Tarot · Swords
King of Swords
King of Swords - Air
Correspondences
- Element
- Air
- Planet
- Saturn
- Sign
- Aquarius
- Number
- 14
- Yes / no
- Maybe upright, Maybe reversed
Traditional Golden Dawn attributions. The yes / no value is a convention for single-card questions, not a prediction.
Upright
A clear-headed authority, committed to fairness, is guiding this matter.
King of Swords. A clear-headed authority, committed to fairness, is guiding this matter. A King of Swords is judgement used as an instrument: principle, precision, and a detachment that serves the truth and can wound people. Its sign is Aquarius, which stands apart: the outside view, the principle held against the group, and progress that costs belonging. Being Air, it resolves through what is thought and said, and it will need words. Its keyword range runs through fair authority, intellectual power, clear standards, and truth enforced.
Reversed
Authority has become rigid, or truth is being used as a weapon.
King of Swords reversed. Authority has become rigid, or truth is being used as a weapon. Under Saturn, it works by limit, weight and time. Nothing here is quick and nothing here is free, but what it builds does not fall over. Reversed here, it has curdled into its dishonest form: the same shape, emptied of the good faith that made it worth anything. Its keyword range, to be read here as difficulty, delay, or a lesson not yet learned: abuse of power, manipulation, rigid thinking, and cold decree.
About the Tarot
A 15th-century Italian card game that was turned to fortune-telling only 350 years later.
The upright and reversed meanings here follow the mainstream Rider-Waite-Smith reading tradition. A reversed card is treated as the same force blocked, turned inward, or overexpressed - not simply as its opposite.
Full history →Meanings are a guide to a symbolic tradition, offered for reflection and entertainment. They do not predict the future or describe real people or events. See the Terms.