Myers Briggs Types and the Court Cards

rachelcat

Hi, all!

A year and a half later, and here I go again! I tinkered with and changed my MBTI courts, so I thought I would re-share.

(I think to follow my meandering below, you need to look at the attached table early and often!)

I’m still using the two letter active/receptive system, but I basically turned the table on its side: Now Functions are suits/elements, and Attitudes are ranks. So what was Wands became Kings; what was Coins became Princesses, etc., and vice versa.

I think this works better with both the type descriptions in Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type by Isabel Briggs Myers and the keywords in a booklet I got at work, MBTI Introduction Workbook by Hile Rutledge, Otto Kroeger Associates. You be the judge! The keywords in the attached table are mostly from the booklet, with some changes and additions.

After reading Gifts Differing, I understand why people are tempted to use the four Functions for the four suits/elements. (Or if they read the underlying theory by Jung, which I didn’t!) But I think it’s an impossible job. Of Sensing, iNtuitive, Thinking, or Feeling, which one is Wands/Fire? Some have said intuitive, some have said feeling. I don’t think any of them work.

In my two letter system, the two active functions, Sensing and Thinking, combine to make the Fire suit. And, of course, all the other suits are two functions as well, based on a combination of active and receptive.

And the ranks are determined by combinations of active and receptive Attitudes.

Note that the table is ordered Fire, Earth, Air, Water. This is to try to show the flow from most active (King of Wands, fire of fire) on the top left to most receptive (Queen of Cups, water of water) on the bottom right. (It also happens to be the astrological order of the elements.)

I also came up with rank names that remove the developmental and gender aspects of the courts. After all, anyone of any age or gender can be any of the types, so Pages, Queens, etc. don’t quite make sense.
Kings = Directors
Queens = Accepters
Knights = Deciders
Pages = Explorers
(They’re a little clunky, but I tried to make them as generic as they need to be!)

So take a look and let me know what you think! (Now I just have to come up with a whole deck concept that will contain these crazy court cards!)
 

Attachments

  • Rachel’s New MBTI Courts with Keywords.pdf
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michick34

Maddening

Rachelcat, that's kind of the experience I've had with it. I've considered a lot of different options and none of them really seem to correspond with the suits just right. I don't really understand why Keirsey decided to separate them the way he did. I've considered Zezina's method of assigning each suit a function then assigning MBTI types by dominant function, but I have not been able to satisfactorily assign a functions to suits. The assignments Zezina had with Wands as Intuition, Cups as Feeling, Swords as Thinking and Pentacles as Sensation is the one I see the most often, but I have a lot of trouble with Intuition as Fire. I feel like intuition has a strong water quality. The most satisfactory (to me) I've gotten is Wands as Sensation, Cups as Intuition, Swords as Thinking, and Pentacles as Feeling, but it still feels off. Also ENFP and INTJ would be in the same group, and when looking at their functional stack, (NeFi) and (NiTe) they don't seem all that similar to me. I've considered Sanctum Priests as well, having each suit have two functions and would assign the same suits but again I feel uncomfortable with the matching, NTs as wands and STs as swords doesn't really jive with me. I'm considering doing it by oriented functions (Ni,Ne,Fi,Fe,etc)but I'm still figuring out how some of these differ from each other and what suits they'd fit best.
 

rachelcat

Hey, hi!

Yeah, I ignored the primary and secondary functions in this organization. But I think the personalities work if you take the primary and secondary into account.

So what do you think of the active-passive idea for combining?
 

michick34

Awesome Chart

I like the active-passive aspect most definitely and I would agree with their +/- assignments. I usually associate the suits with their elements and Jung wrote about Alchemy and a lot of it has been very helpful in my Major Arcana interpretations. In Alchemy, the elements are paired as primary and secondary as with the first two being of a higher quality or force and the second two being a more material creation of the first. Water and Fire are the primary and work passively (energy) with Earth and Air being secondary with more active (stability). Water and Earth are the more passive out of the two pairs and Fire and Air the more active, so it makes a lot of sense to me to do it that way. I also prefer NT as swords and ST as wands, I wasn't sure about T as fire, but it can actually be pretty feisty.

I would probably change the ordering of the ranks a little though with IJs as Queens and IPs as Knights because I am into functional stacks. The Js and Ps represent the orientation of the strongest extraverted function, which in introverts is not their dominant function. It might be easier to type someone by the orientation of the strongest extraverted function, but it is different from the main function introverts will experience in their personality. For example of the wands, ISTJs dominant function would be Introverted Perceiving Sensing and the ISTPs dominant function would be Introverted Judging Thinking. This is a great article (and an awesome site generally) about J & P in IJ and IP types. http://personalityjunkie.com/03/judging-perceiving-ijs-ips/
 

rachelcat

Thanks for the comments! Yes, I was wondering about the E-I dominant difference thingy. So maybe switching my Queens and Knights is all I have to do . . .

I'll have to think about that for a while. That does look like a good article! I'm sure it will help the thinking!
 

fairylights

I'm a huge MBTI enthusiast but I haven't found a system for matching up Court cards with the different types that I can actually get behind completely.

Generally though, I would associate SPs (the thrill seeking artisans) with wands; NFs (the emotional idealists) with cups; the NTs (incisive rationals) with swords; and the SJs (pragmatic Guardians) with pentacles.

And then the Court cards could be divvied up within that system.

Someone's probably come up with that already.

MBTI ISFP represent. My tertiary introverted intuition loves tarot but isn't so great at it.
 

fairylights

I guess the thing standing in the way of perfect mapping is that the Court cards are each archetypes and the MBTI types (even though they encompass less complex messiness than people) just aren't. I don't know. Just rambling here.
 

kilavaish

...
And then the Court cards could be divvied up within that system.

Someone's probably come up with that already.
...

I saw it above somme posts ago, yes, this way it's easy to understand I hope.
 

kilavaish

I guess the thing standing in the way of perfect mapping is that the Court cards are each archetypes and the MBTI types (even though they encompass less complex messiness than people) just aren't. I don't know. Just rambling here.

Maybe ...

Here, in that mapping, the sky is N, and the earth is S, I is female, E is male, which shows the Symbols behind tarot archetypes, and opens the question of the sequence order in mbti types, and their relevant symbols.

Edit :

Something like : what, where, who, when ?