The Royal Elements - How the elements reveal the personalities of the Court Cards

The Royal Elements

Royal Elements very often become quite a quandary in a Tarot reading. Understanding the Court Cards relationships and their elements may assist you in understanding each Court Card's personality. By understanding the relationship held within the Court Card itself truly makes a huge difference, especially when identifying the relationships between the Court Card and neighboring cards in a spread. 

Court Cards and Elements

Kings relate to Air, which in turn relates to intellect, communication, fortitude, honesty and clarity.

Queens relate to Water, which in turn relates to emotions, love, forgiveness, insight and feelings

Knights relate to Fire, which in turn relates to energy, creativity, inspiration, courage, enthusiasm, confidence and spirituality

Pages relate to Earth, which in turn relates to stability, the physical realm, materialistic, security, competence and finances. The Page is traditionally acknowledged as an Earthly Messenger.

Thereby the element of the suit sets the personality of the Trumps.

So to take a look at how this plays a significant role in reading Trumps, we take into consideration the Personality Element and the Suit of a card, then thereby we can see how balanced this character is.

	Earth	Fire	Water	Air
King	E/A	F/A	W/A	A/A
Queen	E/W	F/W	W/W	A/W
Knight	E/F	F/F	W/F	A/F
Page	E/E	F/E	W/E	A/E

Opposing	These manifest polarities, dual natures, shadow sides, they are unpredictable. Yet most vibrant, and are most often extremely resourceful.
Complimenting	These combinations are balanced in methodologies, stable, flexible and adjust to transitions.
Strengthening	Doubled elements double the value of the nature of the character.
Dependency	These elements depend upon each other

 

Relationship of Elements 

By looking at the above illustration we can see how there are two clear patterns:

Generate:	Overcoming
Wood feeds fire	Wood parts earth
Fire creates earth	Earth absorbs water
Earth bears metal	Water quenches fire
Metal collects water	Fire melts metal
Water nourishes wood	Metal chops wood

Another interesting aspect is the Zodiac house into which each falls. Identifying with the various Zodiac signs of Astrology assists in understanding each court card:

Fire houses Aries, Leo and Sagittarius

Air houses Gemini, Libra and Aquarius

Water houses Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces

Earth houses Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn