court cards · reversed cards
Tarot Journaling, together with its companion practices of court-card interpretation and reversed-card analysis, constitutes one of the most generative intersections between the depth-psychological tradition and practical divinatory method. The corpus presents a spectrum of positions: at one pole, Mary K. Greer's foundational workbook constructs journaling as a structured inward technology — a scaffold of spreads, affirmations, free-association exercises, and intuitive writing through which the card's imagery becomes a mirror for the psyche's layered contents. Greer's approach is explicitly Jungian in lineage, drawing on experiential learning, Socratic inquiry, and encounter-group methods to render the cards legible as autobiography. Reversals, in her framework, are not failures of orientation but invitations to shadow-work, to the 'unconventional wisdom' beneath consensual appearance. Rachel Pollack occupies a mediating position, treating reversed cards and court-card 'transmutations' as hermeneutic problems requiring felt discernment rather than rule-following, while her sample readings demonstrate journaling-adjacent reflection. Karen Hamaker-Zondag brings the Jungian structural grid most rigorously to bear on the court cards as yin/yang typological markers. Absent from this corpus is sustained resistance to the journaling mode; the debate is instead methodological — how directive versus open-ended the prompts should be, and how literally or archetypally one reads the figures that arise.
Become a figure in the card and talk about who you are and what's going on. Use the first person singular, present tense. Dialogue with figures in the cards using intuitive writing.
Greer articulates the core journaling method as active imaginative embodiment — writing in the first person from within the card image — thereby transforming interpretation into depth-psychological self-exploration.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984thesis
Reversals, like planetary retrogrades, suggest other 're' words, denoting backward motion, withdrawal, opposition, negation, or having to do something again. Reversals can be both the disease and its remedy.
Greer theorizes reversed cards as a shadow-hermeneutic, positioning them as agents of depth disclosure rather than mere negation, analogous to retrograde motion in astrological journaling practice.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984thesis
The third card—the unconscious—the Two of Wands reversed, indicates my sense of being out of control. It shows how I am blocking my realization that I have control.
Greer's sample journal entry demonstrates the method in practice, showing how reversed cards are read as unconscious blockages surfacing through the spread and disclosed through written reflection.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984thesis
Court Cards almost always represent aspects of yourself. In the reading, they represent the way you are acting in the situation—those aspects of your identity that you are drawing upon.
Greer establishes the court-cards as self-referential psychological portraits rather than external persons, grounding their use in journaling as an exercise in identity differentiation.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984thesis
I combined Jungian and New Age processes, such as those developed at the Esalen Institute, with exercises I'd learned as a theatre student and in encounter groups, to explore the potentials and interactions of the cards.
Greer traces the genealogy of tarot journaling to the confluence of Jungian psychology, experiential pedagogy, and somatic encounter methods, establishing its intellectual legitimacy within depth psychology.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
The fact that every card so far had come up reversed; and yet several — such as Eight of Swords reversed — invited a positive reading, showed the need for change.
Pollack's sample reading demonstrates that reversed cards in a journaling or reflective context carry cumulative interpretive weight, signaling systemic psychological pressure rather than isolated negative meaning.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980supporting
The question of how to interpret court cards — as someone else or as an aspect of the subject — remains for most people one of the most difficult elements of Tarot reading.
Pollack identifies the court-card interpretive problem — self versus other — as the central hermeneutic challenge in tarot reading and journaling, requiring felt discernment over fixed rules.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980supporting
The two court cards that are receptive to the world are the Page and the Queen. We shall not go far wrong if we call these yin. The court cards that tend to be controlling and active, which we can call yang, are the Knight and the King.
Hamaker-Zondag systematizes the court cards through Jungian yin/yang typology, providing a structural schema that supports their deployment in journaling as diagnostic psychological categories.
, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997supporting
How is the Knight of Wands different from the King of Wands, and how would you express this difference in terms of two different kinds of animals?
Greer's court-card differentiation exercise invites journalers to generate personal symbolic equivalents for each figure, deepening psychological ownership of the archetypes.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
Journal Writing Field, Joanna. A Life of One's Own.
Greer's bibliography explicitly cross-references the tarot journaling tradition with the established genre of psychological journal writing, anchoring the practice in a recognized depth-psychological lineage.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
Place the Court Card representing your Inner Teacher in front of you. Look at it carefully until you can reproduce it in your mind with your eyes closed.
Greer presents a visualization-into-journaling sequence keyed to a court card, linking active imagination, contemplative practice, and written self-inquiry as a unified inward method.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
Your Personal Potential Card is the Court Card corresponding to your sun sign. My sun sign is __________, so my Personal Potential Card is __________.
Greer integrates court cards with natal astrology within the journaling workbook framework, constructing a personalized psychological profile anchored in the Persona, Inner Teacher, and Mode of Expression cards.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
Reversed the isolation turns around to become communication, in particular seeking advice on what to do about one's problems. The card can sometimes refer to the act of finding help, such as consulting a reader or a therapist.
Pollack frames the reversed Seven of Swords as a prompt toward relational engagement and help-seeking, illustrating how reversed cards function therapeutically in reflective reading contexts.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980supporting
The authors chose to take the appearance of the Knight of Wands quite literally. He arrives on the scene, a dashing figure, riding a horse through the sands of Carmel beach.
Greer illustrates narrative story-writing as a journaling extension, demonstrating how court-card figures can be literalized and animated within creative written exercises.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
Through his sensitivity to the world of the unconscious, paranormal gifts of one sort or another can reveal themselves. The Page of Cups is still open to the world of the intuitive.
Hamaker-Zondag reads the Page of Cups as a figure of unconscious receptivity, relevant to journaling practice insofar as self-recording requires openness to intuitive and imaginal material.
, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997supporting
REVERSED: A deceitful schemer or over-sensitive esthete. Seductive, especially through guile or manipulating emotions. 'In love with love.'
Greer's reversed court-card keyword lists serve the journaling workbook as prompt-banks for shadow identification, though they function here more as reference than as theoretical argument.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984aside
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER: What are you earning by your endeavors—material wealth, security, status? How are you enjoying what you've earned? SAMPLE AFFIRMATION: 'I acknowledge my feelings, then move to release them.'
Greer's question-and-affirmation format for the Nine of Pentacles exemplifies the journaling workbook's core pedagogical unit — interrogative prompts paired with integrative affirmations.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984aside
Your Tarot Profile Selecting Cards by Personal Choice Court Card 'Roles' Understanding the Court Cards Dealing with Depression Discovering Joy Clarifying Your Relationships
The workbook's table of contents reveals the structural architecture of tarot journaling as Greer conceives it — a modular sequence of exercises organized around psychological themes rather than divinatory tradition.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984aside