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January/February 2010 Issue
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Hidden and Secret Meanings: The Court Cards — Part II
This article was written by David Allen Hulse
posted under Tarot
| Precis: In part I of this two-part article, we shared an email from a Tarot student revealing something that many people learn — one of the most difficult parts of learning to read the Tarot is coming to terms with the sixteen Court Cards. Are they people? If not, what do they represent? As a serendipitous synchronicity, we had just received this literate and even controversial article by the author of two of the most comprehensive books on magical techniques and underlying theories of magic ever published — The Western Mysteries and The Eastern Mysteries. This article reveals some of the secrets of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley as well as ways the Court Cards can be interepreted, including his previously-secret system for utmost accuracy. HIDDEN AND SECRET MEANINGS The Court Cards — Part II By David Allen Hulse As a student of the Tarot progresses in learning the cards, the sixteen Court Cards will always be the leanest in meaning and nuance. Many books and teachers don't seem to know what to do with them. However, they are a gold mine of oracular vocabulary if their secret symbolism is studied deeply enough. There are two basic ways of interpreting a Court Card when it is drawn in a Tarot reading. The exoteric approach is to look at the specific Court Card as a person outside of the querent (the individual whose cards are being read). It is someone they already know or are about to meet who has great influence (which is usually determined by the cards surrounding a specific Court Card in a Tarot spread). The nature of that person is determined by cosmetic appearances or by the zodiacal sun sign. The esoteric approach is to view a specific Court Card as a mask, attitude, or experience that the querent needs to assume in the future, is already assuming in the present, or has assumed in the past. In my beginning studies of the Tarot, the most difficult cards were the sixteen Court Cards. The pictorial Major Arcana cards had very dramatic and distinct pictures to help me intuit their meanings. The Minor Arcana, at least in Waite's well known version, also had distinct picture images to guide me in determining their divinatory complexion. But the sixteen Court Cards seemed to resemble one another and were not distinct enough for me to easily grasp their oracular vocabulary. The most I could see in these cards were the distinction of gender and possibly age. As such, in my initial Tarot readings the Court Cards symbolized other people gathered around the querent. Hair color and complexion seemed to be indicated in the various card designs, and these cosmetic indicators were all I could use to initially differentiate among these sixteen similar looking and often misunderstood Tarot cards. The two master Tarot scholars, Waite and Case, defined the Court cards by hair color more than anything else. But if we look at the doctrine of Tarot correspondences found in the secret teachings of the magical order known as the Golden Dawn, you will discover that these sixteen cards have a deep series of correspondences which can help you in your readings. THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN COURT CARD INTERPRETATION Ettellia (born Jean-Baptiste Alliette, 1738–1791) was the first of many French writers to develop manuals for cartomancy (fortune telling with either Tarot or playing cards). His first work dealt with reading the common pack of playing cards rather than the Tarot. The King, Queen, and Jack (corresponding to the Page in the Tarot) are given two sets of meanings, one if the card fell upright and the other if the card was reversed. These attributes were recorded in his textbook of 1770 entitled Etteilla, or a Way to Entertain Oneself with a Pack of Cards.1 ETTELLIA'S KEY TO THE COURT FIGURES IN A PLAYING DECK These attributes would be further developed in Etteilla's later works on Tarot divination. Eliphas Levi (born Alphonse-Louis Constant, 1810–1875), the most famous of all French Occultists, discussed the Tarot in many of his works. He never went into great detail over the Court Cards. However, he composed a short poem to describe their symbolism in his Transcendental Magic:
"King, Queen, Knight,Page.In my beginning work as a Tarot diviner, if such cards were encountered in the reading, I felt that they must signify another person other than the querent. At first I used the tried and true formulae that Paul Foster Case (1884–1954) shows in his The Tarot, A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, found in Chapter XXVII "Tarot Divination." These attributions for the Court Cards use hair color, complexion, and age to discern between the sixteen personality types of these sixteen cards. These simple attributes (that came from Ettellia and are used in Mathers' pamphlet on the Tarot, about which I will have more to say later) are a quick way of giving meaning to the Court Cards. They are also utilized in Waite's book on the Tarot. The following table summarizes these attributes as shown in Mathers' Tarot pamphlet and extracted from the writings of Etteilla EXOTERIC MEANINGS FOR THE 16 COURT CARDS3 Case qualified these attributes by stating that "Pages may be young girls as well as young lads. Queens are not always married, but represent rather women with experience of life."4 This clarification helps, since many commentators show the King, Knight, and Page all as masculine images, with the Queen being the only feminine figure.
