friend up with me on facebook, twitter or add me to your google + Tarot circle!

    Arwen’s blog!

    Aisling’s blog!

    Now you can hop backwards to Arwen’s blog or forwards to Aisling’s blog – enjoy your day! And come back and see me and the Tarot Courts sometime, won’t you?  *flutters hankie in farewell*

    Will Worthington’s work on amazon.co.uk

  • One Singer | One Song | Which Significator?

    So, I’ve gone right back to the 1960s again – sorry!

    Cannot believe that this is the first track on her first album! What an absolute BELTER!

    So, imagine that the girl in this song is sitting in front of you looking for a Tarot reading –  Court Card would you select to represent her and why?  What method did you use?!

    If you have any suggestions as to what you would like seen covered here on the blog, please drop me a line.  I’ll be happy to help!

    Have a wonderful weekend!  No post on Monday, but Tuesday will see the publication of the Beltane Tarot Blog hop contribution.  I hope that you enjoy it!

  • Hello to The Page of Coins

    Page of Coins: Touchstone Tarot
    Kat Black

    On Friday the moon slipped into darkness before beginning to glow and grow in strength again.  That’s my cue to pull a card to show me what energies will be useful to me until the full moon next month.

    Say hello to Kat Black’s Page of Pentacles from the Touchstone Tarot.

    This is the second time that I’ve employed Kat’s sumptuous deck for this exercise and it’s the first time I had a good look at the Page of Coins.

    Coins equate, of course, to Pentacles and his appearance here lets me know that I will be focusing on the physical for the coming period.  Which suits me fine!

    My nose is streaming and my eyes are watering – I am most definitely coming down with a cold.  Unless it’s hay fever *looks hopefully out of the window at the lashing rain*.  Unlikely.

    I’m also trying to increase the amount that I run.  Well, when I say ‘run’, I really mean ‘jog.’  And when I say ‘jog,’ I’m really talking about the speed that an arthritic labrador can overtake me with ease.  But still, it’s a START.

    And the Page is all about the starting….

    Kat takes elements of many beautiful paintings (for example – Holbein’s Hans The Younger provides the Page, the table and book; Fra Angelico for the gold coin hanging on the wall) and seamlessly melds them together into a stunning new image.

    In the accompanying book, Kat has this guy pegged as a scholar, someone who is prepared to get his head down and work through all the data.  She actually writes ‘slow and steady wins the race,’ well, my jogging is certainly slow and steady.  Not sure about it winning any races.  Unless that arthritic dog is up for the challenge.

    For me, the Page of Pentcles is keen to try new things and is very hands on – so he’s more like an apprentice to me than a student (I’d associate that more with the Page of Swords).  However, I’ve just started attending an art class that will, God willing, at the end of 10 weeks see me producing a couple of Major Arcana Tarot card paintings/drawings.  Play your cards right and I might show them to you.  Maybe not.  You’d need to promise to be gentle with me.  We Pages are only little souls who are just sending forth little tendrils for exploration – we are easily crushed.

    What does the Page of Coins mean to you?

    Good Golly Miss Molly – check out that Amazon price!!!

  • St George’s Day | Spread

    ‘Get a dragon’ you said…
    ‘It will be fun!’ you said…

    Today is St George’s Day and, in honour of my cousins of the red cross on white who live Darn Sarf, here’s a Tarot spread for you to try today.

    This spread was originally on my FB page as a Note last year, but I thought we could add a little court card spin to it here.

    Think of the issue that you wish to address through the reading…

    Flick through your Court Cards and choose one that best represents:  The Maiden – this card represents your goal  and one to represent St George – this card represents YOU in relationship to The Maiden.

    Then randomly select three further court cards.  These represent

    The Dragon – what holds you back from achieving your goal

    The Sword – the energies of this court card will help drive you forwards

    The Shield – the energies of this card indicates something you would do well to protect against

    Your final card in the spread (selected from anywhere in the remained of the deck) represents what might happen if you CAN slay the dragon using the Sword and Shield info and obtain The Maiden. The Likely Outcome card.

    Would love to know how you get on with this variation on the original FB spread!

  • Significators | The easy way!

        Welcome back, little Pages!                    
          From: Anna K Tarot

    I admit, I’ve been a little unfair to you, dearest reader:  I hit you with the Golden Dawn Astrology/Court Card associations and I can see that you’re a little woozy as a result.  I honestly TRIED to make it engaging. I even drew you TREES.  I don’t even draw my SON trees.

    Today I am kinder and outlining three easy ways to select an appropriate Significator.

    The first is simplicity itself – simply hand over your court cards to your client and allow your client to select a card to represent himself in the reading!  It doesn’t get any easier than that, does it?

    Huzzah – you don’t need to do anything tricky with decans or astrology AND it allows you to see how your client sees themselves.  Which can be enlightening.

    Of course, they don’t have to explain why they chose a card, but if they are willing to share their thought processes, it will add to your store of Court Card knowledge.  I would suggest that you ask at the end of the reading, after all the work is done, so that it doesn’t look like you are fishing for information from them to enhance the reading.

