Do the “Loosen Up”

While writing my recent post about the the ability of the court cards to receive "inspiration and support from Above," I stumbled upon an epiphany that deserves further exploration. At the end of the essay I wrote: "I will continue to see tarot royalty as hobbled by their inability to “loosen up;” in practical reading …

Head to the Sky

I've resumed reading Paul Marteau's Tarot de Marseille book after a month's hiatus and immediately encountered another interesting idea. He mentions that the Knight of Cups is bare-headed and therefore "he is directly receiving inspiration and support from Above." In contrast, although Marteau doesn't elaborate further, it struck me that those members of the tarot …

Left or Right? A Matter of Orientation

There is a tradition in tarot reading that visually scanning from the left to the right in a linear spread presents a past-to-future panorama of circumstances signifying an urge to move forward, while looking from right to left suggests a need to first deal with past events in the situation that may still be unresolved …

The Court Cards: A Paradigm Shift

There is a premise in Liber T, the tarot canon of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, that relates the court cards to the exercise of worldly "power" in its various forms. The Kings represent "Potential Power;" the Queens convey "Brooding Power;" the Knights (or Princes) wield "Power in Action;" and the Pages (or …

A Tarot de Marseille “Energy Translation” Tableau

Here I align the seminal "root power" of the Ace and the linear binary projection of the Two with the "agency" of the court cards and the situational "ways and means" symbolized by the remaining pips to produce a developmental tableau that enlivens Tarot de Marseille delineation. Rather than following the esoteric assumption that only …

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I would not be surprised if this has been done before (and perhaps better), but this is my own spin on it. In a previous essay I floated the idea that a reversed court card might exhibit the qualities of the preceding zodiacal sign more prominently than those of its primary astrological referent …

The Unevolved Fire Signs: A Study in Vanity

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I struggled to find a polite way to say "arrogance" without actually saying it, but that would be an extreme example of my point. Also, there is an idea here regarding the reversed court cards and their Golden Dawn assignment to the Chaldean zodiac that warrants further exploration in another essay. In astrology …

“Who’s Got the Ball?” – Court Cards As “Agency”

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The ideas and practices described here are updated from those presented in at least one earlier post on the subject. It has always struck me that the court cards of a tarot deck have a fairly narrow range of usefulness in a reading (not to mention that they are often a source of …

The Virtue of Simplicity

As time goes on I find myself drawn more and more to working with only the 56 Minor Arcana cards in divination. Granted, the 22 Major Arcana are where most of the philosophical "meat" lies in the tarot, but very few of my readings rise to that level of metaphysical complexity and intensity. Most of …

“Will the Real Page of Wands Please Stand Up?”

The methods by which human personality, age and gender have been assigned to the court cards of the tarot have never resembled an exact science. The old ways of using physical traits as the  basis for qualitative "thumbnails" are almost entirely unsatisfactory: Wands people are assumed to be fair-haired, light-skinned and blue-eyed, those at the …