Over the past weeks and months, I've finally been getting to grips properly with something that's bugged me for years: the difficulty of grasping the tarot's court cards. They've always been difficult to pin down for me; the simplest meanings are always out there, but the moment you scratch the surface, the meanings you read and receive are contradictory at best, and downright confusing at worst. I've been trying to work this out for myself, and thought the whole process might be worth a blog post. Here goes. 

 

There are many ways to categorise tarot card decks. The "big three" appear to be tracing a line of descent back to three seminal decks: the Tarot de Marseille, the Rider-Waite-Smith "rectified" tarot, and the Thoth tarot. There's also a fourth - the Grand Etteilla - which is a little non-standard and, in my humble opinion, less influential today. By influential I mean that almost all tarot decks produced these days trace their lineage back to either the Tarot de Marseille, the Rider-Waite-Smith, or the Thoth. And, by lineage, I mean the names and numbers of their cards, their attributions and correspondences, their symbolism, and their meanings. There are significant differences in all of these areas between these three major types of tarot deck. 

 

But there's an additional niggle, which IMHO often seems to be glossed over, as it really is a little thorny. It's the nature and significance of the "court cards", those 16 cards which sit at the "top" of the Minor Arcana, representing kings, queens, knights, and pages for each of the four suits. Or Knights, Queens, Princes, and Princesses, if you're using a Thoth-derived deck. Or something similar; often decks with more distant inspirations will use radically different nomenclature for these four cards in each suit. 

 

Now, there's a tricky problem here. Look at this:

• RWS / TdM Decks: King, Queen, Knight, Page. 
• Thoth Deck: Knight, Queen, Prince, Princess. 

 

It might not seem like much, but did you see how the Knight has changed position in the hierarchy, from 3rd position in the RWS / TdM decks to first position in the Thoth deck? Well, it's actually a big deal, and one that's caused no end of confusion and disagreement. 

 

It's About Correspondences...

 

It all boils down to correspondences. That is to say, the symbolic frameworks and attributions we use to create and interpret, well, almost anything, but in this context, the meaning of each card of the tarot deck. A simple set of correspondences is found in the colour attributed to each suit: red hues for Wands, green hues for Cups, blues for Swords, browns or other earth colours for Pentacles. Another set of correspondences is found in the element attributed to each suit: fire for Wands, water for Cups, air for Swords, earth for Pentacles.

 

But there are other correspondences that are more intricate, less commonly overt, and require a little more reading and study to really understand. A key example in the case of the Tarot are the Qabbalistic (or Kabbalistic) correspondences. In the 19th century, occultists like Eliphas Levi and the members of the Golden Dawn drew elaborate yet very meaningful correspondences between elements of the qabala and elements of the tarot. For example, they noticed that the ten sephiroth "stations of power" on the qabalistic Tree of Life could be attributed to the ten numbers of the Minor Arcana, from the Aces with the topmost sephira of Kether to the Tens with the bottom-most sephira of Malkuth. They also found that the 22 Major Arcana could each be associated with one of the 22 "paths" which connect the ten sephiroth of the Tree of Life. These correspondences are quite esoteric, but it's undeniable that they add richness of meaning to the tarot cards they affect. Almost all of the tarot decks, their cards' meanings, and the books written about them in the modern era are very heavily influenced by these correspondences. 

 

The Four Worlds

 

But there's another layer of qabbalistic correspondence which has caused problems, largely because of the incremental way it was released into the public domain. This is the correspondence system of the four "worlds", "realms", or "emanations"; essentially, a descending order of mystical cosmological events according to which the physical universe was created. The first world, known as Atziluth, is called the World of Emanation, where the forces of the four elements first appear; the second is Briah, the World of Creation, followed by Yetzirah, the World of Formation, and finally the world of Assiah, the World of Manifestation. Each of these four worlds is also associated respectively with one of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, the Qabalistic "name of god", which we represent by the four Hebraic letters "yod", "heh", "vau", and again "heh". Starting with the first emanation of, say, the creative and spiritual energies of fire (corresponding, remember, to the tarot suit of Wands) in Atziluth, those energies gain potential, form, and finally manifest physically as they descend through these four worlds, realms, or emanations. The metaphor here is that as the Tetragrammaton name of God is uttered, letter by letter, the world comes into being.  

