The trumps present the large, swirling patterns of a human life: our movements toward the little self and the big Self, toward individuation and integration.
The pips, in turn, invoke the nitty-gritty opportunities for spiritual practice every day. The court cards, finally, represent individual agency. They show us how aspects of ourselves and others engage the energies of Tarot.
The court cards personify the deck, allowing us to see in human form the specific qualities associated with each of the four suits. The courts are thus as personal as the Tarot gets, helping us see (for instance) the energy of will in human form, or the human embodiment of fire, or finally how compassion lives and breathes and walks.
This personified reading of the court cards dates back to the late nineteenth century. Since MacGregor Mathers and the origins of the Golden Dawn, Tarot readers have associated the four members of the court with the four elements and their functional attributes: Pages have been associated with earth and the body, Knights with fire and will, Queens with water and soul, and Kings with air and mind.80 Given our human bias toward symmetry, these associations are almost impossible to resist. Four elements. Four court cards. Four suits. And, for a Mindful Tarot practice: Four Boundless Abodes.
The “fourness” we’ve already considered with the pips is relevant here as well. The court cards bring a sense of order and stability to each suit: their correspondence with the four elemental energies creates a strong vision of integration. Each suit tilts toward its unique element, but through the court cards also embodies the other three elements. Each suit likewise inclines toward a specific function of human agency, and yet through the court cards embraces all four. Finally, thanks to the court cards, each suit offers an integrated image of the boundless heart, with its Four Cs of care, compassion, cheer, and calm.
This integrated symmetry provides a nuanced royal taxonomy as well. Each member of each suit’s court has a double signification. Each represents the qualities of its suit as well as the qualities associated with its rank. Let’s consider, for instance, the Queen of Pentacles. In the first place, the Queen—like all of the cards in her suit—represents the qualities of the Pentacles. She personifies body, earth and the Abode of Care. But, as a Queen, like all Tarot Queens, she represents soul, water, and the Abode of Cheer. In her double signification, she personifies both cheer and care. She represents the soulful qualities of water and the embodied aspects of earth. She is both “cupsy” and “Pentacles-like.” Indeed, she brings “cupsy” qualities to the very themes and concerns of the suit of Pentacles itself. We might say that she rules over her suit with the qualities of her rank. In the parlance of a century of Tarot readers, the Queen of Pentacles can be understood as “Water of Earth.”
And at the same time, when we meet the Queen of Pentacles in a reading, the personal qualities “she” embodies may attach to someone of any gender. As with the entirety of the Tarot deck, the court cards come to us through the history of Western dualism, and they invite us to disrupt normative binaries at every turn.
|
|
Page earth/body/care |
Knight fire/will/ |
Queen water/soul/cheer |
King air/mind/calm |
|
Pentacles earth/body/care |
Page of Earth of Earth |
Knight of Pentacles Fire of Earth |
Queen of Pentacles Water of Earth |
King of Air of Earth |
|
Wands fire/will/compassion |
Page of Wands Earth of Fire |
Knight of Wands Fire of Fire |
Queen of Wands Water of Fire |
King of Wands Air of Fire |
|
Cups water/soul/cheer |
Page of Cups Earth of Water |
Knight of Cups Fire of Water |
Queen of Cups Water of Water |
King of Cups Air of Water |
|
Swords air/mind/calm |
Page of Swords Earth of Air |
Knight of Swords Fire of Air |
Queen of Swords Water of Air |
King of Swords Air of Air |
Elemental Associations of the Court Cards
The Pages are the court cards associated with the earth and with our embodiment. They are often considered a kind of apprentice to the suit. They represent potential and beginnings, the very earliest stage perhaps of the suit’s energy. From a Mindful Tarot perspective, Pages are the personification of mindful attentiveness. They represent that first and necessary willingness to turn toward the world and toward our experience. They invite us to open wide the window sash of this guest house that is being human.81 They thus personify a fundamental curiosity and engagement with the relevant themes and motifs of their suit. Indeed, without the initial friendliness and mindful care that the Page represents, the qualities of the suit cannot take root and be developed. The Pages are thus that necessary soil from which the energy of a suit can blossom forth.
Page of Pentacles
Given the correspondences between the court and the suit energies, there are four “perfect” court cards: cards where suit and rank attributions align exactly. The Page of Pentacles is the first of these. This Page is “Earth of Earth.” He perfectly epitomizes the mindful, embodied care of his suit.
