Lots of Knights…

I’ve gone through what every individual card means in this blog, now I am going through what clusters of cards mean… What does it mean if you have lots of knights in your reading? Again, I have to put in the caveat that the court cards are amongst the most complex of the tarot cards and need sensitive interpretation.

You put the knight cards in front of you and the first thing you see is a lot of young men on horses. There is an adolescent intensity here, a rushing towards something, a yearning. In their youth, they are not jaded or cynical, but rather they believe in their causes fiercely, and are willing to fight for their beliefs. And the most important thing the Knight needs to know, with all his action and his feelings – is he riding in the right direction?


The Knight of pentacles is stuck, needing movement, the knight of cups, also known as the seeker of hearts, is more deliberate, and often looking for love. The knight of wands is all energy but often not enough planning and the knight of swords is storming forth with anger and impatience. And all 4 are hoping to make it to Death, the other horseman in the tarot deck, who is riding in the right direction and is all about transformational change.

The Court Cards

Before we start with the specifics of the Court Wands, I just want to have a little blurb about the Court Cards in general. The court cards are us and our family or the important people in our lives – the youth, the brother/sister and the mother/father. Or the child, teen and adult, or the aspects of ourselves that need to grow or are all grown up.

I often find the court cards are more complex to read than other cards. Who are they and what do they mean for the querent? (you!) The way I read the cards, most cards represent an aspect of you, but the court cards are the most obvious cards to refer to someone else. If we see the King of Cups hovering on the possible outcome cards, we are talking about an adult, a lover who is around but not quite there yet, and we spend the rest of the reading figuring out how to draw him in. If you are a Queen and your partner is a Page, there is an obvious disparity in power and maturity and needs to be looked at. I find a wealth of information in the court cards, where they fall, who they are next to, how many of them are in the reading. They are not the easiest cards to summarize here, because they can mean so many things.

The many faces of the suits

The playing cards we are so familiar with have a clear relationship with the Minor Arcana. As the picture above shows, modern cards have a relationship with the Tarot suits. The suits are divided into 4 groups - wands, cups, swords and pentacles, though there is certainly plenty of variation on those themes. In the Inner Child Cards that I also use, the 4 suites are wands, hearts, swords and crystals.

The four major groups hold 4 distinct energies.


Wands are fire, energy, ambition, initiative, creativity, passion
(wands can also be represented by sticks, batons, staves, rods etc)


Cups are water, emotions, intuition, love, empathy, the Holy Grail
(cups can also be represented by hearts, harps, flowers, esp roses, chalices, etc)


Swords are air, intellectual, sharp, cutting through illusions, objectivity, Truth
(Swords somehow are the most common suit, rarely changing. I guess swords are such a definitive image!)


Pentacles are earth, work, coins/material possessions, security, comfort.
(pentacles can also be represented by coins, stars, crystals, discs, bells, etc)

Each suit goes from Ace to ten, and then has 4 court cards - the page, knight, queen and king. And of course, there are many variations on those themes as well (from princesses to mermaids…) Court Cards can also be referred to as sister, brother, mother, father – which can explain a lot!