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.