court cards & community

Today on CARD TALK, I’ll cover:
-a quick personal update & new scheduling moving forward
-why court cards can be challenging for people
-how working with court cards can help us connect with others
-prompts for getting to know court card personalities better

Recommended resources from the episode:
bee scolnick: getting sick as the empire falls
five days of offerings essay series // consider community with court cards
During the Next Administration, We Save Ourselves from Rewire News Group

For more on Meg, check out 3amtarot.com, and order your copy of Finding the Fool through Bookshop.org or your favorite local bookstore.

Find episode transcripts and more over on the CARD TALK website. And as a special thank you for CARD TALK listeners, click here to download a completely free, exclusive workbook for building your best personal tarot practice.

Love what you’re hearing? Support the pod with a one-time donation or recurring subscription, and please subscribe, review, and share with a friend or two!

Chapters

• 0:11 Connection and Community in Tarot
• 12:47 Navigating Court Cards in Tarot
• 18:04 Building Community Beyond Friendships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

I'm Meg Jones-Wall and this is Card Talk, a mini podcast for tarot basics and evergreen insights. I'm here to help you build a tarot practice that works for you. Glad you're here. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about connections and community and different ways that tarot can help us deepen our relationships with each other. Before we dive in, I just want to acknowledge that the gap between the last episode and this episode is not insignificant and to say thank you to everyone for your patience and for your grace in my unexpected gap in publishing episodes.

Speaker 1: 0:49

If you are a subscriber to my newsletter, if you follow me on social media or if you listen to the other podcast that I work on called Call your Coven, you might know that one of my dearest friends and professional collaborators, b Skolnick, has been navigating some really scary health stuff that, to be completely honest, had my emotions very close to the surface and made it a little bit hard for me to do things. If I'm being really real, she is still waiting for a resolution, but she was in the hospital undergoing tests and surgeries and biopsies for almost 40 days and it was really fucking scary. She recently wrote a incredibly brave and beautiful piece talking about what she's been through, what she has known so far, what she's still trying to figure out, and I'm going to link it for you in the show notes. I haven't really known how to talk about all of this, because it feels weird to talk about someone else's health issues as a reason for your own personal emotions shifting or your own workflow kind of changing. But if you have ever had someone you love going through a scary stressful time or dealing with medical shit, being in the hospital, anything like that, you know how much fear and worry and, frankly, anticipatory grief can be involved with that, and so I really appreciate your compassion, as things really slowed down for me. Beyond that, because, of course, that's not the only thing that's going on I live in the United States and Trump sure did get elected for a second term, and so when my partner, jaina Kadlec, and I realized that Trump was indeed going to be taking office for a second term and would almost certainly be targeting queer couples and queer relationships and queer people in general, we decided to get married before the inauguration, and so all of that has really meant that I have been out of commission for most of January with traveling and wedding planning and celebration.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Now, none of this was particularly planned or it was planned pretty quickly, but I am so glad and excited to be back working on Card Talk, to be here with a bunch of episodes ready to go for you, and I again just really appreciate your patience and understanding with this unexpected hiatus. But now that I'm back, I also just want to be frank that I am planning to have, hopefully, a pretty major surgery that I've been trying to get for at least a decade as soon as March, should you know, insurance and doctors and everything allow, which means that in anticipation of that, I'm going to shift Card Talk from being a weekly podcast to being in every other week podcast. This is going to better allow me to schedule episodes far out in advance and hopefully will also mean that I won't need to take another hiatus when my surgery happens. I really want this to be a consistent offering and this is going to help me do that. Now, the surgery obviously will be planned, whereas these other things weren't as planned, so I'll be able to give you a heads up if I do need to take that time away. But I want to do my best to avoid that preemptively, and that means changing up the schedule a little bit and showing myself a little bit of grace in the work that I have to do, um and what will likely be a lengthy and difficult recovery. Frankly, okay, that was a lot of personal updates that you may or may not have cared about, but thank you for your patience. Thank you for listening and for being here and for taking time for my words and my ideas to be part of your day.

