Tarot Journey with Leisa ReFalo

Court cards can represent your personality, someone close to you and situations you find yourself in. Usually they describe all three at once.
The knight sits on a white (spirit) horse. He is holding a golden cup in one hand. His armor (Mars) is covered in fish (water). His helmet has wings (mercury) on it. There is a desert in the background. A stream (emotions) runs through it and there are cliffs (limitations, boundaries) in the background.

The Knight is emotional support in action. He is like the King of Cups. He is concerned with providing emotional support but he is much more active. He is traveling to people to help them out, helping them find their emotional home.

The Pictorial Key to the Tarot by Arthur Edward Waite (1911)

Graceful, but not warlike; riding quietly, wearing a winged helmet, referring to those higher graces of the imagination which sometimes characterize this card. He too is a dreamer, but the images of the side of sense haunt him in his vision. Divinatory Meanings: Arrival, approach–sometimes that of a messenger; advances, proposition, demeanour, invitation, incitement. Reversed: Trickery, artifice, subtlety, swindling, duplicity, fraud.

4 Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana

Knight.–A visit from a friend, who will bring unexpected money to the Querent. Reversed: Irregularity.

The Recurrence of Cards in Dealing

In the Natural Position: 4 Knights = serious matters; 3 Knights = lively debate; 2 Knights = intimacy.
Reversed: 4 Knights = alliance 3 Knights = a duel, or personal encounter; 2 Knights = susceptibility.

The Tarot of the Bohemians by Papus; tr. A. P Morton, [1896]
Signification of the Four Series of Minor Arcana in the Divining Tarot

CUPS. Preservation. Love. Instruction.

KNIGHT OF CUPS. A young fair man, a friend. The young man loved. The Lover.

The Tarot by S.L. MacGregor Mathers [1888]

Meanings of the Cards

38. Knight of Cups.–Arrival, Approach, Advance; R. Duplicity, Abuse of Confidence, Fraud, Cunning.

Additional Remarks

The following additional remarks may be serviceable to the to the inexperienced Cartomancer. They are chiefly taken from Etteilla.

38. The Knight of Cups.–This shows the arrival of the card which follows it, as 38, 54, the arrival of affliction or grief; 38, 39, the visit of a fair young man, etc.

The Court-Cards, and especially the Kings and Queens, may be taken to represent persons; in this case their additional meaning should not be read. The Swords represent very dark people; Pentacles, those not so dark; Cups, rather fair people; Wands or Sceptres, those much fairer, and so on. Many Wands together might signify feasting, many Cups lovemaking, Swords quarrelling and trouble, Coins or Pentacles money.

Where the mode of reading the cards requires that the person consulting should be represented, he should take one of the Kings to represent himself, according to his complexion. If a lady consults the cards, let her take one of the Queens; if she be rather fair, the Queen of Cups; if she be very fair, the Queen of Wands or Sceptres. If the inquirer be quite a youth or a boy, let him take one of the Knights; if a very young girl, let her take the Knave, etc. Etteilla’s plan was to take two of the Keys for Significators, that answering to the Pope for a man, that answering to the High Priestess for a woman; but I do not think this is so well. The worst of Etteilla’s system is that he so completely destroys the meanings of the Keys in his attempted rearrangement of them, as to make them practically useless for higher occult purposes.

Book "T" The Tarot

The Four Kings

THE Four Kings, or "Figures mounted on steeds," represent the Yodh forces of the Name in each Suit: the Radix, Father and commencement of Material Forces, a force in which all the others are implied, and of which they form the development and completion. A force swift and violent in its action, but whose effect soon passes away, and therefore symbolized by a Figure on a Steed riding swiftly, and clothed in complete Armour.

Therefore is the knowledge of the scale of the King so necessary for the commencement of all magical working.

IX. The Lord of the Waves and the Waters; The King of the Hosts of the Sea: Knight of Cups

A BEAUTIFUL, winged, youthful Warrior with flying hair, riding upon a white horse, which latter is not winged. His general equipment is similar to that of the Knight of Wands, but upon his helmet, cuirass and buskins is a peacock with opened wings. He holds a cup in his hand, bearing the sigil of the scale. Beneath his horse’s feet is the sea. From the cup issues a crab.

Graceful, poetic, Venusian, indolent, but enthusiastic if roused.
Ill dignified, he is sensual, idle and untruthful.
He rules the heavens from above 20 Degree of Aquarius to 20 Degree of Pisces, thus including the greater part of Pegasus.

• Fire of Water
• King of Undines and Nymphs.

Often the General signification of the Majority of a particular suit and of the particular signification of the either 3 of 4 cards of a sort in a reading:

• A Majority of Cups Pleasure, merriment.
• A Majority of Court Cards Society, meetings of many persons.
• 4 Kings (Knights) Swiftness, rapidity.
• 3 Kings (Knights) Unexpected meetings. Knights, in general, shew news.