Minor Arcana, the Swords
Queen of Swords
Smith's Queen of Swords, from the deck she drew for Arthur Edward Waite in 1909, is the queen, or third court card, of the suit of swords. She sits in profile on a stone throne above the clouds, holding a sword straight up in her right hand and lifting her left hand, palm up, toward the right.
What Waite wrote it means (1910)
- Divinatory meanings
Widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence, sterility, mourning, privation, separation.
- Reversed
Malice, bigotry, artifice, prudery, bale, deceit.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911), p. 228. Read it in the chapter
Her right hand raises the weapon vertically and the hilt rests on an arm of her royal chair; the left hand is extended, the arm raised; her countenance is severe but chastened; it suggests familiarity with sorrow. It does not represent mercy, and, her sword notwithstanding, she is scarcely a symbol of power.
What's in the picture
- The upright sword. She holds the sword point up, its tip near the top of the card. Her hand grips it just below the crossguard, close to the arm of the throne, where Waite has the hilt resting.
- The open hand. Her left arm is raised, the hand open and palm up, held out toward the right as if to greet someone or to show she holds nothing.
- The tassel. A small tassel hangs from the cuff at her wrist.
- Her face. She is seen in profile, facing right, mouth closed. Waite found her face “severe but chastened”.
- The crown and veil. Her gold crown has rounded points. A red veil falls from it down the back of her head, over dark curls.
- The cloak of clouds. Her blue cloak is patterned with white clouds, so the sky seems to be part of what she wears. An orange band crosses her chest from the shoulder.
- The carved child. On the front of the throne, the face of a child looks out from among stone curls, like a cherub. More carving runs down below it, and the back of the throne curls over at the top like a scroll.
- The clouds. Banks of cloud rise behind her as high as her chest, and dark trees stand at the lower left, by a strip of orange ground.
- The bird. A single bird flies high in the clear blue sky, to the left of the sword, far above the clouds.
The card in brief
- In the deck
- Card 63 of 78
- Arcana
- Minor Arcana, Swords
- Number
- Queen
- Element (Golden Dawn)
- Air
- Title in Book T
- The Queen of the Thrones of Air
- Drawn by
- Pamela Colman Smith
- Planned by
- Arthur Edward Waite
- Published
- London, William Rider & Son, 1909
- Scan
- Pam-A printing, c. 1910, Wikimedia Commons
In the old books
Book T (1912)
A Graceful woman with wavy, curling hair, like a Queen seated upon a Throne and crowned. Beneath the Throne are grey cumulus clouds. Her general attire is as that of the Queen of Wands, but she wears as a crest a winged child's head. A drawn sword in one hand, and in the other a large, bearded, newly severed head of a man.
Intensely perceptive, keen observation, subtle, quick and confident: often persevering, accurate in superficial things, graceful, fond of dancing and balancing.
If ill dignified, cruel, sly, deceitful, unreliable, though with a good exterior.
Book T, “A Description of the Cards of the Tarot”, The Equinox I.8 (London, 1912), pp. 166–167. See the source Papus (1892)
A dark wicked woman. The card also indicates her actions, gossip and calumnies.
Papus, The Tarot of the Bohemians, tr. A. P. Morton (London, 1892), p. 313. See the source
Before 1909
The older cards and pictures behind this one will be shown here once their licences are checked.
The film
No film for this card yet.
Sources
- Waite: the hilt rests on an arm of her royal chair; her countenance is severe but chastened.Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part III, Queen of Swords
Around this card
Before and after it in the deck
The same number in the other suits
All the cards of the Swords, or the whole deck.