On “Oldness” and the Tarot Kings

(Based on the representations found on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.)

For those learning Tarot, the court cards present certain interpretive quandaries. Unlike the strong archetypal images of the Major Arcana, or the instructive vignettes of the Minor Arcana, the static figures on the court cards can seem blunt and uninteresting. Further, in a reading, their appearance may seem puzzling: are they significators of someone in our lives or do they point to certain aspects of ourselves?

Mary K. Greer and Tom Little’s book on the court cards was one of the earliest dedicated texts I came across when first learning Tarot. In it, the interpretive techniques transform these seemingly passive and stoic images into active themes, motifs, archetypes, and events taking place in our lives. Gone is the literal adherence to the figure on the card having to be likened to a real-life person in appearance and position; instead, the reader is presented with a multi-faceted approach to interpretation in which any of the sixteen court cards can stand for a range of meanings, such as prevailing energies, messages from the Universe, or the masks that we all wear in the outside world. Working with these cards can be as dynamic as the individual reader chooses, and today I choose to examine the Tarot kings through the lens of “oldness.”

Kings as Archetypes — Checking our Biases
Before delving into one interpretation I propose for the four kings, it may be worthwhile to make some preliminary remarks about the archetype of the king…