The Court Cards - An Explanation and Disclaimer of Sorts...

I'm currently working my way through the Court Card Interpretations for this website. Over the years, these cards have become my favorite ones to work with. I've always intuitively understood the Court as a mix of personality types, psychological profiles and actual living people. When I first started working with the Tarot, no matter how many books I read on the subject, my intuition invariably defaulted to interpreting the Court as actual real world persons. I eventually gave up trying to assimilate the more abstract, 'traditional' way of reading these cards and decided to follow my intuition and develop my own system.

The interpretation of Court cards is often the most difficult for Tarot beginners to grasp. These cards can be read in so many different ways, it can be quite hard to identify which aspect to focus on in a reading. The Court can represent not only people and personality traits, but also physical characteristics, gender attributes, specific energies, elemental correspondences, spiritual or philosophical concepts, aspects of our own personality and even the passing of time. An inexperienced reader may feel overwhelmed by all these possibilities. 

In this section, you'll find a tried and tested method of interpretations and meanings perfected by me over the course of two and a half decades. In my day to day readings I almost exclusively interpret the Court as real people or personality types. Each card possesses its own character traits and attributes, some good, some bad and I'm usually able to immediately tell who they're supposed to represent in a spread. Many of these interpretations will be radically different from what you may have read in traditional Tarot guidebooks. This is why I'm taking my time with these entries. Unlike my sections dedicated to the Majors and the Minors which largely follow conventional interpretations and meanings, I feel that with the Court I'll actually be teaching my readers something new. It's proving to be quite a challenge to translate into actual words a concept that's been all but based on raw intuition for me until now.

I can't wait to share this most personal aspect of my Tarot practice with the Tarot community. I hope it'll help you hone your own skills as a reader and maybe inspire you to find the confidence to develop your own individual interpretation system. Learning established, traditional Tarot academia is very important and never a waste of time, so I encourage you to keep studying as much as you can. We all need to start with a solid foundation. When all is said and done, however, Tarot is just a tool and like any other tool it ends up creating or manifesting something completely different depending on the hand that wields it.

Take from my writings what speaks to you and feel free to disregard the rest. Don't worry, you will fill in the blanks in your own way, on your own time. There's an undeniable element of magic in Tarot reading that I've experienced from the start of my journey. I've realized that the cards learn to adapt to me as much as I learn to adapt to them. It's like an open channel that transmits both ways. When you truly bond with a specific deck, it learns how to speak your language and it will communicate with you in a highly personalized way.

As I always like to remind my students: Trust yourself, your intuition and your deck. This is especially true when you see something in the cards that is completely at odds with established interpretation methods. Your readings will be the most accurate when you find the inner the courage to listen to your intuition.

Don't hesitate to contact me through my Instagram account if you have any questions. I'm always happy to help beginners and advanced readers alike with their studies. IG : @arcanaxvtarot

The decks pictured in this post are, from top: the 'Light Seer's Tarot' by Chris-Anne, the 'Wandering Star Tarot' by Cat Pierce and 'Le Beau Monde Tarot' by Jennifer Pool