Into the world: the Knights in tarot

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

When I look at the court cards as a unit, my first observation is about the progression from Page to Queen and King, namely:

• Page — Discovery of the world
• Knight — Forging one’s way in the world
• Queen and King — Integrating the world

When we met the Pages, we saw neophytes becoming aware of the world around them. The Page that springs most readily to mind in this instance is the Page of Cups, observing with open and childlike curiosity the fish that is emerging from his cup. There is a sense of fluidity of boundaries, in keeping with the idea that Pages represent energy that is young, malleable, and open to development.

A carapace has appeared with the Knights, and it’s a self-conscious carapace at that: each figure wears full armour. This disappears in all but the King of Pentacles in the upper court cards, where we see the king’s metal-clad foot on the head of an ox. The Knights are meeting the world head-on. The Kings are uniting with it — becoming a part of it, representing, as they do, the point where the personal meets the collective.

The Knights, meanwhile, are full of zeal, vim and vigour. They — and especially the Knight of Cups — epitomise the idea of courtly love. Courtly love is the learning ground that we inhabit before we know what it is to love fully, fearlessly, without need or attachment, knowing that all love extends outwards from love of self. The Queen and King understand that love has its origin in here; the Knights look for it out there. In courtly love, a knight goes questing on behalf of a woman — very often a queen; very often she belongs to another man. It is love idealised, partner idolised. It is the adventuring for the attention, gratification and regard of ‘lady love’ that is of paramount importance.

Courtly love is ostentatious and ritualised. Think of a jousting match in honour of the matriarch, who watches the spectacle at a remove and sitting next to her husband. All of these knights are jousters, and the tournament is the arena in which they hone their craft, until they are ready to meet the world in all of its complexity, where ideals are put to the test and where armour can be as inhibiting as it was once protective.

All four knights are riding horses — how else would they move into the world with such effectiveness? The horses are in service to their owners. More than that, they are inseparable from the knights, an outward manifestation of inner forces at work. Knight and horse represent the synergy between intellect and instinct, the ideal vehicle for exploration.

Knight of Wands

[Note: this comes from an earlier article on the Knight of Wands]

The Knight of Wands, a youthful figure, straddles his mount. His hair, his gloves, and the horse are a fiery red, and plumes of flame spout from the top of his head and the back of his left arm. The reds are complemented by the yellows in his tunic, the leaves on the horse’s rein covers, and the desert below him. This is a card that radiates heat.

Then there are two counterpoints to the fieriness.

First, I see green on the horse’s rein covers and the five sprigs of leaves on the wand he clasps in his right hand. The heat is tempered. The horse — the means by which the Knight makes his journey, or the way that he moves through life — is not out of control. The reins lead my eyes from the Knight’s left hand to the horse’s mouth, which sits on the bit: it isn’t fighting the Knight, but is working for him; and the Knight’s grasp is both strong and authoritative.

Second, an expanse of sky forms the largest part of the backdrop. Blue is cool and that coolness is extended to the metallic sheen of the Knight’s armour. This particular personification of creative spirit may be intense, but there is also the presence of rationality. The sky also speaks of possibility — a cloudless blank canvass, and a lack of interference. He is a free agent, his path unimpeded.

This sense of free agency is further brought out when we take a second look at the flames on the Knight. Only his armour is on fire, and he doesn’t seem at all concerned about it. This is because the fire is as much a part of the Knight as his flame-red hair. Far from inflicting damage, this is the fire that comes from within. It is the Knight’s questing zeal as he burns up the landscape.

And what of that landscape? Along the bottom of the card runs a thin strip of desert, with pyramids at the far left. The desert is an earthly furnace; the yellow of the sands are echoed in the ragged yellow tunic, which draws my eyes to the salamanders, themselves symbols of fire.

