AUTHOR’S NOTE: One of the more confounding events facing the less-experienced tarot reader is the appearance of numerous court cards in a spread, particularly if the novice is unsure whether they stand for other people involved in the matter; personal attitudes and behaviors that should either be adopted or avoided; or impersonal and universal forces entering the situation. I’ve written about this subject before, but reading Benebell Wen’s Holistic Tarot has brought it up once again.

Many authors (most notably Arthur Edward Waite) have tried to come up with qualitative distinctions when two or more cards of the same rank are present in a reading, but I’ve never found their efforts especially convincing. They adopt jarring shifts in focus that are frequently all over the place and aren’t consistent in concept or step-wise advancement across the population. I can’t see why three of a specific category should be different from two in anything other than degree (and, of course, elemental dynamics). Why should two Queens, regardless of suit, signify “sincere friends” and three Queens “deception by women,” when they could simply be “several friends” even after allowing for intrigue? Why should two Sixes convey “irritability” but suddenly turn into “success” with three of them in attendance or “abundance” with four? The linear progression does not seem to be well-thought-out, making for dubious applicability that defies reason.

In my own practice I give first consideration to the notion of a “crowded house,” with a number of individuals or a range of competing thoughts and feelings jostling for attention within the querent’s circumstances. When the experience isn’t strictly psychological, I usually see it as evidence of social, or at least interpersonal, contacts that can bring several agendas into play, at best cooperative but at other times quite adversarial (for example, when there are several applicants for a job posting or promotion). The level of maturity expressed by the different cards can have a lot to say about the nature of the interaction: Pages are typically the most immature and unstable, while Queens and Kings are (at least on paper) the most grown-up and steadfast. The Knights are something of a “wild card” that can be prone to “run-and-gun.”

I get a lot of mileage out of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn’s idea of the “powers” of the sixteen court cards (which I believe was the brainchild of Order member Harriet Felkin):

The four Pages (Golden Dawn Princesses) were assigned the role of “Reception and Transmission,” which probably gave rise to the common definition of “messages” while also reinforcing the image of a Medieval herald or court “runner;”

The four Knights (Golden Dawn Princes, at one time called “Kings”) represent “Power in Action,” which is understandable as a “bold stroke” emblematic of the suit: impulsive, effusive, incisive or utilitarian;

The four Queens were accorded the characteristic of “Brooding Power,” which I’ve reinterpreted as the “Power of Contemplation and Concentration” since it carries less negative mental/emotional “baggage;”

The four Kings (Golden Dawn Knights that were also once called “Kings” to deepen the confusion) were titled “Potential Power,” another non-intuitive descriptor that I’ve changed to the “Power of Restraint in Action,” in the sense that the Kings have absolute authority to exercise discretion by staying their hand when they might readily punish without compunction or compassion.

If I could choose a court-card preponderance to receive in a spread when reading for myself, it would be multiple Queens since they would hopefully deliver a profound emphasis on patience, circumspection and perhaps even tolerance as long as I don’t offend then in some way, causing them to close ranks and freeze me out. (Not every feminine threesome is going to be the “Witches of Eastwick” or Shakespeare’s “Weird Sisters;” sometimes they will merely channel the 3 of Cups.) On the other hand, when reading for others I let my clients tell me what a group of court cards signifies to them within the context of the question after informing them of the fundamentals. Then we can sort it out together.

Another interesting aside is the Golden Dawn’s proposal that the horse-mounted Kings in a spread (a stature later transferred to the upgraded Knights) can indicate when someone or something is likely to arrive or depart in the querent’s life, depending on whether the figures are facing “upstream” (toward the beginning of the spread) to show an “incoming” influence, or “downstream” (toward the end of the spread) to describe an “outgoing” one. We could say that a left-facing Knight welcomes the arriving impact and a right-facing one usherers out its departure. This would seem to be a useful indicator in romantic readings, and I believe the same role could be extended to the RWS Knights that align with the Golden Dawn Princes since the seated RWS Kings don’t really satisfy the interactive premise, rendering only a negligent hand-wave without enthusiastic engagement.