Court Cards Are Not Always People: How to Read Tarot Court Cards in Any Spread

Court Cards Are Not Always People: How to Read Tarot Court Cards in Any Spread

Somebody hands you a spread and the Knight of Cups turns up in the middle of it.

So you do what you were taught. You start scanning your life for a young man with feelings. A brother, an ex, somebody at work. And when nobody fits, you sit there stuck, because the one instruction you got about court cards was that they represent a person, and there is no person.

Sixteen of your seventy eight cards are court cards. That is roughly a fifth of the deck, and most readers get through years of practice while privately hoping they stay in the box.

How to Read Tarot Court Cards in Any Spread

Here's the thing: a court card describes a way of acting. Sometimes that's a person in your life, and sometimes it's something else entirely. Once you can read the card before you know who it is, all sixteen open up.

Read the suit first, then the rank

Every court card is two pieces of information and they answer different questions.

The suit tells you the arena. Cups is emotional and relational. Wands is drive, creativity, momentum. Swords is thought, communication, truth-telling. Pentacles is the material world, money, body, work that has to actually get done.

The rank tells you how far along they are. Pages have the idea. Knights take action, sometimes impulsively. Queens watch it take shape and share it. Kings have made it real, and they lead.

Put those two together and you already have a read, before you know who anybody is. Knight of Cups is feelings in action, moving fast. Page of Cups is a feeling that's brand new.

Try this on your next pull: say the suit and the rank out loud as two separate sentences before you try to make them into one.

Ask which of three jobs it is doing

A court card in a spread is almost always doing one of three things, and you can usually tell within a few seconds.

It can be a person in their life. It can be them: a side of themselves they're already using, or one they've stopped using. Or it can be advice: how to go about whatever the rest of the spread is about.

Say someone asks about a project that's stuck, and the King of Pentacles lands in the action spot. He's telling them to act like the owner: put a price on it, put a date on it, take charge of it.

Use this when you're sure a court card is a person and nobody fits. Go back through the three jobs, and by the second one you usually know.

When it's a person, let them name who it is

This is the part I want to be firm about, because it is where readings go wrong.

When a court card is somebody in their life, they're the one who knows who it is.

So describe how the person acts, and ask. "This card is somebody who thinks fast and says the true thing even when it costs them. Does anyone come to mind?" Then stop talking and let them answer. Most of the time they name someone before you finish the sentence.

And when they say nobody comes to mind, that helps too. Go back to the other two jobs, because the card was doing something else.

Let them decide who it is. It's their life, and they know the people in it.

Two court cards together are a dynamic

When two courts land in the same spread, most readers read them one at a time and miss the actual message, which is usually about the relationship between them.

Queen of Swords beside Knight of Cups is a clear head sitting next to a full heart, and the reading is about how those two are getting along. Sometimes they work together. Sometimes one wears the other out.

Two Pages together means everything is brand new and nobody's the expert yet, so it's a good time to try things.

A King and a Page is almost always about authority, teaching, or a gap in experience that somebody is feeling.

Next time two courts turn up, read the space between them before you read either one.

Build your own sixteen from people you know

Here is the practice that does more than any book on this subject.

Take your notebook and go through the sixteen courts. For each one, write down a real person you know who fits it. Your aunt. Your first boss. The woman who runs the shop on the corner.

If a card stays blank, keep the court card personalities and keywords open beside your notebook and look for the trait that reminds you of somebody.

Some of them will come instantly. Some will take a week of noticing. A few will stay blank for a while and then land on somebody unexpected, and that is the one you will never forget.

Once the King of Swords is your uncle who wins every argument and cannot let anything go, you will never need to look him up again. The card stops being a set of keywords and becomes somebody you can picture, which is the whole point.

Your sixteen will be yours alone, and that's what makes them stick.

How to read tarot court cards, starting with one

Pick a single court card tomorrow. Just one.

Read the suit and the rank out loud. Run the three jobs. Write down a person you know who fits it.

Do that once a week and by the end of the year the entire court is yours, described in your own language, attached to real people. That is sixteen cards you currently avoid turned into sixteen you look forward to.

Come learn how to read tarot court cards at High Priestess Tarot School. You get the full 33-lesson core course, five bonus trainings, the Tarot Reflections Journal, Q&A by video, and a community of readers learning right alongside you, all for $7/month, cancel anytime. https://highpriestessts.com/hpts-option