Queen of Swords
The 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.
Meaning
Waite describes the card: "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."
What does the Queen of Swords mean?
Waite's meanings are "widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence, sterility, mourning, privation, separation"; reversed, "malice, bigotry, artifice, prudery, bale, deceit". His list of additional meanings adds "A widow", and reversed, "A bad woman, with ill-will towards the Querent".
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 wicked woman, and her gossip and calumnies".
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