Monday 15 February 2016

Aquarius in the Druidcraft court cards



Today I’ll finish off our exploration of Aquarius in the tarot by looking at the court cards. But which one – or ones?   

Different traditions have different astrological correspondences when it comes to the courts.  Generally  (but not always!) these correspondences depend on how cardinality, fixity and mutability have been assigned.  

For instance, the Book-T system (www.tarot.org.il/Library/Mathers/Book-T.html) attributes the cardinal attributes (initiating things) to the Queens, fixed (maintaining order) to the Kings, and mutable (being able to adapt and transform) to the Knights.  Each court card is also linked to the elements, with Pages with Earth, Knights being associated with Fire, Queens with Water, and Kings with Air.


Other decks follow a different convention. They keep the Knights as carriers of mutable qualities, but have the Queens taking on the ‘fixed’ attributes and the Kings the ‘cardinal’ ones. 


As Aquarius is the fixed Air sign, I’m looking for the Swords court card that’s associated with ‘fixed’-ness.
 
Queen of Swords (trimmed): DruidCraft Tarot
So far in my exploration of the DruidCraft, I’ve found that the Queens seem to correspond best to the ‘fixed’ signs, so let’s look at the Queen of Wands as the Aquarian card.  That combination of air and fixed-ness suggests thoughtful humanitarian detachment.  Actually I can see that in both the King and the Queen, and unlike the other Kings and Queens, there’s no helpful symbolism in the image (that I can see) to help make my choice! It’s what Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm have written about the Queen that makes me see her as the Aquarian figure – “a natural analyst...discriminating and perceptive, with high ideals...ability to be detached and objective”.  



Druidcraft Tarot created by Philip Carr-Gomm and Stephanie Carr-Gomm, illustrated by Will Worthington, published by Connections 2004

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