In general, in the traditional imagery each Page stands erect and exhibits particular care with the suit mark. The Page of Pentacles is especially noteworthy in this respect. This Page holds the large pentacle aloft with both hands, bringing it in close and facing it intently. As Earth of Earth, the Page brings a fundamental reverence and regard to the embodied world, holding sacred everything that the Pentacles represent. Indeed, more broadly, devotion and veneration come easily to this Page. Earth of Earth lives in a world alive with spirit and fellowship, and has a penchant for the slow care of ritual work. When the Page of Pentacles picks up a utensil or tool, it too becomes a ritual object, for the entirety of this Page’s life is mindful engagement and awareness. Pay attention, the Page of Pentacles suggests softly. It all begins with our willingness to pay attention.
Page of Wands
In the traditional imagery from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Page of Wands (or Batons, as the suit was originally called) awkwardly holds a large cudgel-like staff. The Page’s baton is more slender but nearly as rough-hewn, as much a part of the living tree, as the Ace itself. There’s a tentativeness in his pose. The body twists toward the right, and the right hand gingerly taps the middle of the staff while the left hand gently holds the top. The Page of Wands is just starting to learn how to make use of the vigorous, passionate energy at the heart of this suit. Over time this Page will get more confident, as he further serves as apprentice in the Court of Wands. Over time the Page will be able to hold this staff with one hand, like the Knight. But for now he’s still being instructed, with the delicacy of his touch, by the wood itself.
The Knave of Wands in the Marseille Tarot
The reticence of the Page can, however, be of more value than the urgency of others who burn quick and hot. More than any other suit, the Wands need the attentive care of their Page, Earth of Fire. Before we can engage our will and act with vigor, we need to be instructed when vigor appears. We need to learn from this fire in the belly as it sparks. How are we being called? Where do we feel that call? How, when, and where is a response required?
Page of Cups
In the early modern decks, the Page of Cups holds an oversized chalice. In some decks, like the 1650 Noblet, the cup is as big as the Page’s entire torso. On one level, the illustration merely signals the youth’s own stature. The Page is just a child, an apprentice. The cup is big only because the Page is so small. But at the same time, the jumbo-sized cup also indicates the qualities of care and study associated with this member of the court. Being mindful requires us to slow down and lean in. The world looms larger when we take that kind of care—and the inner world of the soul, those depths of imagination and intuition, loom largest of all.
In the Waite-Smith imagery, our Page’s cup has normal proportions, but it is crazy small for its occupant. That fabulous fish inside the cup has no room to swim. Waite tells us that the fish represents “the pictures of the mind taking form.” Like the “Pensieve” in the Harry Potter books, this cup is what we might call a scrying bowl. The meditative Page, mindful Earth of Water, is learning to recognize the waters of the soul. Behind her is the ocean, with its unfathomable depths. For now, she’s just beginning to make herself at home in these waters. She’s apprentice to the profound mysteries of the human heart.
Page of Swords
In the Waite-Smith imagery, all of the Sword court figures are depicted in the midst of clouds. The clouds symbolize the element of air, to be sure, but also invoke the “swordsy” ability to take in the broad horizons of life, seeing the big picture and the multiple perspectives that are possible in any given moment. In short, the clouds recall the capacities of discernment and balance that yield a state of calm: what meditators sometimes call “big mind.” In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, the twentieth-century Zen master Shunryu Suzuki puts it this way: “You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.”
But the studious apprentice Page is just starting out. His sword is still too big for him. He grasps it with both hands. The Page of Swords is like the novice meditator who encounters, for the first time, the hamster wheel of their own churning thoughts. When we first experience those endlessly lapping “waves in our mind,” it can be intimidating. Paralyzing. Those vast and soothing vistas of “big mind” can seem all but unattainable.
Waite describes the Page of Swords as “alert and lithe, looking this way and that, as if an expected enemy might appear at any moment.” This Page is self-aware and hyper-vigilant, attuned to every swell and subsidence of the mind’s roiling currents. Indeed, the Page of Swords personifies the suit in its most Hamlet-like moments, when the ability to see and understand just weighs us down. Being Earth of Air means being grounded in the worst possible sense, like a grounded airplane.
