The Four Queens

Arcanalogue has come a long way in the last five months, but the more that's done, the more there is to do! Now that all four Queens have been posted, let's take them on as a posse and have a closer look at the Queens' overall function in the deck.

As many of you already know, each of the four suits corresponds to one of the four classical elements: fire, water, air, and earth. But the suits themselves subdivide, with the four court cards each corresponding to the elements too. The Queens, for example, are associated with water.

This level of reading is one that many readers never evolve past, because it starts to bring up a lot of thorny interpretive barriers. Captain Planet aside, our civilization seems to have moved on from the classical elements, so what does it mean to be "watery" and how do you articulate that in a reading without sounding like you just wandered out of Plato's cave?

At this point little Jungian psychology really starts to pay off. While concepts and definitions change over the centuries, our brain communicates symbolically, and these are preserved within our psyche. Since the dawn of time water has always presented mankind with its greatest mysteries. It was our womb as unicellular life forms, and its life-giving properties have remained priceless to us ever since we began mucking about on land, but its depths also concealed vast wonders both great and terrible, and as we evolved it became a powerful symbolic force literally built into our consciousness. This is how "water" became more than just a mere substance -- it is an energy, a vast concept containing a language all its own.

This is the aspect of consciousness that the four Queens preside over. The Queen of Wands reveals the "watery" aspects of elemental fire. How does she do this, you may ask? This is where you have to use your imagination as a card-reader. Essentially you create a Venn diagram in which the two elements overlap symbolically, and you see what is produced when they merge, how they comment on humanity, what they have in common. It's a meditative process that employs the early philosophical principles of Alchemy (but takes place on a purely conceptual level -- which means less mess to clean up, and lower risk of lead poisoning). In the case of the Queen of Wands, we look at qualities like fluidity, versatility, passion, and awareness and use them as building blocks to create an icon.

When you read descriptions of the Court cards in various Tarot books, you can usually see how an author has done this work-- it's like being able to see the lines of a sketch underneath the brush strokes of a painting. That's why the court cards tend to be the most variable from deck to deck, and why they're notoriously difficult to read -- there are fewer proper rules imposed on them. We look at them and realize they could be almost anybody, and that of course is the point.

It won't be long, however, before you'll look at a card like the Queen of Coins and immediately think "water of earth," From there it's a small step to gaining an instinctive understanding of what that means, and how it applies to the spread in front of you. Each court card is a portrait waiting to be painted or story to be told, and your unique take on them is something that will give your readings their own unique flavor. As harbingers of the unconscious, the Queens in particular are a good place to begin. Let them approach you one by one, at their own pace. Look for examples of them in the people you interact with at home, at work. You'll soon discover that you are almost always in the presence of royalty.