Case also adds the following spiritual attributes for the Court Cards. He classifies the Kings as the spirit, the Queens as the soul, the Knights as the ego, and the Pages as the body.5 But we shall see further that Case's four attributes allow the highest order to fall to the King, when in fact the esoteric attributes will give the Knight the highest order as the father, while the King will be seen as the son of the Knight. But such a realignment did not occur until the Golden Dawn established its own esoteric doctrine for the Tarot. From the above table, the King and Queen are mature adults, the Knight a young adult, and the Page a youth. Looking at their court titles, one would naturally pair the King with the Queen as co-rulers of an empire, and the Knight with his Page, his apprenticed helper. This was the standard interpretation until the appearance of the Golden Dawn in 1887. The Golden Dawn is the most important quasi-Masonic order to contribute to the evolution of the modern Tarot. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1854–1918) and W. Wynn Westcott (1848–1925) wrote most of the papers documenting the Order's secret teachings. Much was derived from a set of hidden documents known as the Cipher Manuscripts that contained the skeleton attributes of all the magical symbolism utilized in the rituals and practices of the Golden Dawn. The famous attribute of assigning Key 0—The Fool to the Hebrew letter Aleph and the element Air is concealed in a table interspersed among the many leaves of the manuscripts which were written in a coded alphabet of the Abbot Trithemius (1462–1516). However, this manuscript makes no mention of the doctrine of the Court Cards that appears in the Golden Dawn document Book T. Book T was written by Mathers and contains many new innovations for the Tarot as a whole. There are 3 levels of symbolism that Mathers imbued into these sixteen mysterious cards: the fourfold family found in the Qabalistic tetragrammaton, the 36 decans of the zodiac, and the counterchange of the four elements. THE CONFUSION BEGINS One of the most difficult aspects of the Golden Dawn system of Court Cards is that Mathers revised the titles for the four court personages. Traditionally the four are shown as King, Queen, Knight, and Page. However, Mathers came up with a different set of titles as King, Queen, Prince and Princess. This has caused nothing but havoc with most modern interpretations of Mathers complex symbolism. The confusion rests in the title of the King. In glancing at Mathers' new titles one would readily assume that Mathers' new King is equivalent to the old King. But this is where it gets tricky. Mathers' King is the new title for the old Knight. This is the most recondite teaching in the Golden Dawn Court Card system. Both Waite and Case seem to be confused by this reshuffling of titles, but Crowley was perceptive enough to understand Mathers' new classification system. For the Old Knight becomes the New King, the Queen remains the same in both schemes, while the New Prince is the Old King and the new Princess is the Old Page. Mathers' logic for this renaming is based on the mystery surrounding the four-lettered name of God, Jehovah or Yahweh, written in Hebrew as IHVH. This mystery name contains the four elements and the fourfold family as Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter. In Mathers' renaming of the Court cards, the King is fire and the father, the Queen is water and the mother, the Prince is air and the son, while the Princess is earth and the daughter. Crowley immediately saw the difficulty in these revised titles so in his own Book of Thoth, published in 1944, he brought back the old title of Knight, so that in his own scheme the four court personages were transformed into Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. This was done to guard against confusing the old King with the new King. In Crowley's own Magical Diary for May 3, 1920 he writes a new commentary to replace Levi's own poem on the Court Cards: “Why do the Tarot Cards give the Knight as the father, the King as the son? It is an echo of the legend of the wandering Knight who wins the Queen and whose son becomes the King.”6 This diary entry shows that Crowley clearly understood Mathers' secret symbolism. For the Knight as the father goes out on a quest for the hand of the Queen, and when he completes his mystic journey he is united with his Queen to generate his own heir in the King. That King, who is his son, ultimately takes on a bride, the Page who becomes the new Queen. This is an open-ended cycle that repeats itself again and again through each new generation, where son and daughter become father and mother. This pattern may be of help in determining the changing energies represented by a Court Card when it appears in a reading. The following table shows the complex, and often misconstrued, symbolism of the Golden Dawn Court Card system: THE FAMILY DIVISION OF THE GOLDEN DAWN COURT CARDS7
