Court Cards and physical traits
Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 25 Mar 2005, and now archived in the Forum Library.
| daryam |
25 Mar 2005 |
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Hi!
I had some people tell me what a court card and a person it represents looks like,like height, hair color, age,slim or fat, some special traits like having a beard or bold.Can somebody tell me how this works and if there are some standard traits corresponding to each court card.
Thank you!
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| Fudugazi |
25 Mar 2005 |
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Court cards can indicate people with similar physical characteristics. Sometimes Tarot works very literally. But I would be wary to say it works all the time. As the DruidCraft book says - you can have a young woman with the personality of the King of Pentacles! (and with that particular King of Pentacles it's even funnier).
I know some people who programme their cards' meanings, so you could, in theory, programme your court cards to mean only people with the physical characteristics of the court card in question.
Of course, for most decks on the market it only works with Caucasian types anyway.
And I hope never to meet someone with the physical characteristics of the courts in the Navigators or the International Icon decks! ;)
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| psychic sue |
25 Mar 2005 |
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There is a traditional interpretation (I think it might be romany) that attributes physical charactaristics to the cards. As usual, I rely on my intuition if someone asks me that the person looks like. As already mentioned, they own work with caucasions anyway which is a bit limiting!
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| Elektra |
25 Mar 2005 |
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Court cards can indicate people with similar physical characteristics. Sometimes Tarot works very literally. But I would be wary to say it works all the time. As the DruidCraft book says - you can have a young woman with the personality of the King of Pentacles! (and with that particular King of Pentacles it's even funnier).
I'm female, and my personal significator (at least, the card that repeatedly turns up in readings to represent me) is the King of Wands. It's a pretty damn good personality match. But I sure hope I don't look like him! :)
Of course, for most decks on the market it only works with Caucasian types anyway.
This is an excellent, excellent point. (And one that I'm ashamed to say I hadn't thought of before.)
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| daryam |
25 Mar 2005 |
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But is there at least an age and hair colour correspondance? I know that Kings should be older than Knights,but is it really the case and how far does it go? I agree with the poit about personality traits. I also keep on getting a Queen of Swords representing me and my character as well as my air element(swords).On the other hand,however, a Queen is supposed to be a mature woman, maybe married, having children, which I am not, a Princess would fit better here. Swords are also normally people with darker hair, which I am also not.
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| psychic sue |
25 Mar 2005 |
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So you have found that you can't really put physical charactaristics on them.
It may be that you are going through a "Queen of Swords" phase at the moment. It doesn't necessarily mean that you are stuck with her personality!
Physically, she is pale-skinned, thin lips and dark hair. Her eyes may be dark or shades of green/blue. She exudes a mature attitude and does a great disapproving look! She is slightly built and quite tall.
Character wise, she is an extremely independent person. She is highly intelligent and prefers the world of logic and approaches a crisis in a cool calm logical manner. She is noted for her physical grace and loves reading and dancing. She hates time wasters and doesn't bear fools gladly. She is also very aware of atmosphere and nothing gets past her. She can sometimes represent a widow or divorcee.
Maybe this card is telling you that you should approach a problem with the attitude of the queen? Cool, calm collected? Or maybe the card is telling you to be a little more independent?
Sue x
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| tarotbear |
25 Mar 2005 |
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I never bought into that physical traits end of things because then all the world is caucasian.
What about someone with red hair and green eyes? What card represents them? LOL!!!!
I have always accepted that idea to mean 'what is the first impression the querent makes?'
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| WolfyJames |
25 Mar 2005 |
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Traditionaly, Cups (Hearts) have blonde hair, Wands (Diamonds) have chesnut, red hair, Pentacles (Clubs) have brown hair and Swords (Spades) have dark hair. This is for caucasian indeed, but when this system was made, foreign people (asians, blacks, natives, etc.) were not an everyday event. As for position, usually, the King is older than the Knight (and the Queen older than the Page), but not necesserely true. If you go with personality, then you have to admit that some young people are very mature for their age and some old people are very immature for their age, so the older-younger can be as well mature-immature. So you can have a young King (or Queen) and an old Knight (or Page). Still, even if your a King (or Queen), by age or by maturity, some situations can put you in a Page or Knight position. Same thing with gender. If you go with gender, males are Knight or King and female Page (Princess) or Queen, but if you go by personality, a female can be a Knight or a King and a male a Page (Princess) or a Queen. Personaly, I prefer using the personality than the card itself, but there are times where it can helpful to know these things.
P.S. Let's not forget people were obsessed by blondes in the Middle-Ages and dark haired people (and for some places, red-haired people too) were viewed badly. In cartomancy, the Spades have the worst cards and the Hearts the best, and the RWS Tarot has kept this in his tarot. In the Tarot de Marseille, L'Amoureux, the good woman is blond and the bad one is dark-haired.
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| Fudugazi |
26 Mar 2005 |
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Traditionaly, Cups (Hearts) have blonde hair, Wands (Diamonds) have chesnut, red hair, Pentacles (Clubs) have brown hair and Swords (Spades) have dark hair. This is for caucasian indeed, but when this system was made, foreign people (asians, blacks, natives, etc.) were not an everyday event.
I must disagree with you. When Waite and Colman made their RWS tarot, in 1909 in England, the British Empire still ruled half the world, and was full of Asians and Africans, many of whom lived in England (British Universities were full of Indians, for example). But Waite and Colman were, in common with all their generation, blind to other colours than their own.
Your argument has more value when discussing the Marseille, though even in the Middle Ages and Renaissance there were "Moors" (ie Arabs and Africans) in Europe.
