Matter and Spirit: Deconstructing the Court cards and our Solar Year

Part V of XVI, the Knight of Cups: Parzival’s Quest and the Rites of Spring

This is the story of Parzival’s great quest for happiness. He faces trials and moral perils, but after passing through the Rites of Spring, he spies ahead the Well at the World’s End. He has a vision of himself there where he can drink from the sacred spring, and achieve the Grail.

The tarot Knight of Cups rules the heavens from the last decan of Aquarius thru the first two decans of Pisces, or 21 degrees Aquarius thru around the 20th degree of Pisces. Pisces is a somewhat passive sign, and very watery. But this is a Knight, and all Knights are associated with the force of Fire. Fire of Water is a strange combination; you could call it the “Force of Form” which doesn’t exactly feel comfortable. Water is mostly seeking calm, while Fire is instinctually swift and active.

The Knight of Cups is associated with Hexagram 54, the “Marrying Maiden”. The image is “Thunder over the lake: The image of The Marrying Maiden. Thus the superior man understands the transitory, in the light of the eternity of the end.” Keeping sight of the goal, while understanding the transitory nature of all things, is one of the lessons of Pisces. The hexagram reads:

‘The maiden marries: setting forth to bring order – pitfall.
No harvest in having a direction to go.’

While at first we may wonder what this marrying maiden has to do with a Knight, remember that the Knight of Cups is setting forth on a quest. Marriage is symbolic of the fulfillment of his destiny. Along the way, there are pitfalls. But what about “No harvest in having a direction to go”? Ultimately, his goal is Happiness. Sometimes though, we don’t quite understand what will truly make us happy. We think we know what we want. But sometimes what we thought was beautiful didn’t have the real beauty. If we are lucky, Fortune smiles upon us and brings us what we need to be happy instead.

‘The Emperor Yi marries off the maiden
The first wife’s sleeves were not so beautiful as the junior wife’s sleeves.
The moon almost full.
Good fortune.’

The Book T description of the Knight of Cups reads: 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.

The crest of the tarot Knight of Cups is the peacock, with opened wings. The peacock, with it’s iridescent plumage, symbolizes the active, fiery part of water as it sparkles and fluoresces. These are the churning waves and driving rains, the newly discovered springs that gush forth, and the power of water as an alchemical solution.

As Fire of Water, this Knight is creative and inspired, tuning in to the vibrations he receives. He is a sensitive, artistic soul and has a certain poetic gentleness, almost otherworldly in the purity of his divine quest. He believes in his visions. The Knight of Cups is the swift rain, and the briefly overflowing stream from the snowmelt. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac. His waters don’t run deep, but they have motion.  The Pisces season heads towards the vernal Equinox through the last degree of Pisces, the Well at the World’s before the Aries point where things begin again. The last degree of Pisces is the vision of the place the visualizer visualizes. It’s the vision or inspiration of a goal or an ideal that molds our lives. This Knight doesn’t have that last degree of Pisces in his purview, but it is in sight, and the Graal he chases.

As the last and most mutable of mutable signs, the fish sometimes lack direction, swimming lazily back and forth with a certain degree of disinclination to rouse. But the Knight of Cups is receptive to inspiration, and that keeps him moving towards what he desires. As the old souls say, Spring always comes. Perhaps the crab peeking from his cup is an indication that he pursues, or should pursue, his goal indirectly, “without lust of result”, sidling as the crab, yet always moving like the fish he is.

Looking at the first decan of the sign of Pisces in his domain, we have the Eight of Cups, the Lord of Indolence (Abandoned Success). On every quest there comes a moment of losing heart, a dark night of the soul where we lose pleasure in everything. Our will to continue is thwarted. The ship runs aground, and the cups don’t hold water. We are emotionally unfulfilled and not motivated to continue. What should be moving and flowing, has become dry and rigid. The Knight of Cups on his quest must realize this for the danger it is, and not abandon the ship.