Speaker 1: 3:59

Now let's get into the actual tarot of it all. Here on card Talk, we've been doing this little intro series on the different sections of the tarot. I've done episodes introducing the majors and then another episode talking about how to interpret the majors in readings, and then I've done the same kind of pair of episodes for the minor arcana pips or the numbered cards. We have an intro to the pips and then we have a how to read pips in readings. Now the last section that we have to address is the minor arcana court cards, the 16 cards that are often shown as figures or human personalities.

Speaker 1: 4:32

But before we dive into what, for a lot of people, is the hardest to understand section of the tarot, I thought it might be helpful to connect these cards to community building and connections, and to talk a little bit about how we can use tarot for these very things. Now, part of the reason I want to do this is very practical. Court cards can be tricky for a lot of folks and, while I have plenty of things to offer in the intro and reading episodes that I have planned for court cards, I think that seeing them as people and personalities can be a useful way to approach these cards, especially if you're either really new to the tarot or have historically really struggled with these cards. But I also want to do this because Trump just took office here in the United States. I'm recording this episode on Friday, january 24th. He took office just a couple of days ago and it's already been complete chaos.

Speaker 1: 5:21

But beyond the United States, fascism is rising around the world. We are facing collectively, universally, as a global community, rapidly escalating climate disasters, another pandemic when we still haven't really made it through COVID and the last one, a lot of billionaires in a lot of places cracking down on public services and public safety and methods of communication. We're seeing the destruction of social media and we're seeing everything getting more expensive all the time, to name just a few things. Every single person I know is deeply stressed out and scared and also, almost everyone I know feels like they're the only ones who somehow aren't navigating all of the stress very well. Who, who, who are not doing enough to combat all of the things that we are facing. But if you're on social media or you read a lot of newsletters or you're particularly well-read when it comes to fascism or history or community work or mutual aid or organizing or anything like that, you may have heard the expression community is the antidote to fascism and frankly, I could not agree more with the statement.

Speaker 1: 6:26

But there are a lot of different ways to build community and there are a lot of useful things to know about community, and because court cards tend to be the most challenging section of the deck, and because community is something that we all desperately need right now, I wanted to combine these things into one particular topical episode that I just hope will be really supportive and thought provoking and helpful for you in this particular moment. Now. I wrote a whole essay on this particular topic on community and court cards back in November of 2024. This was part of a little essay series that I did called five days of offerings, and I'm going to link both the series and this particular essay into the show notes, but I want to read a part of this essay for you so that you get a sense of what I'm talking about here.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Quote though they can exist in the same groups or with the same people, community and friendship are not necessarily the same thing and do not serve the same functions. And especially right now, when so many people are seeking out community through a lens of mutual aid and activism and when many are being told to build community in order to better survive the world we live in, it's really important to know the difference. End quote. And skipping ahead a little bit, quote we might not want to be best friends with everyone in our community. That's okay. We just have to remember that they are humans and that they are worthy of dignity and respect. In the same way, the court cards represent all kinds of people and energies, some that you may love and others that make you roll your eyes or groan, but each of them have inherent worthiness, along with valuable skills and talents and perspectives that serve different functions. Just because the page of wands isn't the king of pentacles doesn't mean that their gifts aren't impressive in their own right or that their energy can't be helpful somewhere. End quote.