The Knights are the Tarot’s “first responders.” They are the active, questing side of Tarot. Associated with fire and will, their raison d’être is to harken to the call of the world, although their methods and causes vary widely. Artists, explorers, entrepreneurs, activists, healers, leaders … From the standpoint of Mindful Tarot, the Knights are the personification of compassion. They are the spiritual warriors whose light begins to burn when they begin to pay attention to the world around them. To be clear, however, all of us are Knights (and Pages and Queens and Kings) at one time or another. Our Knight moments arise when we simply have to do something—when our body leaps into action almost before we know it. Suddenly our fingers start tapping at the keyboard, our hands pick up the paintbrush or chisel, our feet take to the streets, our arms reach out to our neighbors. We’ve found our way forward in response to the world.
Knight of Pentacles
The Knight of Pentacles is the guy on the slow horse. Above all, as Fire of Earth, he’s patient. He’s called to service like all of the Knights, but he’s also called to a deep mindfulness and thus remains attentive to every aspect of his surroundings. This Knight’s response can seem maddeningly slow, methodical, precise. Sometimes it’s even hard to tell that he is, indeed, responding.
The Knight of Pentacles is slow to anger and utterly trustworthy, and often finds himself as the sidekick to more fiery and flashy types. But in truth, this Knight is so much more than a sidekick. He is a reminder of the magma at the center of the earth, of the fire that spreads slowly, in geological time, but has actually created islands and mountains and vast plains. On those rare occasions when we glimpse the lava that flows through this Knight of Earth, the world around us is forever changed.
Knight of Wands
The Knight of Wands is our second “perfect” court card, exemplifying the fully realized qualities of her suit. She is Fire of Fire. She lives in a world that’s completely alive with possibility—a world of continual dialogue, asking, responding. Roger Keyes, an American art historian, describes just such a world in his poem “Hokusai Says,” about the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai:
everything is alive—
shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.
[ … ]
Everything lives inside us.
[ … ]
Let life live through you.
This fiery Knight isn’t always fearless—but when she is, it’s because she lets life live through her. In her best moments, she knows that the energy that stirs her to action, and that sometimes moves her to laughter or tears, channels through her. No matter how lonely or solitary her quest, she knows she’s not alone.
Knight of Cups
Fire of Water. For some modern readers, the Knight of Cups is the least effective of all the Knights—the least able to engage the will in a quest. After all, water has no shape of its own but simply adapts ceaselessly to the banks and walls and hollows that can contain it. The infinite passivity of water seems completely at odds with the purposeful and fiery activity of a Knight. However, water isn’t just passive; it’s also receptive and reflective. Water gathers into pools, rippling outward with the least disturbance to its surface, and shining upward when struck by the least ray of light. In their capacity to reflect and reverberate, the Cups are the suit most open to transformation. Our Knight of Cups is transformed by each and every encounter he has. It may be difficult to recognize the nature or purpose of his quest because both he and the quest will be changed again and again throughout the term of service.
“Graceful, but not warlike,” writes Waite about this card, suggesting that the Knight of Cups may be a bit too dreamy for his position in the court. Yet in a sense, it is the knightliness of this dreamer that makes his dreams so powerful. The Knight of Cups is the card of great art, great poetry—art that transforms both the artist and the world. His fire is not extinguished by the deep waters of imagination and intuition. Instead, he reveals the fire within those waters. He reveals the deeply transformative world- and life-changing capacity of soul.
Knight of Swords
In the Waite-Smith imagery, clouds streak by this Knight like lightning. No one moves faster than she. Fire of Air, this card reminds us that oxygen is a flame accelerant.
The Knight of Swords is typically the smartest one in the room, and she knows it. This card represents a kind of intellectual ferocity—an explosion into action that comes from the certainty, deep in the belly and reverberating in the head, that one sees the whole picture at a glance. This Knight knows what must be done, and that she’s the one to do it. On some level, this is the “Joan of Arc card”—not because our Knight of fiery air hears voices but because her sense of “getting it” is so powerful that she must act, swiftly and without fear. There’s a reason why this figure is the quickest of all the Knights. Her whole world is one of flashing motion. Charge!