The other danger on his quest is shown by his shadow card, the Seven of Swords, Lord of Futility (Unstable Effort) which is the last decan of Aquarius. It shows how the Knight of Cups can collapse and give in to a sense of Futility when he is outnumbered and overwhelmed. Here there is disenchantment, and frustration that things are not going his way. Rather than be deceptive, he should be more clever than his opposition, and use that hidden Aquarian power. Instead he is in danger of giving in to passivity, figuring if he doesn’t actually try it cannot be said he failed. Yet this is not his true nature, and should be avoided as his Will is sacred, and should not be squandered.

If he succeeds in passing these trials, the cup of happiness awaits. The middle decan of Pisces shows his goal, the true goal, as by the time we get to the Ten of the suit of Cups, it is overripe, and ready to pass away. This is the Nine of Cups, Lord of Happiness. Fortunate Jupiter, the ruler of both the decan and the sign of Pisces, offers a drink from the mazer, and the Merrythought grants the Wish. It is a Nine, the penultimate and thus fullest expression of Water, that of emotional satisfaction. The Nine of Cups is often called the Wish card, because when it appears, the heart’s desire is granted, the Holy Grail achieved.

(Here is the previous article in the series on the Princess of Swords and up next is the Queen of Wands.

Matter and Spirit. Deconstructing the Court Cards and our solar year Part II of XVI
The Descent and the Climb: The Queen of Disks

This is the story of the Devil and the Wheel, and the Devil and the Tower. But it starts with the Archer trying to launch the Universe. It’s a bit heavy.

The Queen of Disks rules over a part of the year that shows us both the peak and the nadir of the solar journey. This is Solstice time for Earth. In the Northern hemisphere, the dark night outnumbers the day light, the days growing shorter and shorter until the hinge of the year is reached at the Solstice. In the Southern hemisphere, the peak of summer is reached; but it is still a hinge point in the solar cycle. These hinges are placed at the start of the Cardinal signs: Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn; the turning points of the year that herald the seasons.

When we see the Queen of Disks, we think of the sign Capricorn; the woman is wearing goat horns and there is both oasis, and the desert in the Rosetta Queen of Disk and the Thoth Queen of Disks versions of the card. Tabula Mundi Tarot’s Queen of Disk has dual mountains, the domain of the goat that climbs as well as descends, and does it all over again.

This is Persephone, but all grown up. The Princess has become the Queen. For Capricorn is the sign of aging, the story of solar years passing. Capricorn has the Devil as the associated Major card. This Queen, like Capricorn, has perseverance and ambition, and knows both the descent, and the climb. Persephone is now Demeter. Persephone’s name  means “female thresher of grain” from the proto Greek and Sanskrit roots perso and parso, referring to a sheaf of grain, and connected to another Indo-European root for “to strike”. But it also may come from the Greek pherein phonon, “to bring (or cause) death”. Her descent into the underworld caused the lamentation of Demeter and the darkness of winter. In the North this is the death of the Sun’s light that warms the Earth, or in the Southern hemisphere this is the Sun that scorches the desert before the world begins to cool.

Yet Persephone rises, and grows into the Queen of Disks.
We can mirror this story looking at the three decans, and associated minor cards, in her domain. While she really has that Capricorn vibe on the surface, she starts, like all the courts, with her “shadow” decan preceding the sign. The shadow decan is each court’s blind spot. Hers is the last decan of Sagittarius, beginning around December 11th and ending around December 21st, when the Solstice point is reached and the Sun passes into the sign of Capricorn. When this Queen is not at her best, she can be a bit heavy handed, due her shadow card the Ten of Wands, seen in the Tabula Mundi Queen’s court crest represented by the crossed hammer and pick of oppression.

The last decan of Sagittarius is assigned the Ten of Wands, Oppression. The Archer vs. the Anvil. Whichever hemisphere you live in, conditions could get burdensome. Here in the Northern half the daylight is decreasing, and over these next ten days we will be counting down to rock bottom.The Sun rises late and sets early, and well before supper time all is in darkness. It really messes with people’s internal fire. At least in this area, sually the first snow that makes a mess that needs to be “dealt with”, falls around this time. New Englanders go out and huff and puff and move around the flakes into piles, shovelful by shovelfuls of the stuff, and though at times it looks fluffy, that schizz gets heavy.

