Exploring the Minor Arcana through Astrology, Part 3
Now that we’ve covered the pips (2–10) of each suit in the minor arcana, it’s time to turn to the court cards and the Aces to see how they represent different periods of time in the zodiacal wheel and how you can use astrology to understand them better (or use tarot to understand astrology better).
It’s been a while since Parts 2A and 2B of this series, so you may want to refresh yourself on where we’ve been going with this look into how you can map the minor arcana of tarot onto 10º segments (decans) of the astrological wheel ruled by one of the sacred seven traditional planets/luminaries. Heck, if you want to start back at the first post in the series where I go over the general matching of pips to zodiac signs, I wouldn’t blame you.
This is the third in what is probably a four-part series on incorporating astrology into tarot as a way of better understanding the minor arcana or at least adding more nuance to whatever you traditionally associate with those cards. As a reminder, this is my synthesis and take based on books and podcasts from which I’ve learned, not something unique to me (you can find a couple of links in the first post in the series). The decan system is hundreds and hundreds of years old, and the decanic minor system is at least a hundred years old since it is part of the Golden Dawn’s Book T from 1888 or so.
The court cards and Aces are not as clearly defined and neat as the pips were, but it is maybe even neater in the interesting and fun sense.
Mapping (Most of) the Court Cards to Decans
To start with, we will look at the court cards, which sounds simple, but Thoth and Waite systems use different court card titles, and that creates a bit of a problem. The problem is that the Waite system has a hierarchy of the Page, the Knight on horseback, the Queen, and the seated King. Then in the Thoth system, we have a hierarchy of the Princess, the seated Prince, the Queen, and the Knight on horseback. This difference in titles doesn’t matter except when you’re trying to map one system onto both deck families, such as elemental attributions or astrology. I’ll be using the Thoth titles because they’re better established, but in case you’re curious about my thoughts on the mapping issue, here you go (if you don’t care, skip ahead to where it’s not indented):
I like the elements and the Golden Dawn system (from which both the Waite and the Thoth decks derive), so I think of the courts first in terms of their elements. The Princess/Page is the “Earth of …” her suit’s element. The Prince is the “Air of …” his suit’s element. The Queen is the “Water of …” her suit’s element. And the (Thoth) Knight is the “Fire of …” his suit’s element. Because I see Waite’s Kings as more tied to Air and the intellect than Fire and passion, and I see Waite’s Knights as more tied to Fire and passion than Air and the intellect, I map Waite’s Kings onto Princes and the Knights remain Knights. This switches the hierarchy of the elements so that Air is the ruler rather than Fire, but I really don’t care about Waite’s hierarchy in the first place, so it doesn’t bother me.
However, plenty of other people (maybe even most), including two of my favorite tarot teachers—T. Susan Chang and Benebell Wen (at least in her Spirit Keeper’s Tarot)—take Waite’s King to be Fire and thus comparable to Thoth’s Knight and Waite’s Knight to be Air and thus comparable to Thoth’s Prince. Does it matter? Not really. I think that there’s a lot of support for my interpretation, which is why I use it. And certainly if you look at the Smith-Waite imagery of the Pentacles court cards, you’ll see that (the King is seated on a throne with bulls, sign of Taurus, while the Knight is riding through a field of what could be corn, which is often tied to Virgo). But you’ll see some ambiguity in the Smith-Waite Cups, and there is full-on confusion in the Swords and Wands.
As I’ve said before (and many people have said before me), just stick with a system that makes sense to you.
The way that it works is that the Prince (or King), Queen, and Knight all represent a 30º segment of the zodiacal wheel, just like the zodiac signs! Except not. The courts are all shifted by a decan (10º) so that 20º is in one sign, and 10º is in another. This creates some overlap and complexity, and the idea of the “shadow decan” is my favorite example of this, which I’ll explain a little more later. (I don’t know who came up with it—probably Austin Coppock—but I learned about it from T. Susan Chang and M. M. Meleen while listening to their Fortune’s Wheelhouse podcast.)
The nice thing is that there is a clear pattern that uses astrological element and modality. Again, I’m using Thoth titles because there is no ambiguity in their attributions.
Queens all take their 20º segment from the cardinal sign of their suit’s element, so the Queen of Cups has 20º in Cancer, the Queen of Disks/Pentacles has 20º in Capricorn, and so on.
Princes all take their 20º segment from the fixed sign of their suit’s element, so the Prince of Swords has 20º in Aquarius, the Prince of Wands has 20º in Leo, and so on.
Knights all take their 20º segment from the mutable sign of their suit’s element, so the Knight of Cups has 20º in Pisces, the Knight of Wands has 20º in Sagittarius, and so on.
(Princesses/Pages have a different thing going on, which I describe later.)
Which 20º do they take? They take the first 20º slice, so the Queen of Cups has the first two decans of Cancer, the Prince of Swords has the first two decans of Aquarius, and the Knight of Wands has the first two decans of Sagittarius.
