The court cards: people and roles

Lesson 4 of 12 — the Arcana cartomancy guide

Jacks, Queens and Kings are the people in your reading, and the parts of you that behave like them.

Key points

• Jacks are the young, the messengers, the friends and peers; Queens the nurturers, organizers and connectors; Kings the authorities, providers and judges.
• The suit gives each court its temperament: warm Hearts, capable Clubs, sociable Diamonds, formidable Spades.
• The old books assigned hair color by suit, fair for Hearts and Diamonds and dark for Clubs and Spades; read the role, not the hair.
• A court card between two cards of its own suit is a person at the center of the matter.
• A court card can also be you, in the role the reading needs you to play.

Twelve of the fifty-two cards are people. Jacks are the youngest: children, young adults, messengers, friends on your level, and anyone whose role is to bring news or energy rather than to decide. Queens are mature and capable: the nurturer of Hearts, the manager of Clubs, the socialite of Diamonds, the survivor of Spades. Kings are authority: the protector of Hearts, the adviser of Clubs, the magnate of Diamonds, the official of Spades.

Older manuals matched each suit to a complexion, so that the King of Hearts was a fair man and the Queen of Spades a dark widow. We keep those notes in each card’s page for the record and recommend you set them aside. A role describes a person far better than hair does. Ask instead: who in my life is warm and protective, who runs things, who knows everyone, who has survived something and says what they think.

Court cards also describe you. The Queen of Clubs in your own position is your competence; the Jack of Spades is your guardedness. And when a court card lands between two cards of its own suit, the tradition reads that person as central to the whole matter. Some readers go further and choose a court card for the person asking before the reading begins, a significator; in Arcana that is optional and off by default.

Practice

Lay out the twelve court cards and assign each one to a real person in your life. Note which ones you could not place; those roles may be missing, or they may be yours.