In the Southern half of the planet maybe it is  the heat that feels heavy. Either way, Christmas is in the very next decan, and unless you opt out and even if you joyously participate, there may be just a bit of work now required in preparation of that time ahead as well. Perhaps plans are being made and schedules are being squeezed, travels are arranged or dwellings are needing to be cleaned and things cooked. Or if one is out of that circus it may just be that it is going on all around you anyway, which can be depressing if you feel left out. In any event, lots of people will welcome when it is over with already. The Ten of Wands has Sagittarius, the last fire sign, in it’s last decan. The fire is preparing to shift, and it is wavering at this point, burdened by approaching earth. The card combines Sagittarian fire with the ruler of the decan, oppressive Saturn with the Universe card lending all its gravity.

On or around December 21st, the Sun shifts gears, spinning slowly on that hinge. Depending on your perspective it reaches its low point or its high point. In a solar horoscope chart, with Aries placed at the sunrise point, or on the ascendant cusp of the first house on the horizon line, then Capricorn falls at the top of the circle, at the zenith or midheaven. The Sun has traveled from Aries through the signs until it reaches Cancer at the bottom of the wheel back up through the horizon line  at Libra and to the top of the chart at Capricorn. The low point of the Sun here in the Northern hemisphere is actually at the top of the solar chart.
So no matter where you are, it is a story of opposites and cycles: rises and falls, climbs and descents, sunrise and sunset, midnight and noon, darkness and light, deserts and oasises, death and growth. It is one reason why the Queen of Disks in Book T is described as best portrayed in profile, with one side of her face in the darkness, and one in the light.
After the last decan of Sagittarius, where the fire is almost put out but not quite, we get to the first decan of Capricorn, and the goat climbs,  the Sun shifts towards light again.

The Wheel turns, and things change even if it is not always apparent. The card for this decan, the Two of Disks is indeed called the Lord of Change. This is the decan of the Devil and the Wheel. The days slowly begin to lengthen, or shorten. Something really has shifted. But we can’t really tell yet, as it has only just begun. It is still very dark out. There isn’t momentum but there is perseverance, and there is rising and falling, beginnings and endings, climbing and descent; all major characteristics of the Queen of Disks. The Two of Disks combines the sign of Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, with decan ruled by the planet Jupiter. Saturn is associated with restriction and compression, rules and boundaries, while Jupiter is associated with traveling outward, freedom, extension and enlargement. Contraction and expansion; it powers an engine or a pump. It’s that which builds a muscle. Mountains are climbed and descended and climbed and descended again. It keeps the solar year going and the solar gear moving and the wheel turning even if it is slowed down by grains of sand. We get through Christmas at least. Time passes, and things change throughout eternity.

All this sand has to go somewhere. Sand is actually like little building blocks, little bits of quartz. In the card for the next decan we see building blocks of matter;  struck by lightning, the elements form. The Devil and the Tower. Things replicate and grow, bit by bit. The Three of Disks shows what happens when a spark from the Tower, as Mars, meets the middle decan of the Cardinal sign Capricorn, or the card of the Devil, the Lord of the Gates of Matter. This is the martial force applied to build corporeal substance. We move on from initial Change, and start to build Works. This Queen’s goal is building; she strives for this in one way or another, and is successful more often than not.

So these three decans and the minor cards of the Queen of Disks speak a bit about this Queen’s past and future, as well as both her shadowed and lit natures. Her shadow card the Ten of Wands, shows the oppresive nature she may retreat to in times of strain as the fire sign she secretly harbors meets the Saturnine anvil. Persphone is tasked with bearing the burden of being the cause of death and darkness. The Sun darkens in the Northern hemisphere or scorches in the South. Persephone had to descend, but she rises again in the Queen of Disk’s middle decan,  the first decan of the sign of Capricorn. Things change, what is contracted expands and vice versa. Persephone is released and the wheel of the year again turns. The maiden matures. Time passes, and  in her last decan, which is the middle decan of the sign Capricorn, we see her fruition. Things are built as well as fall with the passage of time.

