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Discussion
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Hi,
I often see that many people struggle with court cards. This exercise has really helped me to understand how each court card is different from any other. Tarot can be read and studied in as many ways as there are tarot readers so my way is definitely not The Only Way or The Right Way. This has helped me and I'm sharing this in the hopes that it might help someone else too.
This table is based on the idea that each suit has their own element (fire for Wands, water for Cups, air for Swords and earth for Pentacles). The element of the suit is seen in some way in all the court cards.
Every court card is also tied to a major arcana: all the Pages are representing The Fool in some way, Knights are tied to The Chariot, Queens are tied to The Empress and Kings are tied to The Emperor. In the same way, Jungian archetypes can also be tied to major arcana: The Fool represents the archetype of the child, The Chariot represents the archetype of hero or knight, The Empress represents the archetype of mother or caregiver, and The Empreror represents the archetype of father or ruler.
By combining all of this together, each court card has their own Major Arcana card, archetype and element tied to them, which gives them their unique qualities. I did an example for The Page of Wands (in the comments).
There is no right or wrong way to fill this chart, i.e. you can use different archetypes if you think some other archetype might be a better fit. The keywords are meant to be inspiration for my own ideas and thoughts, not some unbreakable rules that absolutely need to be followed.
I'd love to hear your opinions on this. What would you add to this, or what would you change about this?