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Tarot 'Exalted' Court Cards

13:47 / 03.11.06

Discussion on Water elsewhere got me thinking about the Queen of Cups, water of water or water exalted, and I remembered ages ago I wanted to start Tarot threads on the minor arcana to complement the major arcana index. Rather than jump into a slew of suit threads or individual cards I thought I'd start small on the Court cards and specifically the four exalted cards, and see where it goes from there.

That's them right there. The King has the solidity of the earth, his robes blend with his castle and fruitful prosperity, Taurus on his throne. The Queen contemplates the holy grail and her robes reflect the sea, cherubs on her throne, toe dipped in the water, thge Knight looks like he's on fire and the salamanders on his surcoat almost close the circle of energy, the Page has his thoughts scattered by the wind like the birds above his head and even the earth looks unsteady in the picture.

What do you associate with these cards? I'm teaching Tarot at the moment and struggling to associate someone famous with all the court cards to be examples they'll remember, any ideas for these four? What do you think is the relationship between the ace of each suit and it's exalted court mate? They both represent elements after all. How do the exalted cards relate to their sibling court cards?
Or maybe you have a question about these things Barbelith can answer, ask away, maybe this will lead to fruitful discussions of all the minor arcana.

13:53 / 03.11.06

Sorry, but I'm curious -- why are there two genders and four elements? Is there no principle of three in the minor arcana -- no step between male/female and earth/water/fire/air?

And is there an implication of rank between the four elements with these exalted positions?

16:22 / 03.11.06

If you relate the cards to the kabalah (Alan Moore's promethia covers some of this) you can relate the cards in a variety of ways to various architypal themes (father son and holy ghost etc)
I would be very surprised if there were not also numbered codings throughout.

Crowley breaks the card down bu numbers in his Thoth deck as well, I'll try and remember to dig a ref up (busy weekend wife just back from NY and two birthdays and a gig to try and squeeze in)

19:24 / 03.11.06

Sorry, but I'm curious -- why are there two genders and four elements? Is there no principle of three in the minor arcana -- no step between male/female and earth/water/fire/air?

I may not be approaching this from the classic angle you're looking for, but...

The way I read them, the Court cards always refer to people. Usually ordinary human people, but sometimes, in the life of one heavily involved with such, they can be gods or spirits that are interacted with in the same way as people.

Kings and Queens are adult men and women. Knights and Pages are less mature, adolescent boys and girls. I take the suits in an astrological direction, but not completely. I don't try to correlate the Knights/Queens/Kings to Mutable/Fixed/Cardinal, but I do equate the elements to Fire signs, Water signs, Air signs, etc.

Far more, though, I consider the combination of maturity, gender, and element to describe a personality.

Tradition dictates Page, not Princess, so there's 3 males and 1 female, but as I understand it, that same tradition dictates that the youngest (least mature) male equates to female.

Modern decks that try to make things more fair are just as likely to swap Prince for Page, and Princess for Knight, instead of always having the female subordinate to the male.

If indeed the gender is meant, and there's supposed to be a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I would expect throwing the contemplative Queen in means Mother Mary joins the picture. I assume, without looking it up (because it's not my way anyway) that Father is King, Son is Knight, and the Holy Spirit, which some consider female, and which is the bit of God that resides in every common human, would be the Page.

--Ember--

19:32 / 03.11.06

I tend to think of Spirit = fifth element = major arcana cards, when thinking about elemental associations.

I know of a deck, the name currently escapes me, that is based on ideas of queer gender, but I don't know how they attribute the court cards. I'll see if I can find out.

Incidentaly they have 3 lovers cards, one with a heterosexual couple, one with a lesbian couple, and one with a gay couple depicted, so you can choose which expression you prefer, or have all 3 and read into which one comes up.

21:31 / 03.11.06

Is that deck round?

--Ember--

Unconditional Love

23:39 / 03.11.06

Cosmic tribe tarot if i remember correctly.

Well they are social standing, also sexuality, also maturity, also astrological, also body language, also pictorial connotation through environment and prop, i dont think there is a simple explanation or a catch all system, but that is the beauty of symbols, many meanings and permutations in one symbolic representation.

