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Courts as an "earthly" reflection of the Major Arcana


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Posted

Hey all!

 

To better understand the courts -I was toying with the following idea:

 

Since Majors are seen as higher principles/ideas and courts are often viewed as people/ situations/aspects of our everyday life - I was thinking of pairing each court+ Reversed with its corresponding Major (Mostly looking at the RWS system) 

 

This is what I came up with so far and am comfortable with- Feel free to add/change/provide your own insights

 

Queen of Pentacles= Empress- both in terms of creativity, caring for others, growth and of course fertility 

Queen of Cups= The High Priestess- In terms of being connected to one's intuition, a bit secretive, living in her own emotional world , emphatic and understanding her surroundings using her EI 

 

King of Pentacles RX- The Devil- indulgent, workaholic, obsessives with material gain and power, using/manipulating others with money/ physical temptations  

 

Will add more as I go along....

Would love to hear your associations and the reasoning behind them. 

 

Posted

Very recently I paired up every major card with a minor card, some were court cards, but I wasn't thinking about that (nor did I include any reversals), just that some Major and Minor cards have a strong correlation to me so I wanted to do all of them.

 

The two queens you list were my choices as well for those major cards.

Also:

Emperor - King of Swords

Strength - Queen of Wands

Star - Page of Cups

I didn't do a page for the fool but I keep thinking maybe I should revisit that.

 

I was going to post the whole list I came up with.. but then.. y'know.. I didn't.

Posted

People are complex and the courts are too. I believe that each court has some sort of relationship to every major - and by that I mean that you can learn something by contemplating and pairing each court with any one of the majors. You might realize that one archetype seem to bring out shadow elements or show how a court is unbalanced. You might also learn how they behave in extreme situations or what kind of approaches/traits they will condemn in others. I don’t believe in simplifying them too much, it gives a flat understanding and it isn’t helpful when you need to interpret them in readings that aren’t 100% straightforward. What I much prefer is to view the courts through the lens of life experience and people knowledge. I have found it valuable to identify what courts (there may be more than one) that people I know in real life can embody. That has given me a broader spectrum of each card and what it can mean in a reading - and especially what dynamics it tends to create with other cards and/or in specific contexts. 
 

I would suggest that you toy with the idea of matching the empress with one of the other courts, like the king of wands. Is there no empress side to them/him? What’s their relationship to the empress archetype? (Go beyond the old “she could be his mother or someone he’d fancy”.) How might they behave in an empress situation? And what kind of a situation or approach could those two cards together suggest? (the empress isn’t just a person, and neither is the king of wands.. ). I think these type of exercises can get you to develop a three dimensional view of the courts. Ask yourself what you know for sure about a certain court. What could change that certain fact? Could a specific circumstance or another individual change it? 

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