Knight of Cups

A knight in pale armour with peacock wings rides a white horse over the sea, holding a cup from which a crab emerges; his crest is a peacock with open tail.

The Yod of the Heh: Fire of Water, the most internally contradictory of the courts, since Fire and Water are enemies; his brilliance is real but his power evaporates. He rules the last decan of Aquarius (the Seven of Swords) and the first two of Pisces (the Eight and Nine of Cups). Crowley's hexagram, 54, the Marrying Maiden, is a warning about affection without foundation.

Rules Seven of Swords (Aquarius III, The Moon), Eight of Cups (Pisces I, Saturn), Nine of Cups (Pisces II, Jupiter). The courts of the twelve arcs each take the last decan of one sign and the first two of the next, so that every court contains a hidden tension between two signs.

Crowley builds each court's hexagram from two trigrams, the suit below and the rank above: Cups give Lake, Knights give Thunder. The result is hexagram 54, Kuei Mei, the Marrying Maiden (Thunder over Lake). See I Ching and the courts.

Feeling in its most extraverted, fiery form: the romantic who falls in love with love. The internal Fire-Water conflict shows as enthusiasm that cannot sustain itself. The four ranks are often read as the four ways the suit's function can be lived: the Knight extraverted and initiating, the Queen introverted and sustaining, the Prince as its intellectual form, the Princess as its embodied form.

This card corresponds to the Rider-Waite King of Cups. Crowley renamed the ranks to follow the letters of the Name: Knight (Yod), Queen (Heh), Prince (Vau), Princess (final Heh), so that the Thoth Knight is the Waite King and the Thoth Prince the Waite Knight. The figures' mounts follow the Golden Dawn: Knights on horses, Queens on thrones, Princes in chariots, Princesses on foot.

Aquarius (“I know”): originality, idealism, friendship, independence, objectivity, reform. Shadow: detachment, contrarianism, cold intellectualism, stubborn ideology, aloofness.

Pisces (“I believe”): compassion, imagination, spiritual sensitivity, artistry, empathy, selflessness. Shadow: escapism, victimhood, confusion, deception, addiction, lack of boundaries.

The card holds the last ten degrees of Aquarius and the first twenty of Pisces, so its character is mostly Pisces with a trace of the sign before. Anyone born Feb 9 – Mar 10 has this as their court card. Find a birthday.