What if those symbols were actions, movements, processes, variables that interacted like proteins in a cell, what if they can only be considered as meaningful within the whole context of the organism that is the tarot, each reading, like revealing the process of an internal organ.

What kind of processes would they be how would they bond and form relationships, charging a masculine with a feminine, changing the polarity of water into fire, an alchemical symbiosis of significators, realigning perception as an action within wider environmental stimuli, an adaptive archetypal mutation to enhance perception and encourage growth through the foundation of symbolic process.

They stand together as a story that they tell through interaction with one another, a play, in which they all speak, characterised by there costume and props, its how they communicate thats of import, how they respond to one another, the interaction, the individuals themselves communicate to form a larger process, the story, the reading, each element is defined by its relationships perhaps and not its attachments, its costumes and props, the surface belays the real message, the unfolding of the story from a void back to a void.

00:17 / 04.11.06

Is there no principle of three in the minor arcana?

Not really, the Major breaks into three rows of seven but the four suits (as Haloquin says) supplement them to make the deck five parted. I use the metaphor of the hand with the major arcana as the thumb (spirit or akasa or consciousness as you prefer), or the body and limbs with them at the head, or of course the pentagram (same thing really).

Sometimes I think of the structure of the deck as a pyramid with the four suits as the four base corners and the keys as the apex, which fits a lot of the four and square symbolism- like the minors are the foundation which the majors rest upon.

The court cards form a square, the numbered cards form sequences of ten often associated with the Sephiroth, the trumps are the only bit with triplicate structure.

01:03 / 04.11.06

The Cosmic Tribe Deck is queer-friendly (it does have three versions of The Lovers) but isn't particularly gender-fluid. The Knights are pretty remarkably manly men, the Princes are lovely boys/men, the Queens and Princesses are lushly female... no blurring of the binary, no Third.

19:26 / 04.11.06

I actually have a memory of it being at least partially gender-fluid... I know there was a deliberate attempt at depicting real human bodies, as opposed to just stereotypically/culturally considered sexy/beautiful... but I suppose it all depends on perception, if the cards depict physically male/female bodies, does that mean it isn't depicting someone who is third gendered? I probably took it from the context I was reading the cards in and what I know of the people depicted in the cards. I also, admittedly, can't picture the court cards, and they may well be very obviously physically related to traditional associations, I am thinking of the deck in general.

Sample pictures of Cosmic Tribe Tarot Here
These pictures, for example the fool and the magician, I don't find to be particularly strongly masculine as opposed to queer or feminine, even though they are physically male, and this seems to me to indicate a leaning toward gender-fluidity. Or am I just using the term in a vaguer way?

Apologies if this is heading off topic, or is inappropriate for this thread.

15:35 / 05.11.06

Somehow, I don't think of barely post-pubescent male as gender-neutral...

There's a wide variety of female body types depicted, but notsomuch with the males. Those pics seem to fall into the category of either lean boything (The Magician, Fool, Prince and Knight of Disks) or lean but well-muscled studly thing (The Hermit, Sun, Knight of Swords, Three of Wands).

(I love the deck (it is my primary divination tool), but I do wish there were male counterparts to the Ten of Disks, the Queen and Princess of Disks. Other things on my wish-list for that deck, as well, but that's a different topic...)

20:14 / 05.11.06

If I'm not mistaken, the human images are actually from photos - perhaps the pool of models they were pulling from didn't happen to have as wide a variety of male body types?

--Ember--

14:49 / 10.11.06

I don't think that's the case; I think it's much much more likely that Mr. Postman just has a type. If I make it down the peninsula (or you venture into my 7x7 bit of paradise) I can show you the deck if you haven't seen it...

[/rot]

Anybody care to comment on Crowley's re-assignment of suit and seat: Princesses being Earth, Princes being Air, Queens being Water, and Knights being Fire?

17:47 / 10.11.06

I've seen it, if it's the one I think it is. Friends-of-Friends were models for it.

The deck isn't to my tastes for Tarot readings, but I love it as art.

--Ember--