King of Swords
The king of swords in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a king seated in judgment, holding his sword unsheathed. A. E. Waite read it as judgment, power, command and authority.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "He sits in judgment, holding the unsheathed sign of his suit. He recalls, of course, the conventional Symbol of justice in the Trumps Major, and he may represent this virtue, but he is rather the power of life and death, in virtue of his office."
What does the King of Swords mean?
Waite's meanings are "whatsoever arises out of the idea of judgment and all its connexions-power, command, authority, militant intelligence, law, offices of the crown, and so forth"; reversed, "cruelty, perversity, barbarity, perfidy, evil intention". His list of additional meanings adds "A lawyer, senator, doctor", and reversed, "A bad man; also a caution to put an end to a ruinous lawsuit".
In older decks
In Italian packs the suit is spade, swords: the earliest suit marks, the British Museum's catalogue of 1876 records, were coppe, danari, bastoni and spade, "cups, money, clubs, and swords". Papus reads it as "a dark, bad man; a soldier, a powerful enemy".
See also
The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant.
Sources
- The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A. E. Waite, William Rider & Son, London, 1910 (the sacred-texts.com transcription, on the Internet Archive), The Lesser Arcana; Some Additional Meanings of the Lesser Arcana
- The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus, Chapman & Hall, London, 1896, translated by A. P. Morton (scan on the Internet Archive), The Divining Tarot, second lesson: the minor arcana
- A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, by W. H. Willshire, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1876 (scan on the Internet Archive), General history: the marks of the suits
Last reviewed September 28, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research