This is the first article of sixteen, on the sixteen tarot court cards of Tabula Mundi Tarot.

Seems like a weird place to begin, here nearing the end of the year. But the Knight of Wands is the first of the courts, and this is his season.

In this series we will deconstruct each of the courts, exploring the elements, signs, and ultimately the decans riding the wheel that make each avatar all it can be. We will explore the 36 decans through the 12 zodiacal signs of the courts Knight(King)/Queen/Prince, and the four elemental signs of the Princesses (Pages). The first is on the very first of the court cards, the Knight of Wands. Fire of Fire, Yod of Yod. The Yod of YHVH is fire, the spark of creation, and here in the first of the four worlds. It is like the very tip of the letter yod, the point from which the rest of the circle springs.

This is the story of the Archer and Hermes, and the Archer and the Moon, and it has as a shadow story Death and Demeter, foreshadowing what is next as well as what is behind.

Christmas is the Devil: Knight of Wands

The Knight of Wands. Why is he such a yod?

Christmas is the Devil. It really is! What does this have to do with the Knight of Wands? Well, he, and the Queen of Disks, actually have something in common, which is Christmas and the Devil. Though Christmas Day falls in the sign of Capricorn, “the devil is in the details” as they say, and all that makes it so is foreshadowed in Sagittarius season.

About November 21st, right around the time that people start having to think about the holidays Thanksgiving and Christmas (at least in the USA), the Sun passes into the sign of Sagittarius. The court card that comes to mind as most identified with the sign Sagittarius is the Knight of Wands. He is “Fire of Fire” and so of the fire element doubly; the fire of knighthood, and the fire of Wands, the world of Atziluth. He is the ultra mutable in that he is both the last fire sign and the last of the mutable signs (Pisces in Spring, Gemini in Summer, Virgo in Fall, Sagittarius in Winter).

Sagittarius is the Archer, the third sign of the fire set; in the cycle of all the elemental sets through “begin, stabilize, change” it is change, or mutability. Cardinal signs initiate, fixed signs sustain, mutable signs let go for the ride into the next thing. The ship sails forth, the ship anchors, the ship sails away and the cycle begins again. In the wheel of the year, we have the cardinal sign Libra marking the place where summer ends and fall starts, and then the fixed sign Scorpio, as the Sun moves through the fall months of October and November and on into December.

When the Sun moves into the mutable sign Sagittarius, we are at the last third of November, a few days from Thanksgiving. We have recently passed through the last decan of Scorpio with the Seven of Cups and it’s illusionary pleasures, where we envision the feasts to come. Interesting that often that Seven of Cups (Debauch) comes up in association with the “after effects” of partying too hard, but in the wheel of the year it seems to be right before the party-hard season. This is the shadow side of the Knight of Wands, those fantasies that seem to go with dreaming big. Death and the Empress; Aphrodite goes Goth but it really doesn’t suit her.

Around November 21 the sun moves into the first decan of Sagittarius; time to look away from the will-o-the wisp. Party on dude, hurry up and catch that light wave, here comes Sagittarius. The Archer and Hermes make for a straight shot of pure speed.

The Eight of Wands, Swiftness. Swiftness? Thanksgiving, with the great big sleep inducing feast? Well, yes. From here on in we rush headlong into the end of the year, with all of the hyper speed of the holidays somehow taking up time. The year is running out. We meet up with friends and family and communicate, sometimes the dual bookends of Thanksgiving or Christmas are when you see people you don’t often see, until the next year. It’s the time of “Black Friday”, or now it is more accurately “Cyber month” shopping, when people are inclined or compelled or outright forced to shop, unless they opt completely out. Certainly your energy is flowing out swiftly and freely, if you are socializing, or shopping. Even if one manages to dodge those things, here in the north it is the time of approaching winter. If you live in a colder northern climate especially, you will know how fast winter arrives. Time moves fast, and it sure is mercurial and elusive.

