Knight of Swords
The knight of swords in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a rider charging at full course with his sword raised. A. E. Waite read it as skill, bravery, enmity and war.
Meaning
Waite's Key to the Tarot describes the design: "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."
What does the Knight of Swords mean?
Waite's meanings are "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". His list of additional meanings adds "A soldier, man of arms, satellite, stipendiary; heroic action predicted for soldier", and reversed, "dispute with an imbecile person; for a woman, struggle with a rival, who will be conquered".
In older decks
Italian packs call the suit spade, swords; the British Museum's catalogue of 1876 lists it among the suit marks of the earliest cards. Papus reads it as "A young, dark man, an enemy. He is also a spy."
Read next
- Next in Tarot cardsQueen of SwordsThe queen of swords in the tarot's Minor Arcana: a stern queen enthroned, her sword raised upright. A. E. Waite read it as widowhood, sadness, absence and mourning.
- The same shape in Christian symbolsINRIINRI are the initials of the Latin for “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”, the charge the Gospel of John says Pilate had fixed to Christ’s cross. Crucifixes in the Western churches show the four letters on a small board above his head.
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
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from crosses, letters and numbers or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 30, 2026. How we research
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