THE TREE OF LIFE AND A SECRET FOR INTERPRETATION Based on this scheme of the fourfold family, the four court cards in each of the suits can be placed on the Tree of Life as one of the ten sephiroth or stations on the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is a Qabalistic diagram of the Cosmos. There are ten basic numbers or stations on the Tree of Life (sephirah in the singular). Each of the ten sephiroth correspond to the Minor Arcana cards numbered Ace through ten in the four suits. The 22 cards of the Major Arcana correspond to the 22 separate paths that serve as connecting links between the ten sephiroth. Of the ten sephiroth, four fall to the family structure of Father, Mother, Son, and Daughter. These in turn can be the four court cards as the secret Golden Dawn family structure. The following table shows this allocation on the Tree of Life: 16 COURT CARDS ON THE TREE OF LIFE
From this attribution, each of the sixteen Court cards can be directly connected to one of sixteen select Minor Arcana cards, and share the divinatory meaning of that specific Minor Arcana card. This is another method of obtaining an alternate set of meanings for the Court Cards. This was one of the first secret methods that I used in my own Tarot divinations to enhance the elusive meanings for the Court Royals beyond their outward cosmetic appearance. Here are key definitions for the Court Cards based on the Minor Arcana: THE COURT CARDS AND THEIR MINOR ARCANA ORACULAR VOCABULARY
When using the above attributes in a reading for the Court Cards, read the specific Court Card drawn as indicative of an event in the querent's life, not someone else in their life. USING THE ASTROLOGY OF THE COURT CARDS The Golden Dawn, inspired by Paul Christian's (born Jean Baptiste Pitois, 1811–1877) attempt of applying astrological harmonies to the Court Cards as revealed in his History of Magic (published in 1870), devised an astrological scheme which associated the twelve signs of the zodiac and the four elements to the sixteen court cards. In Christian's scheme, the Kings stood apart as four major stars in the night sky, while the Queens, Knights, and Pages became the signs of the zodiac. In the Golden Dawn scheme the signs of the zodiac were aligned to the Knights, Queens, and Kings, while the Pages stood apart as the elements. In essence the Knights were assigned to the mutable signs, the Queens to the cardinal signs, and the Kings to the fixed signs.TO CHOOSE A SIGNIFICATOR GOLDEN DAWN ASTROLOGICAL ATTRIBUTES FOR THE COURT CARDS
You can use the above table fora quick determination by the Sun sign of what card should be chosen to represent a specific querent in any given reading. There is a more complex zodiacal attribution for these Court Cards in the Golden Dawn system of magic. This aspect has each court card bridge 2 zodiac signs. This complexity has been missed by many commentators. For the Golden Dawn system, the zodiac was further divided into 36 decans for these astrological attributions. Each sign of the zodiac is 30 degrees of a 360 degree circle for the complete zodiac. Each sign of is subdividedinto three decans, each decan ruling ten degrees of that particular sign. A decan equals about ten days, as a zodiac sign equals about 30 days of the year. Each Court Card represents a zodiac sign spanned between two signs, the last ten degrees of the preceding sign plus the first twenty degrees of the current sign. Thus, Knight of Wands represented the last ten degrees of Scorpio and the first twenty degrees of Sagittarius, though the card is predominately Sagittarius. With this system any person who was born on a cusp (i.e.straddling between two signs) could easily be classified as a specific courtcard. The following table shows the time of the year governing each card: THE 36 DECANS RULING THE 4 KNIGHTS, QUEENS, AND KINGS
Using the above table you can determine the exact Court Card to use as the significator card for your querent. The Golden Dawn astrological correspondences are the most sophisticated and accurate astrological attributes for the Court Cards ever devised. THE ELEMENTS AND THE COURT A third level of symbolism was incorporated by the Golden Dawn into the lore of the Court Cards. Mathers reasoned that since there were sixteen cards in the Court Royals that these sixteen cards must correspond to the sixteen sub-elemental counterchanges of fire, water, air, and earth. The doctrine in Western Magic is that the elements come together to form sixteen relationships between the elemental forces of nature. There are four classic elements of fire, water, air and earth. In the Golden Dawn scheme of magic, these four elements are the four minor suits of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. In the divination system of Geomancy the sixteen counterchanges of the elements are of great importance. The Tattva system of India also utilizes this scheme of counterchanged elements. Crowley's own unique research in the area of the I Ching allowed this elemental classification system