MBTI Courts

[Rachelcat]

I’ve been threatening to share this for many months, and, since I dreamed I was explaining it to someone, here it is! I’ll explain it to you. I’ve worked on this over many years because I remember posting on Aeclectic, and I’ve done two tarot society presentations on it already. And finally learned how to spell "extravert." It’s a long, long post, but bear with me. I hope you read it through and comment.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator posits 16 character types or personalities, a combination of four dichotomies represented by letters. Since there are 16 types, who wouldn’t try to equate them to the 16 court cards?

One appealing thing about linking MBTI types and courts is that obviously the types can apply anyone of any gender and age. If we link them to the courts, we will have court card meanings that are non-gendered and non-developmental.

Some tarotists, including Mary Greer in her Understanding the Tarot Court, have assigned types to court cards in a way I would call intuitive, that is, they matched up the type descriptions to what they feel the court cards represent. I’ve done it a bit differently, by applying the MBTI system to the tarot court system.

What is the MBTI type system? Here’s a graphic representation.

You take a test, and your type is four letters, one each from the four pairs in this list. (Intuitive is N because I is taken for introverted.) For example, I’m an INTJ. Here’s a site where you can take a test and read all about the types. https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

My next steps in correlating to courts are to (1) emphasize the distinction between attitudes and functions and (2) make explicit the implicit idea that the pairs are active-receptive.

I assign attitudes to ranks and functions to suits. (I tried it the other way around, which makes more sense semantically (rank is kind of the same as function, what people do), but doing it that way didn’t correlate well with MBTI type descriptions.)

Kings and wands are all active. Queens and cups are all receptive. Princesses and coins and knights and swords are mixed. (I use “princess” for gender equality and to emphasize the non-developmental aspect. A princess might become a queen, but queen and princess are different jobs, just as king and knight are different jobs.)

This is the result, in an order showing the flow from most active in the upper left to most receptive in the lower right.

I reorganized into “tarot order,” chose keywords from a guidebook, and came up with card titles and non-gendered, non-developmental rank and suit names. Here’s the final product.

Let me know what you think!

[Rachelcat]

Bumping up for TheLoracular! Any anyone else interested, of course!

[TheLoracular]

I love it.

I think you did something ~amazing. I love 16Personalities as a site and take the test every 1-2 months just to see what happens to my numbers out of curiosity and looking at where I fall on the spectrum and what traits probably need a little tempering up and down for better life equilibrium.

I'm better at creating self-development theory than doing self-development work a lot of the time.

I'm always INFJ and the Knight of Cups has always felt like ~me~ at my most me-ness. (with all its strengths and flaws).

Thank you for bringing this up so I could look at it because your system really does feel like the right approach for scraping away some problematic old labels.

[Nemia]

I'm another INFJ, no doubt, I've taken this test many times over the years. Don't we INFJs love our test result

I can't really see the Knight of Cups as INFJ. They're a knight. They may be the most introvert of the Knights on the sliding scale but I see the Knights as extroverts.

But I'll think about your list, it's interesting. I have always felt closer to the Queen of Cups is mine but where is the Judging?

Thank you for getting my brain fired up a bit

Let's not forget that in this system, nobody is 100% Z and 0% Y. We're all sitting on these sliding scales. The longer I think about the types the better I understand that we all have our opposites within us. Small and weak maybe, but they're there.

I like the flexibility. And I like that today, we see the court cards as non-binary.

[TheLoracular]

That is the part where my brain balks too, Nemia. I'm conditioned to think in that very specific pattern of associations. I'm going to lay it all out and map things to each other from the esoteric side of things to see what song it sings to me that way

I've spent this morning with this image of the letters Yod (in YHVH context) and Shin (in Mother Letter Fire) context joyously running around without restraint like kids on a cosmic playground, unconstrained and being the proverbial "spontaneous (Perceiving) outgoing energy (Extroverted)", Explorer rather than "structured (Judging) outgoing energy.

"Fire of Fire" being Spontaneous + Extroverted just feels so right vs. Structured + Extroverted.

but I haven't contemplated and processed the other 15 the same way yet.

[Charlie Brown]

I've glanced this over, not studied it in depth and, on first impression, I want to follow up Nemia's comment about the Knights not being introverted. I have to say I agree with that, but if we restrict ourselves to the Thoth and Turn the Kings into extraverted, judging knights and then have introverted and judging Princes, it's scans a little better to me.