The heroism of this card cannot be overstated. The Knight of Swords, with all her brilliance and insight, can often feel deeply alone. She gets it, but no one around her seems to see the same truth. It’s not that she never questions herself. But she also knows enough to question her self-questioning, and the heat in her gut will not allow her to wallow for long in self-doubt. Accordingly, the shadow side of this card can be substantial. This Knight doesn’t just leap to conclusions—she leaps to them and then over them and on to the next hillside. She’s often moving too fast to see where the seams of her big picture don’t quite connect.
Fortunately, she’s also brave enough to admit her mistakes. Indeed, she falls hard, and mightily, in those moments when she realizes she’s erred. She’s her own worst critic, seeing into her heart with the same ferocity and fearlessness she brings to the world.
The Queens are associated with the Cups, with the overflowing bounty of water and with the depths of imaginative soul. They personify those moments of profound homecoming, when we feel an abundant cheer and gratitude, a wide embrace of this beautiful world. Where the Knights ride in to fix, explore, and heal, the Queens hold their arms wide to celebrate and cherish. The Knights meet a world that is broken and lacking. The Queens meet a world that is already abundant and perfect. Yet in their most attentive moments, the Queens also realize that life is impermanent. All things are vulnerable to change and decay. In cherishing the world, the Queens are also drawn toward its nurturance and protection. In this light, they are often associated with the Trump III, the Empress. Like the Empress, the Queens can embody a maternal spirit of fertility, nourishment, and growth. But don’t think for a moment that being maternal necessarily means being soft, sweet, or female. Like the oceans and seas, the watery Queens run deep, and they can be both salty and fierce.
Queen of Pentacles
For many readers, the Queen of Pentacles is associated with the rich, dark earth, with the Empress, with fecundity and growth. Perhaps it’s the Oregonian in me, and my last two decades of living in a temperate rainforest, but I can’t help but relate this Queen to the action of the rain and mist. She is Water of Earth, that broad nourishing energy that wants the wide world to flourish.
Waite refers to the Queen of Pentacles as exemplifying “greatness of soul.” If so, this is the greatness of the indiscriminate rain, that sweet water that soaks everything, nourishes everything, to its fullest capacity. There is a steady, mindful patience to this card. This Queen gently considers the mark of her rule, her hands lightly encompassing the pentacle from above and below, just like the hands of Strength placed around the Lion’s muzzle. Such is the posture of both fortitude and acceptance. The force of this card is that of the earth accepting the rain, the rain penetrating the earth.
Queen of Wands
De Angelis’s Queen of Wands is more demure than Pamela Colman Smith’s depiction. Colman Smith’s monarch is the only Queen in her deck depicted in frontal view. Her Queen’s knees are spread wide apart, with her black pussycat sitting directly below: a suggestive externalization of her sex. This Queen, for many readers, epitomizes the passion and sexuality of the Wands. With her staff, cat, and sunflower, she brings forward both yang and yin, as well as the dynamic vitality of their union.
The energy of any suit can become destructive and stagnant when it is held too tightly. One has only to recall the Four of Pentacles or the Ten of Wands. The Queens counteract that heavy and dry spirit. They bring community and relationship, growth and nurturance, to their suits. They aerate and irrigate their world. In particular, the Queen of Wands reminds us that fire is a living current. It ripples and flows, gathers and pools, and floods into our lives. Water of Fire, she keeps vitality itself alive. When we meet her in a reading, we might ask ourselves whether we’re holding on too tightly to the fires burning in our heart, our belly, our loins. Is it time to loosen things up, like the Queen? Is it time to let the currents flow?
Queen of Cups
The Queen of Cups is another “perfect” court card. She is Water of Water, exemplifying the breadth and openness of this element. A body of water can receive rain and snow and mist; it can incorporate minerals and microorganisms, absorbing whatever comes yet remaining one ocean, river, lake. At the same time, although water flows as one body, it invariably encompasses countless currents and eddies. Thus we talk about exploring “the waters” (plural) of a given ocean or diving into “the deeps” (again, plural). In Hebrew, the word for water is always implicitly plural: mayim. We understand this Queen better when we realize that she too is always at least implicitly more than herself, more than just one person. Just as water is always “the waters,” so does she embody the heart of a whole community.
