Reading the Court Cards, the Hardest Sixteen in the Deck

Sixteen of the seventy-eight cards are courts: a page, knight, queen and king in each of the four suits. They are where most readers stall, and the reason is specific. A numbered card describes a situation. A court card might describe a person, or a way of behaving, or a stage you are at — and until you know which, you cannot read it.

That first decision is most of the work.

The three things a court card can be

A person. Someone actually in your situation. This is the reading people reach for first and it is right less often than they assume.

A mode of behaviour. Not a person but a way of handling something — the knight of swords as the approach of arguing your way through rather than as a particular argumentative man.

A stage. Where you are in your own relationship to that suit. The page of pentacles as the fact that you are a beginner at money, regardless of your age or anyone else's involvement.

Nothing on the card tells you which. The spread does.

How to tell which one you are holding

Look at the position. A court card in a position about you — your attitude, your part, advice — is almost never another person. A court card in a position explicitly about others, like external influences, usually is. A court in a neutral position is most often a mode of behaviour.

Look at whether the question has people in it. If you asked about a relationship or a workplace, a court card has somewhere to land. If you asked about a decision you are making alone, it does not, and it is describing how you are making it.

Count the courts. One court in a spread is usually a person or a manner. Three or four courts in a spread is a statement in itself: this situation is about people, and probably about the friction between how several of them operate.

When it is genuinely ambiguous, the useful move is to read it as a behaviour first. Behaviour readings are checkable against your own conduct in a way that person readings are not, and if you are wrong you will notice.

The four ranks

The rank tells you how the suit is being held.

Page. Beginning. Curious, unpractised, willing to be bad at it. A page is the suit as something new to you — a first attempt, a message arriving, an interest that has not become a commitment. Pages are easy to underrate: being a genuine beginner at something is a real and often correct position.

Knight. Committed and in motion. A knight has decided and is going, at speed, which is exactly as good as the direction. Knights are the most extreme rank in the deck: whatever the suit does well and badly, a knight does more of it. The knight of cups is devotion and also infatuation; the knight of pentacles is patience and also being stuck.

Queen. The suit held inwardly and fluently. A queen understands her element from the inside — she does not have to work at it. Queens are usually the most competent version of a suit, and their competence is not performed.

King. The suit held outwardly, with authority and responsibility for others. A king applies the element to the world rather than experiencing it. That makes kings effective and it makes them capable of using the suit as a tool on people, which is the shadow of the rank.

A king does not outrank a page in usefulness. The four are stages, not a hierarchy of value, and a spread that hands you a page is not giving you a lesser card.

Rank and suit together

Combine the two and the card reads itself.

Knight of swords: thought, committed, at speed. Someone who has decided what is true and is arguing it, or you doing that.

Queen of pentacles: the material world, held fluently and inwardly. Competence with the practical and the bodily; steadiness that does not need to announce itself.

Page of cups: feeling, at the beginning. A new attachment, or an openness you had stopped expecting to have.

King of wands: drive, applied outwardly with authority. Leading by momentum — which works, and which can also mean everyone else is now moving at your pace whether or not it suits them.

Do that with any of the sixteen and you will get a workable reading before you have looked anything up.

Three things to stop doing

Assigning gender and age. The older tradition read kings as men, queens as women, pages as children. It produces bad readings, because you will discard an accurate card for describing the wrong-looking person. Read the rank as a way of holding the suit and let the person be whoever they are.

Assuming it is always someone else. The most uncomfortable and most frequently correct reading of a court card in a difficult spread is that it is you.

Reading courts as static. A court card is a description of how someone is operating now, in this situation. It is not a personality type. The same person can be a knight in one area of their life and a page in another, and usually is.

Courts across a spread

Watch for the same rank repeating. Two pages says several parts of your life are at the beginning at once. Two knights says you are committed on more fronts than you can sustain.

Watch for a court card in a position about the outcome. Outcomes are usually situations; when the outcome position hands you a person, it often means the resolution is not an event but a relationship changing.

And note when courts are entirely absent from a spread about other people. A relationship question with no court cards in it is frequently telling you the situation is about you rather than about them.