So what happens to the other 10º? Well, each court card takes the 10º before their elementally related 20º. So the Queen of Cups has the final decan of Gemini (Gemini III) as well as the first two decans of Cancer (Cancer I & II), and so on.
Here’s the full list in astrological order, starting with the first decan of Aries.
Queen of Wands: Pisces III and Aries I & II
Prince of Disks: Aries III and Taurus I & II
Knight of Swords: Taurus III and Gemini I & II
Queen of Cups: Gemini III and Cancer I & II
Prince of Wands: Cancer III and Leo I & II
Knight of Disks: Leo III and Virgo I & II
Queen of Swords: Virgo III and Libra I & II
Prince of Cups: Libra III and Scorpio I & II
Knight of Wands: Scorpio III and Sagittarius I & II
Queen of Disks: Sagittarius III and Capricorn I & II
Prince of Swords: Capricorn III and Aquarius I & II
Knight of Cups: Aquarius III and Pisces I & II
So how does knowing this help you with tarot? Well, you can use these court cards to identify time periods, just as you can use the minor pip cards and some of the major arcana, so there are actually very few cards in a tarot deck that don’t have a time period associated with them. And since the court cards are often used as significators, you can also use them to choose a more precise birthday-based court card as your significator. For example, a late Leo birthday would point to the Knight of Disks as a potential significator, something that a fire native is unlikely to consider “theirs” in terms of birthdays.
But more fun than that is to map the decanic minors to the court cards. What?! I know. It’s the best. The Queens all get the 10 of one suit and the 2 & 3 of their own suit. The Princes get the 4 of one suit and the 5 & 6 of their own suit. And the Knights get the 7 of one suit and the 8 & 9 of their own suit.
A lot of folks struggle with interpreting court cards, so this is actually a really handy tool for coming to understand at least the Princes, Queens, and Knights better.
A great example of this comes from the idea of the Queen of Swords as the widow and the story that you can read in her decanic minors. (Again, I learned this from T. Susan Chang, but I don’t know if it originated elsewhere.) The Queen of Swords’s decans are Virgo III and Libra I & II, so she has the 10 of Pentacles, 2 of Swords, and 3 of Swords. She has the inheritance and legacy of the family, then she has the legal paperwork and the time alone, and finally the heartache hits.
But you can also look at the decans as aspects of each court card's personality, with the out-of-suit card as a “shadow” or an aspect that they have to overcome. The Princes all are tied (mostly) to fixed signs, so they have opposition and eventual success in the 5s and 6s, but there’s this initial and sometimes lingering issue of actually getting going, which is the downfall of the stability often seen in the 4s.
I’ve mentioned M. M. Meleen’s Tabula Mundi Tarot before because Mel (the deck’s creator) explicitly brings the astrological overlap into her cards. She drew some of the minor arcana imagery in each minor pip card from its astrologically related major arcana. For example, the 6 of Disks (Moon in Taurus) incorporates the pomegranates of the Priestess (Moon) and the keys of the Hierophant (Taurus). It’s genius. So of course she does a similar, though more subtle, thing where she incorporates the relevant minor arcana into each court card. The Knight of Disks is illustrated according to the Golden Dawn’s Book T (where all the court cards are described), but then she includes iconography from the relevant minors: the 7 of Wands (Leo III), the 8 of Disks (Virgo I), and the 9 of Disks (Virgo II). It’s added genius.
I’m not going to go through interpretations of all twelve of the cards since you now have two different tactics for learning more about them, but I will say that you can break each of the court cards down into not only three minor arcana but also five major arcana since those five majors feed into the three minors. (See Part 2A of this series for the planet and sign breakdown of each of the minor arcana.)
Now for those Princesses and Pages
This can be a little more challenging. The Golden Dawn treated them differently and as ruling over space rather than time (I don’t really know what that means because I don’t use that system, but there are resources for mapping suits to geographic regions, which you could explore). This makes sense from the elemental view of them as “Earth of …” their respective suits.
The two most common ways of interpreting the Pages or Princesses that I have seen both assign a quarter (90º) of the zodiacal wheel to each one. And since they are “Earth of …”, they make great anchors with one elementally relevant sign and two other signs making up the 90º segment. In one system, you have the Princess or Page anchored at the cardinal sign of her element since she is starting things, so the Princess of Wands would be anchored in Aries. She would then also take up either the sign before and after the cardinal sign or the two signs following that cardinal sign, aligning her with a season. In this case, the Princess of Wands would be aligned to the spring because Aries starts the spring season (in the northern hemisphere).