In short, she bears a boundless heart of gratitude. “Gratitude is confidence in life itself,” writes Jack Kornfield. “Gratitude receives in wonder the myriad offerings of rain and sunlight, the care that supports every single life.” 82 Water of Water, the Queen of Cups lives a life of gratitude. She is open and clear and startlingly present. Her confidence makes her fierce in love because she knows nothing will be lost if she gives her heart. And if sometimes she seems a bit quiet, it’s only because she is waiting for you to speak. She knows how to take her turn, and how to encourage you to live your truth. She brings out the best in others.
Yet sometimes she does so to her own or the community’s detriment. Her clear waters run deep, and her gifts are often exactly what the moment requires. Don’t mistake her silence for fear or shyness. Ask her what she thinks, and prepare to listen.
Queen of Swords
If the Page of Swords showed us a bit of Hamlet, the Queen of Swords shows us a bit of Lady Macbeth. In the language of the court, she’s Water of Air. This is often not a great mix. She has a huge capacity of heart and mind to see the big picture. She is often able to leap forward and dive back in time, understanding the chain of events that has led to this present moment and seeing the trail of falling dominoes that undoubtedly lies ahead. This Queen can be a superb strategist and often provides brilliant advice to those around her. She has an amazing mind for business. Yet she rarely follows her own counsel. Her watery nature so often undoes her; her boldness of mind so often runs counter to her relational intimacy with the world. She second-guesses her brilliance because instinctively she knows it can be a threat.
And so she’s often misunderstood. For many, this card conveys a coldness or a deep grief. The Queen of Swords is sometimes thought to be the “widow card.” But this Queen is neither cold nor in mourning. She’s simply too watery to be air and too airy to be water. She’d like to be harder, more ruthless in her actions—but when she’s honest with herself, she likes her softness more. Ultimately, she needs more friends in her life. If you meet her, if you are her, show her some kindness. She will repay you with everything she has.
On a blustery, windy day, we learn something important about the air. A gust of wind can knock us over. The air hits us with the force of a solid wall. But air is not solid. And, in fact, it can undo what seems solid in us. As the wind blows, the air splits into a thousand tiny tendrils, branching its way through clothing and walls, revealing a world made up of gaps and cracks, of emptiness and holes. The air penetrates everything. It pries apart a world of seeming substance. It enforces a fundamental honesty in the world.
Such is also the power of the Kings. As the personification of the mind, of the double-edged sword of wisdom and justice, the Kings embody the penetrating force of air. They cut through our presumptions about the world. They reveal the emptiness of our delusions. The good King, who is also the wise King, commands his realm not through might but through insight. The King sees and understands, taking in the broad view. It is this airiness that leads to the equanimity and calm associated both with the suit of Swords and with the Kings. To be calm is not to be devoid of emotion. Instead, the Kings of each suit teach us that true calm arises from the capacity to feel and see it all.
King of Pentacles
Historically, the Tarot emerges at the very cusp of Europe’s era of discovery. The year after the very first printed Tarot is published (i.e., the Sola-Busca), Columbus and his ships “discover” the so-called New World. This spirit of exploration pervades the Waite-Smith Tarot in a variety of ways, particularly in the motifs of seafaring and adventure. It’s also the spirit embodied in the King of Pentacles. As Air of Earth, this King encompasses the vast expanse of our embodied human life. He reminds me of a Hans Holbein figure: one of those remarkable Renaissance portraits where we see the successful merchant or ruler surrounded by the full range of his possessions and passions. Both the figure painted and the artist himself indicate a masterful attention to the details of life.
In short, the Air of Earth takes in the vast expanse of it all. He invites us to look at the world from as many different perspectives as we can, to absorb it all. He invites us to be unafraid of our own power, of material stuff and creativity, of getting our hands dirty in the mud of life, of luxuriating in the refinements of life. His earthiness commands us to be curious about it all. His airiness commands us to see the whole vast canvas.
At times, like the great Renaissance explorers, this King vastly overestimates his reach. Air of Earth’s sense of discovery might feel to others like entitlement, or worse. In those moments, the King would do well to take counsel from the Queen. A little water, a little gentle and pervading patience, will be needed.