to be applied to sixteen select hexagrams, for four of the eight trigrams are symbolic of the four Western elements. Mathers clearly connected one of four elements to the cycle of Knight, Queen, King and Page as fire, water, air, and earth. Further, the four suits were also the four elements of fire, water, air and earth. Sixteen counterchanged elements were generated from these four elemental building blocks that allowed each major element to be subdivided into four blends of two elements. Thus for the element fire there are four counterchanges being fire of fire, water of fire, air of fire and earth of fire. This is true for all four elements. Here are the sixteen elemental counterchanges for the Court Cards: ELEMENTAL COUNTERCHANGES FOR THE COURT CARDS
By bringing in this elemental symbolism for the sixteen Court Cards, the attributions of Geomancy, the Tattvas and the I Ching can all be aligned to each Court Card, allowing a much deeper set of symbols than any other previous system for the Tarot. Here are these systems indicating new oracular vocabularies for the Court Cards. GEOMANCY Geomancy (meaning divination by patterns in the earth) is a very early earth divination system that had its origin in the Middle East and spread to Africa, Madgascar, and ultimately Renaissance Europe. There are sixteen figures that are cast in this system. Each figure is composed of four lines made up of one or two dots, odd or even (male or female). Casting of the figure was accomplished by poking holes in the earth (or sand) with a rod, or by casting two sided objects such as seashells. The Golden Dawn used the European refinement of this system, and paired each Geomantic figure to one of the sixteen elemental counterchanges of fire, water, air, and earth. Each figure was also given both a planetary and zodiacal influence. Based on the elemental counterchanges, the sixteen Geomantic figures were assigned to the sixteen Court Cards. The following table lists:
GEOMANCY AND THE COURT CARDS8 The oracle associated to each of these Geomantic figures can be used as an oracle for each of the Court Cards.They should be read as an indicator of the querent in the reading rather than a person outside of the querent.
TATTVAS The Tattvas originate from India and were incorporated as part of the Theosophical tradition. The term Tattva combines the Sanskrit for "that" and "thou" to symbolize the essence of reality. They are a set of magical symbols that can classify the physical universe as five elemental shapes. The Golden Dawn brought this system into their own magical tradition from Theosophical sources. The Tattvas are a subset of the Hindu system known as Yantras, which, in part, are diagrams to aid the mind in meditation. They are used as a tool to induce concentration, and Mandalas are part of this tradition. The Tarot can be seen as a system of Yantras for the West. In the Tattva system there are five basic shapes: oval, circle, triangle, crescent and square. These five basic shapes are counterchanged so that 25 combinations can be generated. Each combination has one symbol drawn half the size of the original and laid inside the original. This smaller symbol counterchanged on a larger symbolis the sub division of that element. Thus a smaller triangle within a larger circle designates the elemental counterchange of fire (triangle) of air (circle). This is reminiscent of the sixteen counterchanges of the four elements. However, with the Tattva system the blue-violet oval is spirit as the fifth element, so that 25 combinations are generated. [Editor's Note: If you are interested in this fascinating but little-known system, there is an in-depth analysis of it in Hulse's The Eastern Mysteries. You may also want to look at Dr. Jonn Mumford's Magical Tattwa Cards kit. It includes a book with a full description of the Tattwa or Tattva system (giving many practical uses), plus a deck of 25 cards illustrating all of the potential counterchanges. Working with these may help you get a better understanding of the energies of the Court Cards.] Of these five basic shapes, four are equal to the Western fourfold elements. They are in turn both one of the four court cards and one of the four suits in the Minor Arcana. Here are the attributes: TATTVA ELEMENTAL CHART For the Golden Dawn, the 25 Tattva combinations were used as astral doorways to the various elemental kingdoms. By passing though the symbol in the astral body, the many gradations of the elemental kingdom could be explored. Each counterchange represented a certain type of astral scenery. Of the 25 counterchanges, sixteen correspond to the classic sixteen elemental counterchanges. By this attribution sixteen select Tattvas can be paired to the sixteen Court Cards. Each counterchange is a different scenic location. These geographical oracles are shown in the following table which lists the name of the Court Card, the name of the Tattva counterchange, and the geographical location that the Tattva represents in a divination.