But as I said - sometimes Tarot is literal, so it can work. I would just say- not systematically. Queens can be young women, and some old men I know have the heart and soul of pages (or princesses).
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| WolfyJames |
26 Mar 2005 |
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I must disagree with you. When Waite and Colman made their RWS tarot, in 1909 in England, the British Empire still ruled half the world, and was full of Asians and Africans, many of whom lived in England (British Universities were full of Indians, for example). But Waite and Colman were, in common with all their generation, blind to other colours than their own.
Your argument has more value when discussing the Marseille, though even in the Middle Ages and Renaissance there were "Moors" (ie Arabs and Africans) in Europe.
But as I said - sometimes Tarot is literal, so it can work. I would just say- not systematically. Queens can be young women, and some old men I know have the heart and soul of pages (or princesses).
The system I mentionned is based on regular playing cards, which existed before tarot, and was one of the origins of tarot. Regular playing cards in Europe were around 1300, before tarot even existed, and that system was put into place then. As I said, foreigners then were not an everyday event. I presumed everyone knew regular playing cards pre-existed tarot and I did mention the Middle-Ages in my P.S. Waite used regular playing cards as an inspiration for his tarot.
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| Fudugazi |
26 Mar 2005 |
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Yes. But regular playing cards came to us from the Moors, and had no faces on them at all. If they had, they would not doubt have been brown.
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| feticeira |
26 Mar 2005 |
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As a soon to be anthropologist: the fact is no matter how many people of different colors were around those who drew the tarot´s court cards, it was and still is a cultural dictum that those who are not fair skinned are less than those who are.
Of course a dark-skinned person would not be used to represent a court figure, first of all courts are exactly that, royalty- something reserved only for the "best".
Also, if courts represent people in a reading, nobody in those times would have liked to be told by the reader that they were that dark man or woman in the picture.
And third, lets not forget occidental culture likes to pretend that what it doesn´t like does not exist. Minorities are ignored and forgotten because it´s convenient, and art and literature as projections of society itself, follow those ideas. So you won´t find art or literature that depicts people that are not liked, respected and taken into account. That would most definitely include tarot, IMHO.
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| feticeira |
26 Mar 2005 |
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... I´ve found that the "outside" traits that courts can tell of, are the attitudes or vibes we pick up from people. Some people look so confident, like from the wands suit. Others are seemingly shy, like the cups and so on.
But you see it´s not necessarily true that said person who looks shy is in fact shy. Maybe they´re just very focused on their own thoughts at the time, or maybe they´re not so familiar with the enviroment you´re seeing them in. Or maybe, it´s just the vibe you picked up from them.
Or it might have something to do with your role or job. I remember in a thread here once, someone over sixty referred to their significator card as a page, because they were new to tarot. So normally this person would have been thought of as a king, an experienced adult. But when it came to tarot, this king was most definitely a page.
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| Moongold |
26 Mar 2005 |
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I would like to see a Tarot deck that had people in wheel chairs, or wearing spectacles, balding or black or brown or chubby. Just some who deviate from the physical norm of beauty.
Maybe the High Priestess could have a birthmark, the Empress have hirsutism, and the Fool have a hearing aid?
There are very few Tarots that could be completely cognizant of all cultures however. I'd love to see the *Exceptionally Beautiful Tarot" which did cater for the many non-idealized but real characters in our everyday worlds.
I think it is unnecessary and possibly dangerous to attribute physical characteristics to Court Cards nowadays, however.
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| WolfyJames |
27 Mar 2005 |
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Yes. But regular playing cards came to us from the Moors, and had no faces on them at all. If they had, they would not doubt have been brown.
Europeans adapted regular playing cards to their cultures and society.
The Moors, these are Spades people, dark-haired people. As I said, people in the Middle-Ages develop an (unhealthy) obsession towards blonds people. The appearance then was extremely important and was a sign of the true soul of a person. If a person were pretty, to them that person was a virtous and kind person. If a person were ugly, then that person was viewed badly as a sinner and deceiver. Blond hair were linked to angels (and fairies) hence their obsession towards blond persons, and these blonds persons were given angelic and superior qualities just because of the color of their hair. Hearts courts are traditionaly blond and the suit is filled with good cards. Dark-haired dark-skinned people ended being the Spades, the worst suit with the worst cards of the whole deck of cards. Dark-haired people were suspected of being evil, doing business with the Devil, so they were suspected of the worst. Diamonds courts suit have a bad rap as well, they're not as bad as the Spades, but you can't trust them and they're usually only there to serve their own interests. Diamonds court cards are traditionaly chesnut red-haired people. Red-haired people were often suspected of being witches, vampires, werewolves and other doomed monsters, because of their hair, as red as the fire in Hell. So whenever something was going wrong in a small village, the red-haired people were suspected first of being behind it.
Tarot being based on cartomancy, tarot got the same problems as well, with the Swords people getting the worst traits of character. But it is our obligation, as modern readers, to move on from these outdated views, and to use tarot in an intelligent and modern way.
Still, people are still obsessed by blonds and blonds are still viewed better than dark-haired people. In the Archie's comics, the good girl, sweet, loving and generous, is named Betty and is blond and the bitch, vain and egostical Veronica is a dark-haired girl. It's like this almost everywhere where blonds are seen as the good girl and the brunette as the cold hearted seductress. I find this very tiresome. Doreen Virtue propagates these views in some of her oracles claming that blonds are spiritually superior to everyone else. Hitler was dreaming of a blond aryen world.
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The Court Cards and physical traits thread was originally posted on 25 Mar 2005 in the Using Tarot Cards board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Using Tarot Cards, or read more archived threads.
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