Traveling with the Tarot Knights
I’ve been having fun writing about numbers and ranks in tarot recently. This week feels like time to explore the Knights!
The Court cards can be confusing because of their versatility; each one can mean so many things. This is especially true of the Pages and the Knights.
Traditionally, Pages are feminine, and Knights are masculine. This has never proved true for me in my readings, so I prefer a deck where the Pages and Knights are fairly androgenous-looking. Intuitively I may see a Page or Knight with a gender in a specific reading. In another reading, the same card may appear as a different gender to me. Of course, on these sorts of reding techniques and interpretations, your mileage may vary.
There are some tarotists who assign to the tarot Knights a sense of courtly honor, like Arthurian Knights of the Round Table. That has never resonated with me but might be something to consider.
Like the Pages, Knights can be young people, or can give you a directive, or make a prediction.
Keywords to associate with the rank of Knight include travel, pursuit, goals, motion. So, a Knight might be a young person who is goal oriented. A Knight might be a person of any age who is single-mindedly pursuing a goal. A Knight might encourage you to pursue a goal.
The sort of goal, of course, is determined by the suit. The Knight of Swords might be pursuing truth, writing, knowledge, communication, or technology. The Knight of Wands might be pursuing fun, creativity, humor, athleticism or spirituality. The Knight of Cups might be pursuing love and romance. The Knight of Pentacles might be pursuing work and money.
Knights can also predict or encourage travel. The type of travel is denoted by the suit. The Knight of Swords might be a trip to learn something or discover something. The Knight of Wands might be a trip for fun, or to a concert or sporting event. The Knight of Cups might be a romantic vacation. The Knight of Pentacles would be travel for business.
One of the ways the pandemic has appeared in the cards of clients is a lot of reversed Knights, indicating cancelled trips, and no ability to travel at the moment.
Two of the Knights can have a special job of indicating timing, that is, how fast something will happen, or how quickly you should move to make something happen. The Knight of Swords is about swiftness, while the Knight of Pentacles indicates a slow pace.
When Pages and Knights appear together, they may talk about a sibling group, with the Knights likely to be the older siblings.
Very often, the Knights appear to tell us to get off our butts and get moving. They can be a gentle or not-so-gentle nudge from the Universe to move forward toward our goals. They are also a constant reminder that life is a journey. Given their particular messages, they can evoke some of the same emotions and information as the Fool and the Chariot.