    The second method is equally simple:

    A Page will represent someone young (probably too young to have a Tarot reading lol!)
    A Knight will  represent someone younger than you (male or female)
    A Queen will represent a mature Yin energy (ie could be a man)
    A King will represent a mature Yang energy  (ie could be a woman)

    And you chose the suit depending upon the subject matter for the reading (see below for some ideas)

    The third method is to chat with your client about the issue and establish how THEY see themselves with regard to it. Listen to how they talk about the issue they want to ask you about. Do they feel hurt? Do they have a decision to make? Is it about money or work? Are people not talking? etc.

    Then you flick through your lovely bundle of court cards until you find the card that best represents your sitter with relation to the question at hand.

    Pages – represent beginnings of things
    Knights – represent that questing spirit and dilemma
    Queens – represent a mature nurturing, supportive, teaching role
    Kings – represent a mature outward display of mastery

    Cups – romantic or relationship – emotionalised issues
    Swords – grief, poor communication – intellectualised issues
    Wands – work, travel, active, intuitive – issues that involve doing something
    Pentacles – wealth, health, hearth – issues about ‘being’

    Just as some of the blog posts here on ‘Thrones’ have prodded you to make decisions about chosing court cards for various characters in songs etc, using this method, you will pull focus down onto one aspect of your sitter and their issue and select the court accordingly.

    And don’t be shy, tell your sitter why you have chosen this card.  They may disagree, thereby helping to clarify the reading that is required.

    These three methods are very flexible, allowing your sitter to be represented within the reading by a different card every time.  The methods from Wednesday’s blog post (which depend upon Astrology) will mean that the same card represents the same person every time – whether you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing is entirely up to you! 🙂

    Personally, I prefertoday’s methods because, while Astrology undoubtedly adds to the layers of interpretation available to you when reading, I believe that Tarot is a strong enough system to work on its own.

    Which method of chosing a significator do you prefer?

    This is the Page of Pentacles from the Anna K Tarot.  Click on the link, or on the image,  to visit Anna’s site and see this lovely deck!

  • Significators | Astrology | The need for a lie down….

    So now we roll on to the Golden Dawn’s allocation of Court Cards to the zodiac.

    Reader, I wrote this post about half a dozen times, every time it ended up utterly turgid and soooo boring I thought I might have to post you out a couple of match-sticks to prop your eyelids open and assault you with this *brandishes hat pin* just to make sure you are awake.

    First of all, it’s bad news again for the Pages; there’s still no room at the Astrological Inn for them with this system either.

    BUT – you will be pleased to know that I’ve abandoned all that earnest writing in favour of a drawing!  OK, it’s not the BEST drawing, but it does show the Golden Dawn’s zodiac choices.  I even added some seasonal trees to tart it up a bit for you.  You’re welcome.

    TADAAAAH!!!!
    (*sssh* ignore the fact that I almost spelled my blog’s name wrong)

    First of all, let’s look at the outer wheel which is marked by lots of tiny strokes. like the teeth on a wheel There’s 360 of them to be exact.  Degrees.  They’re called degrees. This works out quite nicely to 30 degrees per astrological sign.  I marked the outer ring accordingly.

    The next ring shows the 12 zodiac signs – well, my hand-drawn glyphs.  Apologies – they are tricker to doodle than you might think.

    The inner ring has the Kings, Queens and Knights of the Tarot Court.  The Wands are written in a nice fiery orange, the Swords in truthful black, the Cups in watery blue and the Pentacles in green.  I *know* – SO organised.

    You will see that each card does not line up exactly with each zodiac sign.  Irritating.  AND what is stranger is that they aren’t matched up like the previous system AT ALL (ie Wands = Fire Signs).

    Why is this?

    Well, the long and the short of it is that the Golden Dawners recognised that people are not quite the exact fit for each traditional astrological definition. So in a huge elemental mash-up, they offset each court card, preventing it from ‘owning’ a zodiac sign by 10 degrees.  This is called a decan. I think this overlap gives the whole thing a sort of strength of structure, like the bricks in a wall.  Just me?

    Those Golden Dawn smarty-pants DID allocate Major Arcana cards to each zodiac sign; I guess it prevents any direct equation between a Court and a Major.  I left them off this diagram – just to keep the confusion down to a dull roar 😉

    How did they arrive at these card/sign allocations?

    The easy answer would be to say that I have no idea, shrug my shoulders and just move swiftly onwards, but the truth is, they did it using the concept of Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable signs.  *flourishes the hat pin* Do I need to use this yet?

    Astrological signs with Cardinal attributes were allocated largely to the Queens.  The word itself derives from the Latin word for hinge, and, as you can see by the red dotted axis (axes, axii?!)  the Queen straddles the months that mark the changing of the seasons (The Solstices and the Equinox)

    Mutable signs were allocated to the Kings.  They fall at the end of the season, diminishing in strength.  Very Golden Dawn.  Honestly 😉

    In the middle are the Fixed signs, the attributes were allocated to the Knights.  They are reckoned to be the strongest, purest forms because the Knight is the child of the King and Queen. 

