One
view is that these are not separate people, but all aspects of the
Querent him/herself. Even the Queen if the Querent is a man or the
King if the Querent is a woman, is an aspect of the Querent
him/herself. In Jungian parlance, the King or the Knight represents
the animus or masculine side of the woman whilst the Queen
or Page/Princess represents the anima or feminine side of the man. The
age system that I use comes from the hermetic system of the Golden
Dawn. Kings start at age 40 and go up from there. Queens start at age
40 and go up. Truly is it said that in this system, life begins at
40. The four Knights start at 25 and go up to 39. The 4
Pages/Princesses start for both sexes at age 1 and and end at 24 for
men and 39 for women. There are alternative names for the court
cards. The 4 Kings are also known as the 4 Lords in certain decks.
The 4 Queens are also known as the 4 Ladies in certain decks. The 4
Knights are also known as the 4 Warriors or the 4 Princes in certain
decks (Book of Thoth is one example of a deck having the 4 Princes.)
Finally the 4 Pages, also known as the 4 Squires, the 4 Maidens, and
finally the 4 Princesses. Alternatively, any particular Tarot deck may
also have its own titles for the Court cards. Shall I give an
example? In the Pagan Tarot, the Elders occupy the spot of the kings.
For the Queens, you have the Initiates. For the Knights, you have the
Novices, and the four elementals for the Pages. In the Sensual Wicca
Tarot, you have the Sages for the Kings, the Mothers for the Queens,
the Acolytes for the Knights, and the Maidens for the Knaves or Pages.
By the way, the word knave comes from the German knabe which means
boy. Here at KEEN I use the Celtic wheel of the year time system, of
which there is more than one. I use two of them in concert. The first
one comes from the Ancestral Path Tarot by Tracy Hoover. It is the
Wheel of the Year, and it's one of the best Wheel of the Year Time
systems I've ever seen. The second one is just as good, although not
as elaborate. It comes from the Hallowquest book to the Arthurian
Tarot by John and Caitlin Matthews. Discussing the Ancestral Path Wheel of the year time system, . begins
in the Spring, Aries, Taurus, Gemini--Swords. There are three
headings under this Time Period, Tarot card, and Zodiac sign. For the
Princess of Swords we have May 24th to May 30th. Zodiac sign is
Gemini. For the Prince it's May 31st to June 6th. The sign is also
Gemini. For the Queen of Swords, it's June 7th to June 13th, also
Gemini. For the King of Swords, it's June 14th to June 20th, which
completes Gemini.
The Summer Staves, Cancer, Leo, Virgo. The Princess of Staves July
12th to July 18th Cancer, Prince July 5th to July 11th. Queen June
28th to July 4th Cancer King June 21st to June 28th Cancer. Next
season autumn/fall, Cups Princess of Cups November 23rd to November
29th. Prince of Cups Sign Sagittarius, November 30th to December 6th
Sagittarius, Queen of Cups, December 7th to December 13th also
Sagittarius. King of Cups from December 14th to December 20th
Sagittarius. Winter-Sacred Circles (Pentacles) (Capricorn, Aquarius,
Pisces) Princess of Sacred Circles January 11th to January 17th
Capricorn. Prince of Sacred Circles January 4th to January 10th
Capricorn. Queen of Sacred Circles December 28th to January 3rd
Capricorn. King of Sacred Circles December 21st December 27th
Capricorn. The HallowQuest book is more simplistic. The King of
Swords is Spring, King of Spears is Summer, King of Cups is Autumn/Fall
and the King of Stones rules Winter. The Queen of Swords rules June
13th to june 19th. The Knight of Swords June 6th to June 12th. The
Maiden rules May 30th to 5th of June. Spears Summer Queen of Spears
September 12th to September 18th, Knight September 5th to September
11th Spears, Maiden of Spears August 29th to September 4th. Queen of
Grails December 12th to December 18th Knight of Grails December 5th to
December 11th, and Maiden of Grails, November 28th to 4th of December.
Queen of Stones March 14th to March 20th, Knight of Stones: March 7th
to March 13th, Maiden of Stones February 28th to March 6th. Notice
how the 2 systems sometimes overlap. That should not be considered a
problem. It just indicates a kinship between the systems. Let's
discuss our buddy Donald Tyson in his Secrets of the Necronomicon, Each
court card has 2 elements, not just 1. King of Wands Fire of Fire.