Speaker 1: 8:17

Community is complicated and I think it's particularly easy, especially if you are someone that has historically felt kind of isolated or had trouble fitting into different spaces or making friends or finding your people. I think it's really easy to fall into the trap of believing that the people we are in community with also need to be our friend or should be our friend, or that we can only be in community with people we would also want to be friends with. But if we're only willing or able to connect with people and have empathy and love for people that we want to also have backstory with and history with, and intimacy with, and personal relationship with, it's going to really limit our capacity to show up for people that we might find annoying or frustrating or strange. Those people are still worthy of humanity and dignity and care and respect, even if we think they're really frustrating or don't always understand where they're coming from or what their deal is or why they're acting the way that they are. And what I go on to talk about in that particular essay and what I want to address more deeply here is that court cards can help us specifically learn how to navigate, work with, understand and even learn to enjoy and appreciate personalities or combinations of energy that might feel complicated or weird or uncomfortable or too different than you. If any of this sounds appealing or helpful to you, I'm going to include again a direct link to this essay in the show notes, which also does include a tarot spread that you can use to explore this concept.

Speaker 1: 9:47

But the reason I think this is so relevant right now is because everywhere I look I'm seeing calls for community building. Now this happened the first time that Trump took office as well, and has been an increasing call over the last decade as fascism continues to rise again, not only in the United States but around the world. But community building again is complicated and it takes time and it takes a lot of effort and sometimes it's not always as easy as just joining our neighborhood mutual aid organization and showing up. And especially because wearing a face mask has become this really politicized and criticized act instead of just what it is, which is a simple and effective public health measure, a lot of us who are immunocompromised or disabled can't show up in public spaces, which means that our community building has to be done online, and when our community building is done online, it can be even harder sometimes to recognize the humanity in another person, because we might just be seeing their words or their little avatar and not remembering that there is a whole human being behind that other screen and those lines of text.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Working with the court cards can really be an exercise in humility because it forces us to address what someone else might bring to the table and how that person or that personality or that energy might feel really different than what we ourselves bring to the table. It can allow us to see the value in different approaches and perspectives and histories and it can also show us how different approaches are going to be useful in different circumstances and perspectives and histories. And it can also show us how different approaches are going to be useful in different circumstances or situations. Working with the court cards, whether that's in your readings or in journal entries or through tarot spreads or in literally any other capacity you can imagine, can really help you understand what's showing up for community, what taking care of community and what being in community means for you, what you're really good at, what you really bring to community spaces and also what you might need to work on or what might feel more challenging or complicated or tender for you to navigate, depending on who you are and where you are and what your capacity is. We're all going to have different ways of showing up and I don't want you to discount those ways just because they don't look like what someone else can do or what someone else has to offer.

Speaker 1: 12:02

When we look at all 16 court cards together at the same time as a big group, we might see kind of a motley crew right, we have a lot of different people with a lot of different strengths. We have people of different levels of experience and different areas of interest. We have people with different skills and talents and abilities, and that is a good thing. That is a really cool way to think about community different people with different abilities and talents and perspectives and histories and experiences and knowledge bases and other connections of their own that are all coming together towards a common goal or to take care of one another. Now, you're not going to love every single one of the court cards. Probably, if you work with the tarot long enough, you might learn to really appreciate all 16 figures of the courts.

Speaker 1: 12:47

But chances are there are a couple court cards that feel really uncomfortable or strange or confusing or like bum you out when they show up in readings. And that's fine. That's being a person. We're not all going to get along with every single person we meet every day forever, and so I think it's really powerful to consider which court cards feel comfortable and which ones don't, which court cards we see ourselves in and which ones feel like they might be in opposition to those other cards. Right, working with these 16 figures can really allow us to learn more about who we are, how we want to show up, what skills we bring to the table and also what other kinds of personalities or levels of experience we find the most comfortable. And when we've identified which cards feel the most comfortable, we can also do the inverse right and really start to think critically about which cards feel uncomfortable and why that might be, and what kinds of approaches might be best suited to interacting with or engaging with or even learning from these other cards.