King of Wands
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” Shakespeare writes in King Henry IV. The King of Wands feels the weight of every decision he’s ever made. To be sure, it is not hard for him to act. As Air of Fire, he typically knows exactly what he needs to do. He sees his options, perceives the consequences of this path or that path, and typically chooses very wisely. He’s confident and sure-footed. Those he leads, he leads with charisma and grace, and they are grateful for his presence. This is the fire in him. He knows that he is needed, and he knows how to meet that need. But the King of Wands doesn’t sleep well at night. He’s too acutely aware of his responsibility. It pains him to be glib and easy with power. He is not afraid of committing himself to any given path. It’s just that he sees all too clearly the paths that he will never be able to take. He knows that there will be as many failures as there are successes.
Losing sleep, by the way, is what makes him the right person for the job. It shouldn’t be easy to be king.
King of Cups
In the Waite-Smith depiction, the King of Cups—Air of Water—sits on a throne that floats on the ocean. What does it mean to rule over the waters? Can we find an Emperor-like stability in the middle of uncertainty and unfathomable mystery?
If anyone can do it, it is this King. He takes the responsibility of his rule deeply to heart. He sets his dais on the watery flows and makes his realm the province of the Moon and the High Priestess. This is the world of the unconscious, of the soul, of submerged and abject emotion, past traumas, unknowable shadows. The King of Cups manages to find his balance amid the waves and currents. He knows buoyancy but is a master of the dive as well, able to take on the weight he needs when it’s time to go deep. Few can surf like this King, and even fewer can—like him—withstand the almost unimaginable pressures on the ocean floor.
This King also reminds us of the prismatic quality of water. Light can indeed penetrate the shadowy depths, although it will be bent and refracted as it does so. The King of Cups finds his true calling as a bender of light. He translates what cannot be said into clarity and meaning. He is a healer, a counselor, a philosopher, a poet, a saint—or simply a kind neighbor who listens with gentle eyes and firm discipline.
King of Swords
What does it mean to look at the whole terrain—and to embrace it all in some fashion? To allow all of the pieces to be present, not having to push away one part in favor of another? In general, the stability of the King emerges from that kind of openness and expansiveness of perspective. The King, the good and wise King, maintains the vast and open stance of the sky, encompassing whatever rises, whatever falls.
How does one attain such a vantage point? For the Queen of Swords, the answer is strategy. The Queen tries to envision the whole vast landscape as if life were a series of moves and the terrain were a chessboard. The King of Swords, however, does not engage in strategy. His sense of rule does not involve the manipulation of pieces nor the calculation of moves. Instead he strives to embody an impartial justice. He knows that he can’t respond to everything he sees, hears, or encounters—and he knows the danger of responding too soon. Instead, he aims at first simply to bear witness, to listen to the truths of others, and to take note of the world in all its complex multiplicity. Sometimes, for this reason, our King seems too aloof and quiet for the urgency around him. But above all, our King of Air seeks clarity, hoping to survey a crowded, noisy world and to comprehend its full range of possibilities and truth.
The task is daunting. The King of Swords is wise but not necessarily brilliant. This King knows he cannot rule without help, and so he builds a community of advisors and counselors, seeking out dissension as bravely as he can. The King of Swords is not afraid of criticism. He knows that only a team of rivals can help unify the realm—can help him rule broadly and fairly.
And, of course, our King is not necessarily a king, and certainly not necessarily male. Air of Air, our last “perfect” court card, might be a parent, or a diplomat, or a cop, or a librarian, or a grocer—or anything, and nothing.
Air of Air is simply the truest breadth and reach of this human life.
Air of Air is each of us, sitting squarely in the midst of all the messiness and glory of our days. Each of us is this King, surveying the vast expanse of life as well as we can, trying to hold all the pieces in our heart and mind. Our throne is simply the upright and open posture of daily practice.
As we navigate and try to settle into all of life’s ups and downs, we can cultivate the faith that each moment grants another opportunity to show up fully.
Each moment allows us yet another chance to embody all of the capacities of the boundless heart: the gratitude of cheer, the active responsibility of compassion, the mindful attention of care, and the calm that holds it all.
80. MacGregor Mathers first articulated the elemental/functional associations with the court, although his correspondences differ from mine—and from many readers’ today—by associating the Kings with fire/will and the Knights with air/mind. Mathers’s associations rest on the Golden Dawn commitment to the tetragrammaton—the four-letter Hebrew of God—and to a Kabbalistic association of the court cards with the myth of creation.
82. Kornfield, The Wise Heart, 394.