Queen of Wands Water of Fire, Knight of Wands Air of Fire, Knave of
Wands: Earth of Fire. Cups King Fire of Water Queen of Cups is Water
of Water, Knight is Air of Water, and the Knave is Earth of Water.
Swords King Fire of Air, Queen Water of Air, Knight is Air of Air, the
Knave is Earth of Air. Disks King is Fire of Earth, Queen is Water of
Earth, Knight is Air of Earth, and Knave is Earth of Earth. This
system is both Hermetic Golden Dawn and Crowley. Fire Water Air and
Earth, IHVH, Tetragammaton.
Thus we can see that the court cards represent personalities in a
person's reading. The medieval interpretation would be that the Swords
represented the Warriors, the Cups represented the clergy or the
sacred, the Pentacles represented the merchant class, and the Wands or
Staves represented the peasant class. Because court cards are
personalities, they can represent family members, co-worker or boss, a
loved one, or as Tegwedd said in the beginning of the blog, yourself.
Alternatively, court cards don't have to be people at all. The four
maidens or pages, whenever they show up, represent new beginnings. New
beginnings in Water or Cups would be in love, or other emotional
issues. In Fire or Wands, Career, in Air or Swords revelation or new
ideas. In Earth or Pentacles, financial and health improvement. With
the Knights, messengers, in Cups, messengers of love. In Wands special
opportunities or enterprises. The Knight of Swords is a messenger of
information, or intrigue. For the King and Queen, important
influential people. To many people the court cards are an enigma.
They don't seem to understand that this can be resolved by simple
research. For one thing, the court cards represent the four scales of
colors. They also represent the 4 worlds of the realms of the the
Qabalah. From the top to the bottom, the Kings represent Atziluth, the
Queens Yetzirah, the Knights Briah and the Pages Assiah. The Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn assigned 2 angelic names to each court card.
In Faery Wicca, the court cards represent heroes of Celtic myth and
legend. As you can see, the court cards can have many more and deeper
significance than just people of the Querent's acquaintance. The court
cards play a pivotal role in the construction of the Tarot card deck.
They take on a centrist pose. Below are the numerous situations of the
pip cards. The 16 court cards reside within the center of the Tarot
tree structure. The tops are the 22 Trumps, the archetypes. A Pagan
point of view would be that the court cards are the people, the
Tuatha. The court cards then would be the heroes and heroines of the
myths and legends. The top part of the tree are the Gods and Goddesses
and nature spirits. When a personality card shows up, interpreted as a
human being at first, but then also interpreted as a situation or as a
method or solution to resolve an issue. Now I want to hear from all of
you. What areas in the uses of court cards in a reading have I missed?
Your opinions are valuable to me. All ego aside, I want to know your
thoughts on this topic. Well, I hope I didn't miss anything, but if I
did, please let me know.
And now, for the news: I have been asked to write a Pagan book on the Tarot, which I have titled The Tarot for Pagans. It will be an ebook,
which means that instead of a physical book, you buy a download of the
book, so that none of our precious trees have to die so that I can have
the egoboo of being a published author. Tegwedd has had 5 books
published this way, and she tells me that it is the coming thing. She
is now working on 5 WIPs (Works in Progress) at once. When she gets
stuck on one, she switches to another one and so on. Two of them
really have me excited. One is about vampires, and the other one is
about pirates, two subjects dear to my heart. In fact, she owns a copy
of the Pirates Tarot, a deck which I have been using to do readings for
you good people, but now that she is also reading for Keen, I'll
probably have to surrender it to her so that she can read with it. It
is her deck, after all. Back to my book, Tarot for Pagans. I have
decided to write it by committee, and to that end, Tegwedd and I
started a group by that name on Facebook. Join the group, and have a
hand in the book's creation. Anyone who contributes will get a mention
in the acknowledgements at the beginning of the book.
Tegwedd and I plan to do regular blogs on Keen, we're also looking to
expand Abbott's Inn International and are looking for capable staff to
help us in this enterprise. Our staff, in lieu of payment will receive
readings and classes by email for a year and a day. We need more paid
readings by email. $32. It's nearly November, and I haven't been able
to pay October's rent yet, because AT&T, SMUD and PG&E took my
whole October SSI check.