Speaker 1: 13:45

Community work can be uncomfortable, and so can working with the minor arcana court cards. We don't always understand what they're trying to say, just like with people, sometimes these cards require a little bit of additional attention or care or insight. They force us to listen in ways that might be frustrating to us, and I think part of the reason that court cards can be so challenging for people is that people can be challenging for people. We don't always understand where someone else is coming from, and we don't always want to take the time to really ask the questions and engage with what their history is and why they're bringing a certain kind of approach or perspective or opinion to a situation. We don't always have time to do that or have the ability to do that, and while there are lots of ways to build community, both in real life, like in physical spaces, and also in digital spaces, I really do fundamentally believe that learning to get more comfortable navigating the court cards in and out of your tarot readings can genuinely help you learn to understand different personality types and different groups of people in stronger ways. It can really build up those muscles and allow you to learn how to sit with discomfort around personalities that might be really different than your own. Just like working with court cards, learning to build community takes a really long time, and so I really want to encourage you to be patient with this process. Again, I'm going to have two more episodes for you on court cards in general, and I will eventually be doing episodes on every single card in the deck, but in this particular moment in time, if you find yourself struggling to build community, if you find yourself having trouble finding a place where you feel like you fit, or if you find yourself struggling to know what you have to offer or what your capacity is for showing up work with the court cards, I think it will really help you learn to offer or what your capacity is for showing up work with the court cards. I think it will really help you learn to see yourself in new lights and also learn to feel more comfortable engaging with different kinds of personalities. I always like to end with a practical tip or trick in these episodes, and so today's tip comes straight from the essay I shared, which again explores really using court cards to learn more about yourself and your preferences when it comes to community.

Speaker 1: 15:53

Quote. Think about the 16 figures of the minor arcana courts, if you like. Literally grab your tarot deck and pull them all out. Which ones do you relate most to connect with, see yourself in? Which ones do you feel represent you? Which ones do you love to see that feel comfortable or affirming or supportive? End quote. I also want to add which cards do you respect the most? Which cards show up or you look at and you say, wow, I wish I was like that. Which cards do you admire? Quote, and which cards confuse you, frustrate you or upsetting to see in readings. Which cards are harder for you to connect with or understand. Which figures activate feelings of discomfort, which ones bum you out or irritate you or offer personality traits that you don't particularly like and quote. And again I'll add to that, which cards bug you, which cards don't make sense to you, which cards feel like they remind you of someone in your life or that you used to have in your life that you always struggled to connect with or understand. Which cards are hardest for you to empathize with.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Even if you are brand new to the tarot, I really want to encourage you to take some time to look at these 16 cards and think about the vibes that they're giving to you, how they seem, what they feel like if they remind you of someone you know, whether you like that person or not, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 17:15

What is your initial reaction to these cards and what stories might you tell about them? What do you already feel like you know about these figures. I also want to encourage you to think about what might you be misunderstanding about these cards. Which ones feel like friends instinctively and which ones feel like enemies is such a strong word but which cards feel like they might be people that are harder for you to engage with or people that you prefer to avoid?

Speaker 1: 17:41

Now, none of this is about judging the court cards or anything like that, but I do want to push you, regardless of your level of experience with the tarot, to recognize which personality traits can feel the most challenging for you to navigate or connect with, and to really think about how working with specific court cards that might embody those traits can help you learn to hold space for personalities that are difficult for you in real life.

Speaker 1: 18:04

Really being engaged with community is going to require you to occasionally work alongside people you don't really like, and so, if you want to be someone that is more engaged with community and not just be working alongside friends, I think this is a really powerful way to start to reclaim your capacity for community and start to flex those muscles so that you can get more involved in both physical and digital communities for the long haul. That's all I have for you today in this episode of Card Talk, but I will be back soon with the rest of our introductory episodes to the court cards. Thank you again for spending this time with me and I'll see you again soon. Card Talk episodes are always free for everyone to enjoy, so if you love what you hear, please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing, recommending Card Talk to a friend or two or donating to help with production costs. You can find episode transcripts. Learn more about me and join my signature Tarot Conservatory membership program through my website, 3amtarotcom. Thanks for listening and see you next time.