The other approach that I have seen, and I like this one better, is to have the Princess anchored at the fixed sign of her element, complementing the Prince. In this case, the Princess can still take either the signs after her elemental sign (e.g., Princess of Wands is Leo, Virgo, and Libra), or she can take the signs on either side of her sign (e.g., Princess of Wands is Cancer, Leo, and Virgo). This latter option gives her a season anchored to her element, so the Princess of Wands is tied to summer, which makes sense since it’s fiery. This doesn’t work as well for Swords, which is tied to winter, since air is alchemically hot and wet (and winter is not), but I think the system makes more sense. Fixed signs feel more in line with the anchoring of Earth than cardinal signs do.
So in my preferred system, the Princess of Disks is the springtime (Aries, Taurus, and Gemini), the Princess of Wands is the summer (Cancer, Leo, and Virgo), the Princess of Cups is the autumn (Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius), and the Princess of Swords is the winter (Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces). Timing-wise, that would be fairly easy to interpret.
But in terms of deeper interpretation, that makes the Princesses even messier than the other court cards. You could just see her story as that of the three signs with which she’s associated (Aries, Taurus, and Gemini). But it could also mean that the Princess of Disks holds the full potential of the cards related to Aries, Taurus, and Gemini. To put that in perspective, you would be looking at the Emperor (Aries), the Hierophant (Taurus), and the Lovers (Gemini). You would then be looking at the nine pip cards of the minor arcana related to that 90º segment: the 2–4 of Wands, the 5–7 of Disks, and the 8–10 of Swords. And then you could also look at the court cards associated with those three signs: Queen of Wands, Prince of Disks, Knight of Swords, and (for the final decan) Queen of Cups. That’s a lot to work with.
Play around with what you think is most interesting and meaningful to see what makes the most sense to you. You may find that having such a broad range as that 90º segment makes it a little harder to use these attributions with much meaning (I think that’s why you see fewer people talk about them), but at least give it a whirl and see what you come up with. And you can always use the astrological components just for timing.
What’s left to the minors? Aces.
The final cards in the minor arcana would then be the Aces. I’ve seen charts where the Aces align perfectly with the Princesses/Pages. That seems unhelpful. No other card overlaps that way, so the Aces and Pages/Princesses shouldn’t either, even if they both represent initiatory energies and have some overlapping meanings. You could solve this by just shifting their 90º segments. If you have the Princess starting at a cardinal sign, then your Ace of Disks might instead anchor at the cardinal sign (Capricorn) and start with the previous sign (Sagittarius), which would create 90º segments that start at the mutable signs instead of the cardinal signs.
That still isn’t that interesting to me or sensible considering what the Aces mean. I think that problem comes from trying to create a meaningful 90º segment, as opposed to being open to non-consecutive 30º segments. Aces are the essence of the element, the promise of that element coming into being. You could say that they’re the pure form of the element. So why not let them represent the three signs of their element? The Ace of Wands could be tied to the three fire signs: Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius. Where it begins or ends doesn’t matter because it’s the promise of fire, and those card are fire. Including any other sign would seem to be a distraction.
In this way, the Ace has the same problem that the Princesses/Pages do: there are a lot of related cards. The Ace of Wands’ association with Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius means that there are three majors, nine pip cards, and, if you find them useful, a handful of court cards (six instead of four because of the nonconsecutive ordering). Unlike the Princesses, however, you have all of the cards relating back to the critical element of the Ace. Those three majors and nine pip cards are all fiery, and then you have the whole Wands court plus some friends. You can use those extra court cards to complicate the Ace, or you can just ignore them and say that the Ace of Wands is all fire all the time. What “fire” means is already pretty complex thanks to all of those other cards.
Final Thoughts on these Attributions
As you can see, it gets a little complicated, and working with this system and the court cards will yield plenty of insights. (I’m planning to write more eventually on how to read the court cards, but this is actually the most useful exercise I’ve found.) Whether you choose to include the Pages/Princesses and Aces is up to you, but this is more advanced tarot, and you’ll need to be willing to experiment as you go. But once you’ve experimented with your options, just stick to something and let your intentions be clear. They will work out if you’re confident in them and clear in both what you think they usually mean and how they could be speaking to you in different ways.
A fun way to explore how these work is to start laying out your birth chart in terms of tarot cards. You can find the decan for each of your planets (I would stick to the sacred seven) and, if you know them, your rising sign and midheaven. This helps you to see the complexity of your own astrological chart, which is a nice reminder that you’re a complex and multifaceted person, especially if you’ve been living mostly with thinking of yourself in terms of your sun sign. It might also help you see a new, very personal way of reading those seven (or nine) minor arcana.
Then you layer in the court cards! Such excitement. But seriously, they will help you to bring the court cards to life, and you’ll actually gain a lot of personal wisdom about these often tricky figures. You can even bring in the major arcana and the Princessess/Pages and Aces. You may find that you have a good chunk of the deck within your chart.
Ready to get to know the Court Cards more deeply?
Sign up for my course, Awaken the Court Cards, or get the comprehensive and fun companion workbook, Awaken the Court Cards: A workbook to bring the court cards to life.