How do You Interpret Knights?

[Guest]

Hi all 🙂

 

I saw it was a thread on court cards here, but I want to ask a more specific question.

 

How do you interpret Knights?

 

I use www.learntarot.com often when I'm unsure, and there the Knights are given certain qualities with a flip side of over-doing it. Example is the Knight of pentacles that can be realistic that can turn to pessimistic, and cautious that can turn to unadventurous.

 

But after working with the Legacy of Divine Tarot deck I see that all the Knights are wearing a mask.

 

Is it representative of the masks we are carrying? I find this interesting.

 

I would like to know what you think about it because every time I pull a Knight I get a bit uncertain.  I don't have the grasp on it.

 

PS! I added an image of the Knight of coins from the Legacy of Divine Tarot.

 

GS

[Eric13]

With me this all depends on the particular Knight. Generally, all Knights can mean there's a message the querent should look for or expect, there may be travel coming for some reason, all Knights are teenagers, or have a teenagers mentality, youthful enthusiasm and even their naive points of view on life that may actually make things right without having been jaded by life.

It breaks down to the querent question also. 

But each knight is different too. 

The Knight of Wands will someday be the King of Wands. He is full of forward moving passion and fire who hasn't got time for any negativity, or problems from the past. He represents rapid changes and life moving fast. 

However, the Knight of Cups is somewhat passive and emotional who has a problem just deciding to make it across a river. He won't ever be King. I'm using the RWS deck these days so that's how I interpret these things. But everything is open for other points of view too. 

[Barleywine]

Here's something you might find entertaining, although it's probably not a lot of use in divination.

 

https://parsifalswheeldivination.com/2018/05/27/the-knights-and-the-empress-fealty-and-favor/

 

Regarding the masks, I think they're just stylized helmets, but Ciro was into costume masks at that time (Oracle of Visions is full of them), so he made the helmets look like masks. I see them as an emblematic part of a knight's armor and don't place any significance on them at all when I read with that deck.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Joe said:

With me this all depends on the particular Knight. Generally, all Knights can mean there's a message the querent should look for or expect, there may be travel coming for some reason, all Knights are teenagers, or have a teenagers mentality, youthful enthusiasm and even their naive points of view on life that may actually make things right without having been jaded by life.

It breaks down to the querent question also. 

But each knight is different too. 

The Knight of Wands will someday be the King of Wands. He is full of forward moving passion and fire who hasn't got time for any negativity, or problems from the past. He represents rapid changes and life moving fast. 

However, the Knight of Cups is somewhat passive and emotional who has a problem just deciding to make it across a river. He won't ever be King. I'm using the RWS deck these days so that's how I interpret these things. But everything is open for other points of view too. 

I don't see the Knights as teenagers. That I use as an interpretation of the Pages though.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Barleywine said:

Here's something you might find entertaining, although it's probably not a lot of use in divination.

 

https://parsifalswheeldivination.com/2018/05/27/the-knights-and-the-empress-fealty-and-favor/

 

Regarding the masks, I think they're just stylized helmets, but Ciro was into costume masks at that time (Oracle of Visions is full of them), so he made the helmets look like masks. I see them as an emblematic part of a knight's armor and don't place any significance on them at all when I read with that deck.

Very interesting to view the Knights as defender of the Queens. Somehow it made a lot of sense for me in divination. Is it the Queen behind the mask?

[McFaire]

Traditionally, pages have been associated with messages and adolescence, knights with action and movement (metaphorically "in your prime of life"), queens with inner maturity, and kings with outer manifestation of the suit qualities. That's one way of looking at it, in a nut shell.

 

Courts are the hardest I think. But if you consider the suit qualities and how they are expressed in the above ways, it can be helpful.

 

Knight are often mounted, or in the case of the card image you posted above, the action and energy is represented by horses even though the knight himself isn't mounted.

 

So considering the Knight of Coins, you would consider the suit qualities of coins, and the qualities of being action-oriented, having the energy of being "in your prime," but not necessarily having the inner wisdom that comes with more experience, perhaps not having the outer manifestation of long achievement yet.

 

It could refer to chronological age but often it portrays how a person acts and relates to a situation or issue. You could be 65 but in the Knight phase of a project or relationship, for example.

 

Knights may evolve into Queens or Kings, or not.

[Barleywine]

Here's the position I came to since I never accepted Waite's assumptions about age. This is from one of my blog posts, and it's the basis for my working model..

 

"Contrary to common sense, Waite positioned his Knights as “males over 45” and his Kings as being under 45. I can only assume he caught the Golden Dawn’s provisional “Knight-Queen-King-Page” iteration mid-stride and never retracted it (and I’m not aware that he ever offered a convincing justification).  My opinion is that it’s most logical to define the Kings as older males (45 is a reasonable “cutoff point” since it is more about mental and emotional maturity than physical prowess), the Queens as their female contemporaries, the Knights as people (whether male or female is open to case-specific adjustment) in the physical prime of life (25-45) and the Pages as young people of either gender under 25. In all cases, the nominal gender is not a given and should be assigned by the reader to suit the context of the question or matter at hand."

[Mi-Shell]

Barleywine,that is exactly quoted from this post from here:

https://parsifalswheeldivination.com/2018/08/23/tarot-101-my-way-court-cards-a-brief-introduction/

🙂

.....I too love his blog!

:)

 

🙂

[gregory]

Parsifal's wheel IS Barleywine.... (And being him, he would have posted credit for the quote if it hadn't been his !)

[Barleywine]

2 hours ago, gregory said:

Parsifal's wheel IS Barleywine.... (And being him, he would have posted credit for the quote if it hadn't been his !)

Absolutely. Everything in my blog is original work unless I specifically credit it to others. In this case I pulled out some text instead of just linking to the post.

[EtherealMoonRose]

Court cards in general still confuse the heck out of me, but knights are one of the easiest for me to interpret.

 

To me, knights are all about action. They are always doing/going somewhere/taking charge, but being knights and still immature, they can be hasty and irrational. They are also messengers. Obviously the message differs depending which knight it is.

[Barleywine]

I agree with McFaire that, traditionally, the Pages were about messages since they represented the couriers or heralds of the Medieval court (when they weren't being knights' squires, that is). But I do acknowledge that "action" is the Knight's forte. In the Golden Dawn system, the facing of the mounted figures (called "Kings" and "Figures mounted on Steeds" in Liber T, but that's a whole other complicated subject) indicated whether something or someone was entering the situation (facing against the flow of the cards as if waiting to receive it) or leaving it (facing with the flow of the cards as if carrying it out of the picture). I've researched and written quite a bit on the subject.

[Mi-Shell]

22 hours ago, gregory said:

Parsifal's wheel IS Barley wine.... (And being him, he would have posted credit for the quote if it hadn't been his !)

Oh! OK! 

Sorrry!!!!!!! 

Then, dear Barleywine, I have been reading your blog without knowing it is YOU!

These days I am realllly getting kafaffled up with who is who in real life, what is their screen name on forums and what is their blog called.....😿 😕