By Sarah Taylor
A Knight rides out from the desert, searching. The ground behind him is dry, parched, ungiving; the air above him is clear, blue, no sign of rain. Sweat has been precious in this country. Tears have been precious. Resisting both has meant that he could continue on his quest that little bit longer.
Knights are adventurers, just as we play the role of adventurer when we feel that our sense of incompleteness can be filled by something we simply have to look for.
That Knights are partnered with a horse is telling: they need the power and stamina of that beast to carry them over vast tracts of land, to find what they are seeking that much faster, to help them beat a quick retreat if that’s what is called for. When we are Knights, our horse is our instinct: it follows the scent to where we need to be, and it does its best to keep us out of trouble.
The Knight of Cups is on a quest for Love. But isn’t it so often the case that the very thing we seek out is what we have had all along? Because the Knight of Cups has the source of all Love: it is his heart, which, here, he carries at the end of his armoured sleeve.
Perhaps the reason that the Knight does not recognise his own heart is implied in the elements that shape him: he is the airy aspect of water. Air is intellect, water is heart. In that description lies the limitation that the Knight finds himself riding up against: the Knight thinks about how he feels. His mind is engaged in trying to understand something that doesn’t require mind at all. He is on The Hero’s Journey, and what he comes back with — his “boon” in the words of mythologist Joseph Campbell as he reaches the river in the desert — is something that he can then integrate. This, to me, seems like the act that he is engaging in with the next card, the Four of Pentacles.