Learn the Court Cards with Patterns

The court cards can be tricky to learn and really connect with because the card imagery doesn’t always tell a story, and there are so many dimensions to what a court card can mean.

When I see multiple court cards in a spread I like to look for patterns in the way that they’re laid out. I like to see where they are in relation to the heart of the question. But first you need to learn to see the court cards in patterns. To do that I use this exercise.

Court Card Matrix

Pull out the court cards from your deck and shuffle them.

Focus on a question or an event/situation that you wish to read about. As this is just a practice exercise, you don’t have to choose anything too specific.

Lay them out in rows of 4 in front of you.

Gaze over the cards and see if you keep going back to one particular card. If you are not a visual person, but are more linked to energy through touch, you can run your hands over the cards to see which cards you feel the strongest sensation from. If you are an auditory person, you can also imagine the layout of the cards in your head while humming a song. Where the humming seems off key would be the card (s) that are of greatest focus for you.

Once you have found your card, look to see where each of the other sets of court card lie.

• Do you have multiple knights together?

• Multiple Queens?

• Where are they in relation to you?

• Are you in the center (center of attention)?

• Or are you on the outside looking in?

• What way is your court card facing?

Don’t think about the suits at this point, just focus on noticing the location of the cards. When you are looking at the court cards around you, think about the keywords for the courts:

• Kings: Creativity (building something, making things happen)

• Queens: Relationships(romantic or not, people coming together, working together, union)

• Knights: Conflict (problems, blockages)

• Pages: Transition (movement, change, messages)

Use these keywords to state out loud how the court cards are relating to you. For example, if you have 3 kings surrounding your card, you may be surrounded by creativity. If you have pages below you, you may have received begun the transition into something.

Go deep into this, notice if cards are in a diagonal line towards you, is energy moving towards you or away from you? Spend some time with the cards here to really notice patterns. What do they mean in relation to what you asked?

You should repeat this exercise often until you are more comfortable with the court cards.