Knighting in GT

ThtDancerGuy

Hello everyone,

I am struggling a bit with knighting, and wanted to discuss the diffeerent techniques people use for knighting. I know how one card knights another, but how do you read the story? I either read the two cards on the same row (with houses) as short sentences that need to be joined up with the other sentences in a coherent way. OR, again, the knighted cards on the left are the past influences, and on the right are future projections.

Any thoughts?

Thank you

Hi again RAphrodite,

I think you are overthinking the Knighting purpose, RAph. Knighting is just a dumb little thing a reader can do to get more information out of a certain [focus] card. So if you have read everything around your focus card and you still want a little more information, you can Knight that card to its Knighting cards. I trust you know how the Knighting movement goes. You read it as a simple pair, the original focus card is the first card and then the Knighted card is the second card that modifies the focus card. So say we are Knighting with the Heart card, which is the love life, and we get Heart + Sun, Heart + Birds, and Heart + Tower, for example. You just read them as simple little informative combinations giving you more details about the love life. So Heart + Sun shows a very happy, successful, exciting, passionate love life. Heart + Birds could be saying they are in a relationship (Heart + Birds = a couple), or it could be saying the person is currently dating. Heart + Tower can be saying that they have strict rules and boundaries they set up in love, and/or it could be suggesting that possibly they are a little confined and restricted in their love life. If I ever Knight, which I usually don't feel the need to so rarely do, I tend to link the Knighted pairs' interpretations with the information that I had already gleaned from the main reading of the focus card (past, present and future, the Box around that focus card, etc.). The Knighted pairs don't usually reveal any super new or unknown information that was not originally revealed in the main reading; I find Knighting often just repeats or reiterates what has already been read from the other cards directly around that focus card.

I do not advise reading the houses underneath the Knighted pairs because that just overcomplicates the point of Knighting and is cause for further confusion, especially if you're still learning your way with just Knighting.
 

Barleywine

Hi again RAphrodite,

I think you are overthinking the Knighting purpose, RAph. Knighting is just a dumb little thing a reader can do to get more information out of a certain [focus] card. So if you have read everything around your focus card and you still want a little more information, you can Knight that card to its Knighting cards. I trust you know how the Knighting movement goes. You read it as a simple pair, the original focus card is the first card and then the Knighted card is the second card that modifies the focus card. So say we are Knighting with the Heart card, which is the love life, and we get Heart + Sun, Heart + Birds, and Heart + Tower, for example. You just read them as simple little informative combinations giving you more details about the love life. So Heart + Sun shows a very happy, successful, exciting, passionate love life. Heart + Birds could be saying they are in a relationship (Heart + Birds = a couple), or it could be saying the person is currently dating. Heart + Tower can be saying that they have strict rules and boundaries they set up in love, and/or it could be suggesting that possibly they are a little confined and restricted in their love life. If I ever Knight, which I usually don't feel the need to so rarely do, I tend to link the Knighted pairs' interpretations with the information that I had already gleaned from the main reading of the focus card (past, present and future, the Box around that focus card, etc.). The Knighted pairs don't usually reveal any super new or unknown information that was not originally revealed in the main reading; I find Knighting often just repeats or reiterates what has already been read from the other cards directly around that focus card.

I do not advise reading the houses underneath the Knighted pairs because that just overcomplicates the point of Knighting and is cause for further confusion, especially if you're still learning your way with just Knighting.

This is a comprehensive assessment of how it seems to work in the majority of cases, especially as "additional reinforcement" for something already apparent in the spread. If I were to prioritize my approach into techniques of greater and lesser usefulness, it would probably be as follows:

Proximity/distance (the "near/far" method)
Knighting
Intersections (between topic card lines)
Mirroring
Houses, but not chaining (used for extra information on focus cards in the same manner as knighting)
Counting (but I've only experimented with it and don't see a lot of value there)

I don't use facing to any great extent (unless already implied for cards like the Clouds or the Scythe), and use the notion of receding (left) and approaching (right) influence rather than past/present/future. I'm just starting to get into playing card insert interpretation.

My analogy of each focus card as the center of a kind of vortex of influences that can overlap like ripples on a pond has served me well in analyzing the GT.
 

firecatpickles

I look at knighting similarly to knighting in chess. Knighting is something to look out for: Issues that can have an effect on the card in question, such as what card knights the Fish/money card, or what card knights the Hearts/love card, etc.