Can someone explain these darn Thoth Courts?

In an effort to make some sense of the Thoth court card atttributes, I tried to analyze it in terms of the two components: the court personas, and the Tarot suits. Here's what I came up with.

Court card interpretations can be viewed as an expression of the human characteristic (the court persona), as they relate to and interact with the universal elements (the 4 Tarot suits).

Court Card Characteristics:

Knights (Kings) = Committed intention and initiative, Wisdom
Queens = Integration and adaptation, Instinct and understanding
Princes = Goals and progress, Controlled Thought
Princesses (Pages) = Manifestation and results, Energy expressed in matter

Suit Expressions:

Wands = Assertion and action
Cups = Creative inspiration and emotions
Swords = Intellectual and intuitive processes, communication
Disks = Resource allocation and tangible results

Elemental Correspondences:

Fire: Wands & Knights
Water: Cups & Queens
Air: Swords & Princes
Earth: Disks & Princesses

Some examples:

Princess of Swords = Earth of Air
Manifestation of results (Princess) from Intellectual and intuitive processes (Swords)
Interpretation = Intellectual results, decision maker, activist

Prince of Disks = Air of Earth
Goals (Prince) relating to resource allocation and tangible results (Earth)
Interpretation = Progress in planned growth, understanding cause (Prince) and effect (Earth), project manager

Breaking it down into the components seem to help me more readily grasp the basic energies of the Thoth court cards.

The Thoth deck is not my "comfort" deck. But, I do use elemental associations as one clue in determining what the court cards mean to me. So here's my attempt at a short explanation of the court card elemental associations. This is basically the method I use, but there are other methods out there.

1. Each element is associated with certain personality traits.

Water is the element of emotion, unconscious processes, feelings
Air is the element of the mind, thinking, and communication, intellect, reason
Earth is the element of body, practicality, material matters, physical well-being, sensory information
Fire is the element of will, creativity, enterprise, inspiration, energy, aggression

2. Each suit is associated with an element. For most decks this is--
Wands: Fire Cups: Water Swords: Air Pentacles: Earth

3. Each Rank of Court Card is also associated with an element.
Knights (Kings) -Fire
Queens-Water
Princes (Knights)-Air
Princesses (Pages)-Earth

Each Court Card can be thought as a mixture of its suit element and rank element. The suit element is the primary/dominant element. The primary personality traits associated with the suit, are modified by the element associated with the rank-but the suit's element is dominant. Some elements are compatible and strengthen each other, some are neutral, and others conflict with and weaken each other. Court card personalities that contain opposing elements may have internal conflicts.

For example the Queen of Wands is Water of Fire. She is primarily a wand's type personality. Her method of expressing her water side is controlled by the element of fire-she a dynamic person who nurtures people by energizing and inspiring them. The Knight (King) of Cups is Fire of Water. Being a Cup he is dominated by the Water element even though he has aspects of the element of Fire in his personality. The direct, forceful, energetic approach of the Fire element associated with the rank is somewhat thwarted by his dominant cup side. The Knight (King) of Cups rules and gets things done in a fatherly, diplomatic, subtle way. They are both mixtures of Water and Fire, but each one has a different dominant element and different personalities.

Rose

Thanks for the article, Strange2...I think Hulse is right here, as I said before...Knights are Knights, whether it's the Thoth deck or the RWS deck...the Kings of the RWS equal the Princes of the Thoth, both of them signifying Air...even though only coldsuns seems to agree.
I have to admit it threw me off when I got the Thoth deck at first, too...once I read a bit more and realized that it was the RWS that was off, everything became a lot clearer.

*Confused* Darn Beastie Boy... Why couldn't he just leave the Court cards as they are goddamnit??!!! Knights = Knights, and Kings = Princes, but surely it should be Knights= Kings and Princes = Knights, since:

Queen = Water

and

Princess (Page) = Earth.

Why didn't he use polarities? So, Knight=King (Fire) To go with the Queen's Water, and Prince=Knight (Air,) to go with the Princesses' Earth...

Kiama

Okay, I've just read the wonderful article.

I think I get it now... Just a quick question...

So, the only thing that's been changed are the titles, and the meanings stay the same as they were?

So, whist the King of Cups in RWS trad is now the Knight of CUps, the meaning is still the same no matter which trad you go for?

Kiama

Richard said:

Knights are Knights, whether it's the Thoth deck or the RWS deck...the Kings of the RWS equal the Princes of the Thoth, both of them signifying Air

Click to expand...

??? RWS kings is air??
i never knew this. i always thought the king was fire and RWS knight was air which is why i equal the Thoth knight with the RWS king.

Hope it's alright if I join in.

Read Hulse's article-developed a headache (it's a good article just more than my mind could absorb). Tried it again this morning--still a little confused.

At the risk of sounding like a babbling idiot:

Before the Golden Dawn, AND BEFORE CROWLEY AND WAITE DESIGNED THEIR DECKS, the traditional titles for the court cards were King, Queen, Knight, and Page.

Mathers,a founder of the Golden Dawn, revised the traditional titles of the court cards to King, Queen, Prince, and Princess. But the card that he called King was in fact equivalent to the traditional Knight and the card that he called Prince was equivalent to the title for the traditional King.

Crowley decided to go one step further and actually rename Mather's King to Knight.

Waite used the same system as Mather but went back to the original names. (Here's the babbling part) So Waite's King is equivalent to Crowley's Knight which is equivalent to Mather's King which is equivalent to the pre-Golden Dawn Traditional Knight.

In Chart Form corresponding court cards:

Traditional Mather Crowley Waite

Knight King Knight King
Queen Queen Queen Queen
King Prince Prince Knight
Page Princess Princess Page

In short Crowley's Knight is equivalent to Waite's King and Waite's Knight is equivalent to Crowley's Prince.

Out of curiosity I checked my books. The only specific reference I could find was in Hajo Banzhaf's book Key Words for the Crowley Tarot where he does state that the King in Waite's deck is equivalent to the Knight in Crowley's deck and Waite's Knight is equivalent to the Prince in Crowley's deck.

I'm going to go somewhere and scream now.
Rose

*LOL*
no, rose! you did good. thanks for a very informative post.

Thankyou Rose! I would tend to agree with you now that the Crowley Knight is the RWS King and Crowley Prince the RWS Knight...

It makes sense that the Knight (RWS) and Prince(Crowley) are Air together, simply because they have the same energies: They are both volatile and movement-oriented. As Crowley said himself, the Prince will then marry the Princess and thus become King, moving up one.

I finally understand these cards. Thankyou all so much!

Kiama

Here's another way to look at courts

Tom Tadforlittle's table shows a traditional name and elemental attribute...then his own system for his tarot in the making. I actually found it a useful starting point to think of court energies.
I thought it was Crowley who did something as the 'air of water' emphasis in his description and Frieda Harris who incorporated those ideas in her pictures---so this was useful to me.

http://www.telp.com/tarot/hermits_tarot/hcourt.htm

I originally was looking for information on how Tom Tadforlittle and Mary Greer were writing a book on court cards.
If I see this information adds confusion, I'll amend my note
Mari H.
----------------------------------------------------------------