Methods of interpreting the Tarot Court Cards (Les Honneurs) are explained, identifying Court Cards as types of people, personifications of things, functions, and astrological signs.

Imagine a Medieval Court in all its pomp and circumstance. The Tarot Court represents the quintessential family order, a place for everything and everything in its place.

The Court of the Tarot de Marseille is traditionally more difficult to interpret. The Tarot Court Cards are subject to a kind of “middle child” syndrome:

Are they Minor Arcana or Major Arcana?
Do they stand for people?
Do they stand for events?
Do they stand for organizations?
Are they personal approaches to a situation? Are they “advice”?

It would seem the Court Cards stand for everything! Typically, this makes The Marseilles Tarot Court Cards potentially intimidating and hopelessly complicated to the Tarot reader.

Within the Tarot de Marseille tradition, the fact that the Tarot contains a “family” in the deck is considered purposeful. The Court is quite simply a family and serves this role in the Minor Arcana by primarily signifying people pertinent to the question at hand. This differentiates it from the events signified by the numbered “pip” cards.

Indeed, we need not stretch our imagination to envision the King as a Man, the Queen as a woman, the Knight as a young adult, and a Page as a youth.

Certainly, the drama of our lives may likely involve people. As the events transpire in the Minor Arcana pip cards, the people may appear in the Courts.

To throw in a monkey wrench, The Court Cards may not signify people, per se. But, as we will see, they are at least personifications of something.

In the Tarot de Marseille tradition, the role of the Minor Arcana is well…minor. In our system, Minor cards are drawn to clarify the Majors in a reading.

Indeed, the Court Cards and Minor pips amplify the Majors. Yet, a perfectly fine reading may be obtained with Majors only.

The basic categories of interpretation of Court cards are:

• Court Cards as People
• Court Cards as a Royal Function
• Court Cards as Phenomena
• Court Cards as Astrological References
• The Optical Analogy Method