"People Persons" and court cards

I've always found court cards difficult, at best I keep the elemental hierarchy in mind and picture it in terms of growth and maturity, but this is just the barest surface scratch, I know.

I was thinking though....I am anything but a people-person. I really understand people no better (or at least categorize people no better) than I do the court cards in the tarot.

This rule is illustrated by its exception: Whether emphasizing the faults or the blessings, I do identify with the queen of swords and can point out people (usually, though not always women) who also have the same personality features or life experiences....

All the others? After a time I can logic out a meaning.....as I can with people...after a time I can logic out motives and personality associations...but little intuition or automatic empathy exists (learned empathy yes, immediate sense of empathy for people, seldom).

Wondering if other people have a similar experience with both people and court cards....if perhaps there's a correlation between say an introversion associated with a tendency to avoid people and not knowing the cards, versus being of a very social empathic nature and clicking with the court cards right away.

Thoughts?

Don't know if it's really about being a "people person" or not...
but I DO think that it is easier to understand courts if you are used to meeting, interacting with, and watching all kinds of different people.
What I'm trying to say is, I think it has more to do with practical experience of dealing with people, than with personality.

But of course, if you're uncomfortable around people, or just not interested in them, then it will be more a challenge to study them.

I'm not a people person, and often feel a bit socially awkward. But I love meeting and talking to people anyway, because it's so interesting, all the different ways there is, to be human.

a little more

I wanted to write so much... but my thoughts went off on a tangent... I'll try to keep it short, it's not my greatest talent, but I'll try

Court cards:
I find them difficult too, at least if I try to picture them as real people, I just can't do that. My problem there is that I think they are too flat. I've never met a person about who I could say: "That person is a King of Cups." It's always "yeah, he's a little like the KoC sometimes... but then also a bit like the Queen of pentacles... and the Knight of swords in a bad mood..." Nobody fits perfectly, and the courts (to me) are just too flat to be real people.

I don't think anyone can BE a specific court card. (But I get why people identify with them at times so please don't think I'm saying it's wrong to do that.) I mean, for most of the time I've seriously played with Tarot, I've felt mostly drawn to either the Queen of Swords or the Page of Swords. Those cards are the ones I "get" by gut feeling without having to think about what they mean, they are the most easy to identify with. But I can't say that I am the QoS, because that's not all that I am. Sometimes I might be more a King of Pentacles, and I'm no less myself in those moments.

As I see it, the courts are not complete people, they are more a set of attitudes and behaviours, and sometimes we act more in harmony with one such pattern, and sometimes with another pattern. And people are too complicated; so everybody's been every court card, sometime in their life.
I find it much, much easier to deal with the courts when I think of them as a certain attitude/feeling/action in a certain situation. Because I know what it feels like to have a Queen of Wands–morning or a Knight of Swords-argument or a King of Cups–moment. I've had them; everybody has had them. But I've never met anyone whose personality is completely a King of Cups.

That's also been the clue for me to understand people. (I have never really been a people person, for different reasons.) To realize that there are a lot of experiences and feelings that we share, more than we know. We're really not that unique. Every person out there has some experience in common with me. Sometimes it's not immediatley obvious what we have in common, but it is there. That is where empathy starts.

I believe, to understand people, the way is to NOT categorize people. To not try to make them fit a picture of what they should be, but just take them as they are. Otherwise that picture might stand in the way of actually seeing them. Because they will always at some point break that picture anyway, and do something unexpected that does not seem to follow logic. Break out of the pattern I have associated with them and follow another. Of course, in retrospect, it's usually possible to understand the reason for what's happened, it's rarely completely random, even if it can seem that way at the time.

"Introversion and a tendency to avoid people" versus "social and empathic nature" – I'm not sure if it's that simple.
It's possible to be introverted and empathic, for example. And I know a few people who are very social and outgoing and also completely deaf to other people around them...

A lot of thinking, this post. I hope I don't sound rude or anything, if so I apologise, English is not my first language so sometimes I don't get the finer nuances. Especially not in writing. But I've been thinking a lot about social behaviour lately.
I'm probably one of those people who have to work a little harder than most, to "get" the social thing. Tough, because when it comes down to it, I really like being social! Meeting good people, talking about interesting things, laughing, dancing, doing creative stuff together – I love it, really love it. But since I'm not a people person, it's practice, practice, practice. And trying to find those things that we have in common, that come from being human.

Long story short, the answer: in my case at least, understanding of court cards and understanding of people seem to be connected. And I would say I'm an introverted AND social person. Who finds understanding the courts is getting easier the more I socialize with other people. (Or it could have nothing to do with my social life and just be that I'm getting better at reading cards, who knows.)

Haven't thought about this before, but it was fun. Thank you for your post, SphinYote.

I get the Queen of Swords representing me a lot, and because of that it's a card that can make or break a deck for me. Outside of that though I'm pretty clueless with court cards. If I ever need a prompt for a card meaning, 9 times out of ten it'll be a court.

oddity said it very well. i'll just add, we are all ALL of the cards at some time or another - not just the courts.