 

It's all a bit abstract, but there are oceans of material written about these Four Worlds and the Tetragrammaton. Most importantly for our purposes, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn chose to attribute these Four Worlds, and the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, to the four tarot court cards. Which is where things get thorny...

 

Secrets of  a Secret Society

 

Now, the Golden Dawn was a secret society, and members swore oaths not to reveal its secret teachings. Such were the spooky-yet-fun predilections of our 19th century predecessors. They loved that "secret" stuff.
 

One of the key members of the Golden Dawn was occultist and theoretician A.E. Waite, who as we know was one of the two driving forces behind one of the three most influential tarot decks of all time, the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (Pamela Colman Smith, artist, illustrator, occultist, being the other driving force). When Waite and Smith produced their influential tarot deck in 1909, Waite was under oath to the Golden Dawn not to reveal certain secrets. I haven't been able to find absolute confirmation of the fact, but I surmise that one of those secrets related to the nature and hierarchy of the so-called "court cards" of the tarot and their correspondences to the Four Worlds of the Qabala. 

 

Historically (such as in the Tarot de Marseille), the court cards were labelled (translations are approximate) King, Queen, Knight, Page. When the Golden Dawn tried to associate each of these with one of the Four Worlds and the four letters of the Tetragrammaton (in the natural order of Yod, Heh, Vau, and Heh), they found problems with the Kings and the Knights. Their own analyses suggested that it was in fact the Knight that was the incarnation of the "fiery" forces associated with Yod and with Atziluth (the first of the Four Worlds), and that attribution produced the energetic, fiery, active, rapid nature of the Knight's traditional tarot card meanings. In contrast, the King was better associated with the "airy" power of Vau and with Yetzirah (the third of the Four Worlds), producing the reasoned, controlled, outwardly directed nature of the King card's traditional meanings. 

 

Whether you agree with this or not, it's what the Golden Dawn determined. You can find it in Regardie, in Crowley, and, in slightly hidden form, in Waite, too (he was still restrained by his oath of secrecy, remember). The upshot is that the Golden Dawn's theory of correspondence necessitated a re-ordering of the four court cards into a new hierarchy which matched the Tetragrammaton and Four Worlds.

 

This hierarchy was: Knight, Queen, King, Page. 

 

Not very intuitive, right? Well, the Golden Dawn addressed this by basically renaming the cards. You can find these names in various places; usually any tarot book worth its salt will mention them. For example, the King of Pentacles was given the name "Prince of the Chariots of Earth"; the Knight of Wands became "Lord of the Flame and the Lightning, King of the Spirits of Fire"; the Page of Swords became the "Princess of the Rushing Winds". Only the Queen retained her original title, in names like "Queen of the Thrones of the Waters".

So, this meant the Golden Dawn created a new hierarchy: Knight (renamed King), Queen, King (renamed Prince), and Page (renamed Princess). Sometimes this is hybridised; in the Thoth deck, you get Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. But it's effectively the same thing; a re-ordering of the court cards to represent the new Golden Dawn correspondences of the Tetragrammaton and the Four Worlds. 

 

And Here's the Rub...

 

Now, back to the new Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909. In this deck, Waite chose to present the court cards in their old order, ie King, Queen, Knight, Page. However, he chose to use the new attributions and correspondences of the Golden Dawn. So, the King is Vau / Air, and the Knight is Yod / Fire. If you were to put the RWS court cards in true hierarchical order, you would read them in that order (above) of Knight, Queen, King, Page. That's the order used in attributing their meanings. 