The Knight is heading away from the open expanse of sand and in the direction of the pyramids. I get a sense that he is questing into new lands, and new possibilities, after a period in the wilderness that seared away those things that he no longer needed. His tunic certainly indicates that he has met with a conflagration of sorts, as it lies in tatters across the horse’s flank. The pyramids evoke an ancient wisdom. Is the Knight, himself, wiser after his ordeal?

In the juxtaposition of sky and flame there is a meeting of the elements air and fire. This combination can be cleansing and reinvigorating. It can also be explosive and destructive. Creative passion, like flames, can be both a servant and a master, and sometimes the sparks that we ignite for a ‘controlled burn’ end up burning uncontrollably themselves.

This card, to me, is all about a decision point — a place where creative zeal is held in balance. Can you see the mix of forward and backward motion in the picture? The forward motion is described in the fire and tunic blowing in the breeze created by movement; the horse’s front hooves reaching out of the picture, the Knight’s pointed toe. The backward motion by the way the horse’s head is set down, its weight concentrated in its hind legs, and the fact that the Knight is sitting back and deep in the saddle.

Will the Knight, consumed with passion, spring forward and challenge the very pyramids themselves by leaping over them? Or will he keep his eyes on them, acknowledging them as a guiding principle? Can he channel the energy coursing through him effectively and powerfully or will he self-immolate? I get the strongest sense today that his is the course of focused creation that is productive rather than destructive, zealous rather than fanatical. But it is potent nonetheless!

Knight of Cups

As I mentioned in the introduction, the Knight of Cups epitomises the idea of courtly love. He sits in profile, proud and upright, on his steed, seemingly offering his cup to someone in front of him, but who remains hidden to us. This is in keeping with the kind of love that admires from afar, and where the object of desire is just that: an object, rather than a subject that functions independently of the admirer.

Yet, he is in service to this desire. Even his horse is bowing, head lowered, right leg raised. Like Hermes, messenger of the gods whose wings adorn the Knight’s heels and helmet, he acts as intermediary between the human and the divine. He brings with him the potential of the Cups suit but cannot embody the reality of it in the world. He confers love in embryo. For it to root itself in the world, he needs to get off his horse and ground what he holds in his hands — which is what happens in the Queen and King.

For now, though, there are the seeds of transition towards this state of integration: the fish jumping from the waves printed on the Knight’s clothing become flesh and water in the King. The landscape may be in part desert, but winding through it is a small river — which is already sustaining life on its banks — and the implication is that this river will at some point run into the sea. There, it joins with other bodies of water and becomes part of something that is expansive, that has depth, and which is, for the most part, within our awareness but also not fully knowable. At its very depths, water — symbolic of emotions and which interacts with humanity through the vessel of the cup — is a mystery.

Knight of Swords

Can you feel the directed, sharp passion of the Knight of Swords when you look at him? His is a world of angles and slanted movement — the most kinetic of all of the Knights.

Whereas the Knights of Cups and Pentacles face off to the right, their horses barely moving — if at all with the Knight of Pentacles — the Knight of Swords faces left, an exaggerated version of his Wands counterpart, the symbol of his suit thrust in front of him, his horse practically leaping off the page.

Like the clouds in the sky, the horse’s mane is angular, spread to the wind. The wind-blasted trees bend with its current. If Swords are mental processes, then the realm of the Knight is edgy, adversarial. If the butterflies circling the horse’s neck were real, they would be swept away. Here, though, they are safely embroidered into the fabric around the horse’s breast.

Like all of the Knights, the Knight of Swords contains the symbols of the upper courts, but in an embryonic state. Here, the butterflies are set in their own background of blue, but they have not been integrated in the way that they are in the King, where they are hewn from stone, enduring, central to the picture. The birds are in mid-transition, appearing both on the rein covers as designs and in the sky. Thought — experimental, self-conscious — taking flight. But the predominant elements here are the wind — invisible and yet apparent in every aspect of the illustration — and the Knight himself, whose expression is one of fierce intent. With the exception of the butterflies, any softness is blood-red: the Knight’s cloak flows out behind him, as do the feathers in his helmet, the way that blood would flow if he were to use that sword in earnest.