I had a big disappointment the other day. Altoids has discontinued my
favorite flavor: chocolate. You all know what a chocoholic I am. I go
though two to three bottles of chocolate syrup a month. How dare
Altoids take away my chocolate from me! The nerve of those people!
From Facebook, we go to Multiply, Hi5, our networks (of which there
soon will be 8) and MySpace, and Tribes.net. Twitter is next.
Covenspace, and Witchvox, if it has a blog or journal.
The new Ning network we want to create is Paganspawn.ning.com. What we
need for our networks is staff, bodies, perferably warm ones who engage
in internet activity. Blogs, graphics, technical help, new groups,
articles, forums, and the big one: music.
Utherverse and Second Life are alternatives to IMVU, in case you've
gotten sick of IMVU's draconian policies and Gestapo style tactics.
anybody guess what time it is? If you guessed sending out 5 free
minutes, you get a cookie, and we have cookies that Tegwedd baked in
the refrigerator! From now until Sunday. Everyone who is my client
will get 5 free minutes. For those of you who are sexy Pagans, I have
a site with two URLs. Both of these sites are located in Vancouver,
BC, Canada. I joined these sites when IMVU when IMVU turned rabid sex
and Pagan hating Christian Republican Puritans. The 1st site is
http://www.utherverse.com. The 2nd site is http://redlight.com. These
sites are not for the squeamish. This is a fun sexy site, full of
business, gratuitive sex, and very happy horny Pagans. If you enjoy
healthy adult entertainment, then these sites are for you.
People are still not rating Teiweth and me. Without ratings, we can't
advance in the KEEN system. It's that extra minute you take that means
so very much.
We need more Pagan links for the links section of the sites we're both
on. Teiweth doesn't do the sex site thing. IMVU soured her forever on
that sort of thing.
We have friends who we're promoting. He is an artist and composer of
note. She is an extremely capable tax preparer. They jointly run a
gallery, which showcases visual art by other artists in the area. The
artist's name is Walter T. Rhoads. The site is
http://www.rhoadsart.com. The site for the gallery is
http://www.gallery14.net. His wife, Julie Maahs, the tax preparer, has
a site too http://.your-taxes.com. We're going there tomorrow.
In parting, let me tell you about the powers of the four main books in
every Pagan/Witch's life: The BOS/Grimoire, the magickal diary, the
dream journal, and the divination journal. The BOS or Book of Shadows
is the book filled with rituals/spells that every Witch refers to. The
magickal diary is the lab notebook that tracks a Witch's experience in
performing those rituals/spells. The dream journal is the chronology
of a Witch's dreams/visions. The subconscious is very important to a
Witch, for it is here that all magick takes place. A Witch should make
friends with his or her subconscious, then it won't hold so many
terrors for him or her. Teiweth made friends with hers about 15 years
ago, and it is her chief tool in her writing. You don't have to spend
a lot of money on these books either, unless you have the money, and
want to spend it. It's far better to spend it on one of my readings
lol. For her BOS,Teiweth got a black looseleaf three ring binder. For
her magickal journal, she gets those marble covered composition books
that are on sale every August just before school starts. The magickal
journal is a sort of lab notebook. You would write down conditions
like the weather, sign the Moon is in, and other data, then write down
the feelings you had about the ritual/spell. The dream journal can
also be as simple or elaborate as you Will. Teiweth has been keeping
hers off and on for years. For herself, she happened to have a 3 ring
looseleaf binder, in which she placed about half a package of college
ruled notbook filler paper. You can also use wide ruled if your
writing is big and sloppy like mine is. She put one together for me,
too. If you want to remember your dreams, say to yourself in that
hypnagogic state as you're going to sleep, at least 4 times, "I will
remember my dreams." Teiweth reports that she always has hers just
before she wakes up in the morning about 7:30. You can spend money on
those blank books you can get at bookstores, or even Renaissance
fairs. The same goes for your divination journal. But why do it, if
you don't have to? The ancient Witches made magickal objects out of
found objects and supplies. Recycle, reuse, wear it out, that's what I
say.
I've been here for almost ten years and I can say that KEEN is getting
better and better all the time. Peace! Peace! Peace! Blessed Be,
Merry Meet,m Merry Part, and Merry Meet again.
AD(archdruid) Stephen6580