Queen of Tarot

The ancient wisdom of the cards

Knight of Swords Tarot Card Meaning and Art Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Designation

Knight of Swords

About the Deck

Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Pivotal and canonical, this deck defined a new pattern that would be followed up to the present. I made a digitally retouched and painted version of this deck, which I call the "Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck". The cards from that deck, as well as a modern English translation of the romantic English descriptions by Arthur Edward Waite (as appear on the Waite Smith Tarot deck) appear in a cross-referenced format in my book, "A Concise Guide to the Tarot: In Vivid Color"

Provenance

Designed by A.E. Waite and Illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. England, 1911.

Tags

swords-12, knight-of-swords, knight, swords

Description

He is riding in full course, as if scattering his enemies. In the design he is really a prototypical hero of romantic chivalry. He might almost be Galahad, whose sword is swift and sure because he is clean of heart.

Meaning of Knight of Swords from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Upright

Skill, bravery, capacity, defence, address, enmity, wrath, war, destruction, opposition, resistance, ruin. There is therefore a sense in which the card signifies death, but it carries this meaning only in its proximity to other cards of fatality.

Reversed

Imprudence, incapacity, extravagance.

According to Many Schools of Thought

Papus's Divinatory Meanings

Young dark man. An enemy. A spy.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

Upright

A soldier, man of arms, satellite, stipendiary; heroic action predicted for soldier.

Reversed

Dispute with an imbecile person; for a woman, struggle with a rival, who will be conquered.

S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings

Upright

A Soldier, a man whose profession is arms, Skilfulness, Capacity, Address, Promptitude

Reversed

A conceited fool, Ingenuousness, Simplicity.