When I look at this Knight, I feel a sense of caution around the intensity of his presence. His are thoughts that are rapier-quick and incisive — they can be exceedingly accurate, but they can also damage. Is his horse looking back at him warily, or checking in to see what it should be doing next? I’m not sure. I’m inclined towards the first interpretation, but maybe I, too, am playing Knight with this conclusion: quick off the mark, not seeing the potential for the development and evolution into balanced insightfulness. Perhaps riding with the Knight is the only way to reach this state, as he jumps off the edge of the card into the, as yet, unknown. Would anyone less bold be doing the same?

Knight of Pentacles

[Note: this is taken from an earlier article on the Knight of Pentacles]

The Knight of Pentacles, jaw set and resolute, looks to a place beyond the right-hand edge of the card. His horse is at rest, its ears turned backwards, waiting for a command from its master. In the Knight’s gloved right hand sits a pentacle. Is the Knight extending it to someone? Or is he simply holding it up for examination? I can’t quite decide whether the movement of his hand is enough to suggest an offering, or something else.

The Knight’s expression is purposeful and serious, and while his arm is held forward, the rest of his body is tilted slightly backwards, away from the point on which he is focusing. Do you feel a tension between the extension of the arm, and the way he is set back in the saddle? What is it suggesting to us? This, perhaps:

Whereas the Page in the previous card of the suit is a romantic soul, his pentacle the all-consuming object of his desire (he holds it aloft, and it seems that nothing can draw his attention away from it), the Knight is learning that the desire of the lover can get you into all kinds of trouble. He is a warrior. He has almost certainly waged war over his pentacle — the conquest of ‘things’ and the need for power that have justified so many of our human battles. Sometimes a warrior such as he comes to a point where it is worth asking a few questions:

What does power over something mean? What rights can he claim over something that was ultimately divinely given (in the Ace)? What is the responsibility of the possessor?

Perhaps the Knight is beginning to understand the notion of acting in service to something greater than he is. From the need to possess of the new lover (the Page), the Knight has reached the point of detachment. He doesn’t seem to be entirely comfortable with the notion yet — I get the impression there is an air of “What? I’ve fought this hard to find out that it wasn’t really mine to begin with!” about him. But there is a sense of a transition into that understanding.

The Knight is richly clothed, as is his horse. A red cloak almost covers the armour on his upper body. That cloak is seen again — this time without armour — on the Queen in the next card. Red is the colour of blood, of life; and of authority. The Knight is donning the mantle of authority. But it is an authority that puts the need to fight in its proper place: battle as a necessity, not a hot-headed pursuit into the ‘rights of ownership’. The King wears armour, but it is almost wholly covered by a gown that is covered in grapes. He will fight if he needs to… but only if he needs to. He is a protector, not an aggressor. The Knight is showing signs of that shift in power and attitude.

The fruit, flowers and leaves that adorn and surround the King are beginning to issue from the Knight’s helmet — transforming a war-like object into one that is tempered by a different facet of humanity: the desire to nurture. Similarly, there is a sprig in the browband of his mount’s bridle. Horses were ridden into battle; but they were also used in more peaceful pursuits, such as farming. This is suggested by the ploughed fields that run across the bottom of the picture.

So the Knight has come to a resting point. Animation is suspended. The fighting is over, and the visor on his helmet is up. He can see clearly ahead of him. The pentacle is no longer completely his. In one gesture, he is relinquishing complete possession.

The Knight of Pentacles speaks of those moments in our lives when we realise that we are custodians rather than owners of the world that surrounds us; and that it is by working in harmony with it that we reap the greatest rewards. It is not a moral standpoint, but one that simply takes into account the efficiency of operating and working with, and within, the laws of nature. All things will be brought into balance — an idea first espoused in the Two of Pentacles. That balance has its fullest expression in the Queen and King of Pentacles, who demonstrate what it is to be truly wealthy.