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Tarot Court Cards / Figuras de la corte
Four people appear in each suit, and it can be tempting to ask immediately, “Who is this?” Try a smaller question first: what is this figure doing? Learning the court cards begins with recognizing their names, noticing their differences, and giving an interpretation room to remain a possibility.
Meet the ranks
In A. E. Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the court ranks are Page, Knight, Queen, and King. You will commonly meet the Spanish names Sota, Caballero, Reina, Rey; copy the wording printed on your own deck. Across Waite’s four suits—Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles—these make sixteen court cards. They belong to the Minor Arcana, not the separate Major Arcana sequence.[2]
The title and suit matter together. A Knight of Cups and a Knight of Pentacles share a rank, but that does not give them identical entries in a guidebook. Decks can use different titles and structures. Check the creator’s explanation instead of forcing an unfamiliar court into a chart from another system.
History has more than one pattern
Curator Tim Husband describes fifteenth-century Italian tarot with four face cards in each suit: king, queen, knight, and knave. These belonged to playing decks, not to a single ancient personality system. He also notes an important exception: the older Visconti Tarot has as many as six court figures per suit, with male and female figures across the ranks. The surviving cards complicate any claim that tarot has always followed one unchanging pattern.[1]
Our illustration is an original imagined court-card study. It is not a reproduction of the Visconti cards or a historical deck.
One suit, four different entries
The examples below paraphrase selected upright meanings from Waite’s Pentacles entries in Part III, §2. They are a small sample of his recorded interpretations, not a complete reading key. The questions in the last column are our original suggestions.[2]
| Rank in Pentacles | Waite’s historical associations | Our reflective question |
|---|---|---|
| Page / Sota | Learning and sustained application | What skill could I patiently practice? |
| Knight / Caballero | Practical usefulness and responsibility | Which commitment needs follow-through? |
| Queen / Reina | Abundance, generosity, and security | What can I care for or share within my limits? |
| King / Rey | Applied intelligence and business aptitude | What needs a thoughtful plan? |
These are not four compulsory stages of spiritual progress. You can explore any question regardless of your age or gender. Waite’s text also contains appearance-based descriptions and dated judgments; studying a historical source does not require using those descriptions to label living people.
Original shop practice: a court-card comparison
Allow ten quiet minutes. Use a deck you already own, its guidebook, and a notebook. This is a learning exercise, not a predictive spread. If you have no deck, use the four rank names as notebook headings and work only with the questions above.
- Choose one suit deliberately. Find its four court cards. Keep them upright so you can focus on one distinction at a time.
- Record the names. Note the deck, artist, and guidebook author when known. Leave unknown details marked “unknown.”
- Compare one feature. Look at posture, movement, or how each figure holds the suit object. Write only what you can see before interpreting it.
- Consult the guidebook. Put one brief paraphrase beside each card with its page number. Keep these notes separate from your observations.
- Choose one question. Use a question from our table or write your own about an action you control. Answer with a small, realistic next step—not a claim about somebody else.
- Finish without ranking yourself. You do not need to “become the King.” Date the entry and return the cards to their box.
A purple pencil is our optional color suggestion for personal notes, not a traditional court-card correspondence. Keep cards dry and away from oils, smoke, heat, and flame. No ingestion or skin application is involved. Ask consent before discussing another person’s life, and do not treat a court figure as evidence of their identity, motives, or trustworthiness.
Journal prompt
Which difference did the artwork show, which came from the author, and which did I bring to the cards myself?
Sources & further reading
- Tim Husband, “Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot Cards” — The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2016)Curatorial discussion of early tarot and variations in court-card structure.
- A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part III, §§1–2Primary text: court ranks and the four Pentacles court entries. Historical divinatory claims are not established facts.
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