 

If you like, this was one of the "initiated secrets" of the RWS deck; that, despite appearances, the court cards were actually the Golden Dawn court, and not the traditional court. But that simple act of obfuscation has created a whole world of confusion and contradiction since. 

 

Because, quite simply, many sources over the past 50 or so years mix up and confuse this configuration. They take the traditional court card correspondences (such as the Tarot de Marseilles), where the King comes first, and then simply jam the Golden Dawn correspondences on top. This results in the King being associated with the Golden Dawn symbols and meanings for Yod, Atziluth, and Fire, and the Knight being shoehorned into Vau, Yetzirah, and Air. 

 

Why Does It Matter?

 

Does this really matter, you may ask? Well, yes, to be honest. If your Knight is now Air and not Fire, that's going to profoundly affect the meaning of all the Knight cards across all four suits (and Kings too, of course). In any case, if you care about consistency and logic in your symbolism, it matters. Because there are additional correspondences beyond the ones I've given above, such as the astrological correspondences of the 36 Decans, whereby each of the Knights, Queens, and Kings are associated with three minor arcana, two major arcana, and two zodiacal signs (one which "rules" that court card, one which "precedes"). If you arbitrarily switch around the Knight (Yod, Atziluth, Fire) and the King (Vau, Yetzirah, Air), you end up mixing the clear, logical, yet intricate sets of correspondences created by the Golden Dawn, which underpin the meanings we now attribute to these cards. 

 

If you read your tarot cards "intuitively", ie you don't mind much about systems of symbolism and correspondence, then you can reasonably ignore all this. But if you're looking to the Tarot as a kind of internally consistent library of myths, Jungian archetypes, and symbols which are heavy with cultural resonance, and worthy of a lifetime's study, then it's kind of a big deal. For example, if you open up a book claiming to provide you with insight into the Tarot working from a deck which is part of the RWS or TdM lineage, and you find yourself with a description of the King of Wands which declares it's the "Fire of Fire" (ie, the mixed-up attribution of the King to Yod, Atziluth, and Fire), then you know right from the start there's going to be an underlying disconnect to all the reasonings underpinning the meanings and interpretations that book is giving you. And that means the book will, here and there, contradict everything else you've read in your quest to understand the cards, sometimes profoundly so. In other words, it's going to sow confusion, not generate clarity. 

 

For me, that's a big deal. 

 

So What Is To Be Done?

 

Now, I don't want to suggest this is a "problem", per se. The Tarot is a living tradition, and it's filled with contradictions. I love the Rider-Waite-Smith lineage for the wonderful scenes which Colman-Smith crafted for each of the Minor Arcana, I find them so much richer than the simple "here's a pic of 4 wands, make of it what you will" approach of the TdM and Thoth lineages. But this historical quirk has made the already intricate court cards a stage more opaque and indeed confusing, and they need approaching with care to understand them properly. It would be nice at least if modern-day Tarot discussed this issue more clearly. 

 

Personally, I'd love to see a beautiful tarot deck which does the following:

• it has the symbolic and narrative richness of the RWS lineage, specifically in the Minor Arcana. I love those little scenes that Pamela came up with.
• it presents the court cards in "correct" Golden Dawn hierarchy, and renames them to: King (on horseback, used to be a Knight), Queen, Prince (on a chariot, used to be King), and Princess. At a pinch, I could live with the Thoth naming of Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. 
• uses the full GD system of correspondences, so that the Kings (on horseback, ex-Knights) are Yod / Atziluth / Fire, and the Princes (on chariots, ex-Kings) are Vau / Yetzirah / Air). 
• are as simple, clear, and readable as the best of the RWS lineage, but which incorporate GD and Thoth correspondences without becoming overloaded and difficult to read. 

 

Now that would be a rectified tarot! Does anyone know of such a beast? 

 

Blessed be, 

 

Sarah x