Tarot Court Cards for Beginners: Bring Clarity to Your Readings

by Leeza Robertson

For many tarot readers, the court cards are the most challenging cards to work with. But once you become familiar with how these enigmatic cards work, you can turn them into friends and allies that provide powerful insights and advice. Featuring stories, explanations, and simple exercises, this book explores the many facets of pages, knights, kings, and queens to enhance your journey through the tarot.

Author Leeza Robertson approaches the court cards from a variety of angles, exploring the symbols, legends, personalities, messages, and spiritual influences of each card. Providing unique tips, reading techniques, and spread ideas, this book will help you welcome the court cards into your tarot practice.

Genres: Tarot, Spirituality, Witchcraft, Nonfiction

216 pages, Paperback

Published May 8, 2017

About the author

Leeza Robertson is the author of Tarot Court Cards for Beginners and Tarot Reversals for Beginners, and she’s the creator of two tarot decks, the Mermaid Tarot and Animal Totem Tarot. Leeza spends her days dreaming up new tarot decks and exploring new ways to introduce more people to the world of tarot. When she doesn’t have her nose in a book or her fingers running across a deck of cards, she runs an online Tarot Academy with her Business Partner Pamela Chen which can be found online at Bit.ly/uftamagic

Reviews

[Emily Rainsford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It's easy to read and offers really insightful perspectives on the court cards, along with useful exercises to accompany the theory. It was a quick enjoyable read on my kindle but I'd definitely like to get a physical copy for reference and to better access the exercises. Recommend for anyone struggling with the court cards or just wanting an interesting perspective on them.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leeza Robertson takes a different approach to the court cards than many authors do, by looking at the historic roles that kings, queen, princes, princesses, knights, and pages played, and factoring that into her explanations. This is one of the only tarot books I've read that distinguishes between knights and pages vs. princes and princesses. One (simplified) example: knights could ride forth into adventure, but princes were too valuable and needed to be kept at home. I thought this was an important distinction, and made for interesting interpretive differences, depending on what the court cards in your deck are called. But it threatened to throw my own sense of the cards off, because it felt like I now have potentially 24 court cards to handle, rather than 16. If you're just learning tarot, though, or if you haven't found a satisfactory way to read the court cards, then this may be a great approach for you.

Robertson discusses each rank thoroughly: Pages/Princesses, Knights/Princes, Queens, and Kings. Every card discussed is illustrated with one of the court cards from Llewellyn's Classic Tarot, although Robertson also talks about cards from the Gaian Tarot and the Tarot of the Hidden Realm. (A few cards from these decks are used in the example spreads at the end of the book, but it would've been nice to see those decks throughout the book as well.) Each section ends with a spread and exercises to work further with those cards, and then there's a chapter of exercises and spreads to work with all the ranks together. All in all, it's a thorough exploration of the court cards, and well-suited for beginning tarot readers.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title suggests, this book focuses on the Court cards – King, Queen, Knight and Page or princess, depending on the deck you are using. Princess cards aren’t something I have come across before and I thought they sounded interesting so I will be looking out for them in my next deck. The idea behind the book is that understanding the court cards can really add to your readings as they are so influential in the deck.

As the title also says, this book is for beginners and so starts with a brief history of the tarot before moving onto specific language used when reading tarot cards. It then talks about the different suits (there are four) and what they mean before moving onto the cards themselves. Throughout there are pictures to help you understand what you are seeing and reading. Starting with the lowliest of the cards, the Page and moving up to the King, Robertson breaks down the cards into four sections: as a person; as an archetypal influence; as a spiritual influence; and as a messenger (she also explains what each of these is so you don’t need to worry there). Each section is easy to follow and, I found, understand. I had lightbulb moments, which was nice, and found her interpretation of the cards to be really positive (some I have found to be rather doom and gloom).

After going through the cards, there are a series of exercises and readings you can complete to test your knowledge. They start small, with a three card spread, and plenty of explanations as to what the cards you have laid out mean. Because this was an advance copy, I struggled a bit here as the layout of the book was off but imagine there would be no problems in the final copies.

Finally, once you’ve been through the exercises, there are resources for people interested in finding out more which I thought was really helpful.

For me, this book was great and just what I was looking for. It added to my limited knowledge, was easy to follow and to read, and helped my learning through the exercises. Leeza Robertson has a nice style of writing – very personable and approachable – and doesn’t rely on jargon or try and blind you with science. For those starting out on their tarot journey I think this is a great read and I would recommend it.

Note: this book was provided as a review copy in return for my fair and honest review.

[Hana the Suburban Witch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for beginners. It showed a side to the cards I hadn't thought of, lost a star because it wasn't super engaging the whole way through and was a bit of a chore to finish and I beleive some of the court card qualities were not included.

[Darlene Acosta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using as a reference book. Very helpful.