    Around the edge of the inner circle, I have marked the Cardinals in red, the Mutables in yellow and the Fixed in day-glo orange ( a mixture of red and yellow, just like the Knight is a mixture of his Mother and Father!)  It’s almost like I planned it 🙂

    And THAT is how the Golden Dawn allocate their Court Cards astrologically.

    And now I am off for a lie down in a darkened room.

  • Significators | How to choose ’em | Part 1

    I don’t care how nice your hat is, there’s
    nothing for you here, Sonny.
    Keep walking….

    One of the most popular ways to establish a Significator for your sitter is to ask them what their Birth Sign is (or Sun Sign) because, heck, even the Blackest Doubter knows their Sun Sign.

    Back in the day, the 12 astrological signs were allocated by the Great and The Good (or at least the Heavily Robed) to the Court Cards.

    What’s that I hear you say? There are 16 Court Cards and only 12 Astrological signs (13 if you count the ‘new’ sign of Ophiuchus).  Well, it was decided (probably by Committee – and you know how THAT tends to turn out) that you could get around this anomally by leaving the Pages out of the equation all together.


    The reasons for this are complicated and, dare I say, contrived? Basically, the Pages don’t get any astrological real-estate because they are too young and immature. Now, I don’t know about you, but that all sounds to me like trying to ram a square peg into a round hole by being clever enough to cut the corners off using lots of Esoteric fancy footwork.

    Or maybe I’m just not smart enough to ‘get’ it yet.  Tarot is, after all, a never-ending learning process and I know I’ve still got a very long way to go. *hopes that the Golden Dawners don’t take out a Fatwah against me face*

    Aaaaanyway, just take my word for it – the Pages aren’t included in the Astrology/Tarot system.

    So what does that leave us with? Four types of sign – Earth, Air, Fire and Water… and four Tarot suits. And three astrological signs in each category to accord with the three *cough* Court Cards in each suit!

    Just a quick reminder:

    Wands = Fire
    Swords = Air
    Cups = Water
    Pentacles = Earth

    Some people switch Swords and Wands associations around though. And just to confuse matters, the Astrological signs are allocated in different ways according to different decks.  Here is a handy set for you to refer to:

    King of Wands – Aries
    Queen of Wands – Leo
    Knight of Wands – Sagittarius

    King of Swords – Gemini
    Queen of Swords – Libra
    Knight of Swords – Aquarius

    King of Cups – Cancer
    Queen of Cups – Scorpio
    Knight of Cups – Pisces

    King of Pentacles – Taurus
    Queen of Pentacles – Virgo
    Knight of Pentacles – Capricorn

    You might not agree with these associations –  Maybe you think that The King of Wands is Sagittarius and the Knight is Aries? I’d love to hear how you allocate them.

    The key thing is – find something that works FOR YOU and stick with it!

    I’d love to know what advantages or disadvantages you can see with this particular method of selecting a Significator.

    And just WAIT till you see how the Golden Dawn allocates them…. 🙂

  • Significators: Why bother?

    Queen of Cups
    Morgan Greer Tarot
    published by US GAmes Systems Inc

    Court Cards can perform a specific function within a Tarot reading; the role of Significator.

    A Significator is a card that is deliberately chosen to represent the sitter.  There many different ways to select a Significator, so I’ve decided to break down the various methods of selection into next week’s blog postings.

    Note that I say ‘CAN’ have a specific function: Not everyone bothers with a Significator card these days.  Regardless of your method of choice, if you deliberately select a card to act as the sitter, then you immediately preclude that card from turning up within the reading itself.  That grates on the sensibilities of many Tarotists who would prefer to have ALL the cards at their disposal.


    It’s a perfectly valid reason not to bother with a Significator, but it’s simple to get round that particular bugbear – just use a different set of Court Cards to those in the deck you are working with.  This will ensure you have ALL court cards at your disposal for the reading itself – as well as allowing you to work with your favourite courts.

    It could even give new purpose to a damaged deck that is currently lying unused and unloved in a drawer – use the courts solely for significator selection?  It’s an idea, what do you think?

    There are some fantastic spreads that depend upon the use of a Significator, namely the Golden Dawn’s Opening Of The Key spread, which we will look at in a subsequent blog posting too.  Jeez, we’re going to be busy!

    Other people simply don’t bother with a significator because they regard it as just a pile of old-fashioned toot.  Well, that’s fine too.  It’s what I used to think 🙂

    But now I have seen the light, dear reader *pauses for a couple of ‘Hallelujahs’ and ‘Amens’*

    I’ve found that using a Court Card as a significator really helps me get in The Zone for the reading.  With a court chosen to represent my sitter, we jump through the looking glass from this world and enter the world of the Tarot cards: The sitter, as Significator, becomes part of the reading.

    I know.  VERRRRRRRY hippy-trippy 🙂

    So, tell me – do YOU use a Significator or not?  I’ve put up a little poll over there on the right hand side of m’blog.  Vote if you’ve got the inclination and time!