Tarot court card quiz

What the court card quiz tells you

Each of the 16 court cards combines a suit, which gives your temperament, with a rank, which gives your stage of life and the role you tend to play. The quiz scores the two separately, so you find out both how you react and how you lead.

For what each rank and suit means when the card turns up in a reading, see tarot court cards explained.

How the court card quiz works

• Questions 1 to 5 find your suit. Every answer belongs to one suit and gives it one point. The suit with the most points is your temperament.
• Questions 6 to 8 find your rank. They ask how you work in a group, where you are in life and how you treat rules. Each answer gives one point to Page, Knight, Queen or King.
• Ties. If two suits finish level, the one you picked last wins, starting from question 5. If all three rank answers differ, your answer to question 7, about your current stage of life, decides.

Worked example. Say your first five answers are Cups, Cups, Swords, Cups and Pentacles. Cups has 3 points, so your suit is Cups. Your last three answers are Knight, Queen and Queen, so Queen has 2 points. You are the Queen of Cups. Because suit and rank are scored on their own, two people with the same temperament can land on different ranks, and that difference is often the most useful part of the result.

All 16 possible results

Each result has a short title. The full set is below, so you can look at the cards next to yours.

Other ways to find your court card

The quiz reads how you act. Tarot readers use a few other methods, and comparing them with your quiz result can be revealing.

• By zodiac sign. Your sun sign’s element gives the suit: fire signs are Wands, water signs Cups, air signs Swords and earth signs Pentacles. You then pick the rank that fits your age and role. Some decks also tie each court card to a slice of the zodiac, though systems disagree on the details.
• By sorting the cards. Lay out all 16 court cards and sort them into three piles: drawn to, put off by, and neutral. The card you like most often shows who you want to be, and the one you dislike shows the side of you that you keep hidden.
• By keeping track. Note which court card keeps showing up when you read for yourself. Over a few months, one or two usually stand out.

Court cards in relationships

Suits tell you how someone takes in the world, and ranks tell you how they act on it. Ask a partner, friend or colleague to take the quiz, then read both cards side by side:

• Same suit, different rank: you share values but not pace. A Knight of Wands and a King of Wands both love a challenge, but the Knight wants to start today and the King wants a plan.
• Wands with Swords (Fire and Air): lively, fast and full of ideas. Watch for arguments that are more about winning than about the issue.
• Cups with Pentacles (Water and Earth): warm and steady. The risk is getting comfortable and skipping hard conversations.
• Wands with Cups, or Swords with Pentacles: the most different temperaments. These pairs often learn the most from each other once they stop trying to change each other.

For a birth-date view of the same relationship, try the arcana compatibility calculator.

What to do with your court card

• Use it as your signifier. When your card turns up in a spread, the reading is probably talking about you.
• Use the next rank as a stretch goal. A Page of Cups can ask what the Knight or Queen of Cups would do in the same spot.
• Pair it with a Major Arcana card. Your court card shows your everyday style. The persona arcana quiz finds the bigger archetype behind it, and the tarot birth card calculator gives the cards tied to your birth date.