It’s still “fall” technically speaking until December 21st, but the heavy coats and shoes have come out and been in rotation. You’d better get out there and trim back the giant vine that is overtaking your house, and pick up the garden tools, and tarps, and chairs, and random weird things out in the yard before they get buried in feet of snow and ice until April/ Or May. You don’t want to pick things up, or you do want to but you get busy, or both are true, and before you know it winter really feels like it is about to happen ANY SECOND NOW. You’ll probably be communicating a lot, and if you are observant, you may even pick up a genius idea, either from some outside contact or more likely, from the inner genius just picking something up on the airwaves in reverie. If you don’t pay attention and grab that thought though, it passes on by swiftly.

Following Swiftness, the 8 of Wands, we move into December, what most people think of as the month of Sagittarius, though it only has two of its decans. The beginning of December is the season of the 9 of Wands, Lord of Established Strength. The Archer and the Moon; Art in the pure flow of the Priestess. At the start of December we have moved into the middle decan of Sagittarius. Strength comes from flexibility. It helps to go with the flow, and not get rigid. The sap descends, but know that descent is in preparation to rise again renewed. In the north, it starts to really feel like winter. Often the first snow falls that is enough to cover the ground. These ten days contain the birthday of St. Nicholas, December 6th. God forbid you have a birthday now, or you are doomed to a lifetime of no cultural events except for “holiday craft fairs” and renditions of the Nutcracker suite and its ilk ever falling on your birthday. Good ol’ St. Nick. Is “St. Nick” the Christian saint, giver of gifts and protector of those in need? Or is St. Nick Santa Claus, giver of gifts to good children, or is St. Nick old Nick the Devil, Satan, the giver of the knowledge of good and evil? “Nick” is also one of the names of the devil, won’t you guess his name? The devil is in the details, and dyslexic devil worshippers worship Santa. It is actually not the worst time of year. This is when picturesque flakes of snow fly here; usually they are the kind that look “pretty” covering the tree branches and the ground for a day, then disappear. We are not yet lodged in our bunkers; we are moving.

If you were not aware of the approach of Christmas before, chances are it is noticeable now. It’s the next big thing in the cycle of the year before New Year’s Eve, even though we still have the last decan of Sagittarius to bear. In the last decan of Sagittarius, we meet the 10 of Wands, otherwise known as the Lord of Oppression. Past the fast flare of the Knight of Wands, we slam right into the reality of the Queen of Disks. It is a really difficult time of year she begins at. There is all the stress of the approaching holiday baggage and we are also approaching the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice at the end of the decan. While Sagittarius in sign, the 10 of Wands is the first of the decans of the Queen of Disks, who is usually associated with the approaching sign of Capricorn. She has though the last decan of Sagittarius as her shadow, her blind spot or where she retreats in times of stress.

Christmas day falls in the first decan of Capricorn, the middle decan of the queen and the sign we normally associate with the Queen of Disks. Capricorn, whose major arcana card is the Devil. That decan starts around Yule, December 21st, the darkest day of the year, and also the slow beginning of the climb towards light. But that is for next time. For now, we are here in the season of the fire knight, the rush of activity just before the hibernation and recuperation of winter. This will all be over before you know it, when reality kicks in and we can hunker down. But for now, we hurtle onward towards the penultimate marker of the year.

So back to the Knight of Wands. He, like all of the court cards we will encounter in this journey through the courts, shows visually in his depiction these three decans. In this card, he has the shield with emblems of the Seven of Cups, Debauch; Eight of Wands, Swiftness;  and Nine of Wands, Strength. He takes us through mid November (last decan of Scorpio) through mid December (middle decan of Sagittarius). We are propelled by desire (7 of Cups, Venus/Scorpio), rushing swiftly (8 of Wands, Mercury/ Sagittarius) towards the darkness before the return of light (9 of Wands, Moon/Sagittarius).

We have to remember, this Knight of Wands card is the spark, the whole start of the cycle of the fairy tale of creation. All Knights are a beginning impulse. In his case, the arrow is shot and the target is the power to Will. All he does is toward that eventual end.

Next up, the last decan of Sagittarius, the shadow card of the Queen of Disks, our next court card in the series. It is the final slog until the light begins to increase again and we get to the Christmas holiday, Devil season, so that we can be through it and onward to the change of the year, when we can build anew.