ELEMENTAL TATTVA LOCATIONS AND THE COURT CARDS9 As such, these attributes can beused in a reading to determine the geographical locations that the querentmay be exposed to, in the past, the present or the future.
THE I CHING
FOUR TRIGRAMS AND FOUR ELEMENTS
These four basic elemental trigrams form sixteen counterchanges in the series of 64 hexagrams. Sixteen of the hexagrams correspond to one of the Court Cards, and can be used as an oracle for the Court Card series. Again, the attribution comes from the sixteen elemental counterchanges that can unite sixteen select hexagrams of the I Ching with the Court Cards. The following table gives:
THE I CHING AS ORACULAR LANGUAGE FOR THE COURT CARDS10
ELEMENTAL PERSONALITIES (JUNG AND THE COURT CARDS) There is one more application of the elemental counterchanges for the Court Cards that can reveal a psychological portrait of an individual. This is a system that I had developed after I had gained familiarity with reading the cards. It based in part on Carl Jung's fourfold division of the human psyche as will, emotions, intellect, and the body (as sensation). These four attributes can be attributed to fire as will, water as emotions, air as intellect, and earth as the body (or somatic response). These four principals modify one another as the sixteen Court cards. Here are traits that can be used as further definitions for the Court cards in any reading. They can be either the querent or someone the querent knows. THE COURT CARDS AS ELEMENTAL PERSONALITIES11
THE INFLUENCE OF BOOK T ON WAITE, CROWLEY, AND CASE Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1943) In The Pictorial Key, Paul Foster Case (in The Tarot) and Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) in his The Book of Thoth give divinatory attributes to the sixteen court cards that are derived from the Golden Dawn esoteric tradition for the Tarot. There is much agreement among these three authorities, and the following table will give you the essential divinatory vocabulary in defining the court cards as personality traits. These are the most common divinatory meanings that most modern Tarot readers ascribe to the Court Cards. For the most part these definitions were derived from Mathers' elaborate Golden Dawn order teachings as recorded in his secret Book T. BOOK T'S KEY WORDS USED BY WAITE, CROWLEY, AND CASE12
With the elaborate Golden Dawn attributes for the Court Cards, we have come to the most sophisticated set of attributes possible. This is certainly a deeper view of the cards, than the traditional "a dark man", "a fair woman", or "a clever youth". Hopefully, the wealth of new divinatory meanings captured in this essay will help enrich your own Tarot readings when dealing with the elusive sixteen Court Cards. May the Spirit of HUA that dwells over the Tarot cards guide you with light in all your readings. Editors Note: As you have no doubt seen by this article, David Allen Hulse is an amazing and thorough student of the occult. His two remarkable books follow this tradition of depth and accuracy. The Eastern Mysteries uses language as a uniting factor in its examination of six major Eastern spiritual traditions, including sources of Hebrew and the Qabalah, secrets of the chakras and Sanskrit, mysteries of Chinese and the I Ching, etc. The Western Mysteries follows the same focus on the secrets of language. It links astrology, runes, magick squares, Enochian magick, the Tarot, etc. Together they form a complete introduction (and thus, a great encyclopedic resource for research) to virtually all major spiritual and magical systems. Both The Western Mysteries and The Eastern Mysteries by David Allen Hulse are © Llewellyn Worldwide. Have you used the information in either of these books to help your Tarot divinations or for some other purpose? Share what you've learned with other readers. Send an email to us a TLJletters@llewellyn.com or click on the "We want to hear from you" link below with your story. FOOTNOTES 1. Decker, Ronald et al. A Wicked Pack of Cards. New York: St. Martins Press. 1996. p.75.BIBLIOGRAPHY Case, Paul Foster. The Tarot, A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages. Richmond: Macoy Publishing Company. 1947. |
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