Your Chosen Card – Knight of Swords Upright Rider Waite Deck
Knights correspond to the element Fire, which suggests action, enterprise, movement, novelty, and challenge coming into your life. When upright, the Knight of Swords prompts you to take decisive action to defend your rights and protect whatever you hold dear. This clever and assertive knight makes a good ally and a formidable opponent. Like the protagonist of Shakespeares Henry V (1598), the Knight of Swords rallies you with the words: ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.’ He readily connects the dots and is able to cut to the chase in any situation. His arrival is sometimes accompanied by the passing of misfortune. In many ways the Knight of Swords resembles Sir Galahad of Alfred Lord Tennysons 1834 poem of the same name:
Keywords Upright: Assertive, brave, swift, virile, forceful, eager, courageous, decisive, righteous, formidable, industrious, alert, strategic, clever with words, analytical, discerning, skillful; quick action, debate, strategy, clarity of mind, a sharp intellect, a rush to get things done, making drastic changes, defending ones rights, charging into battle, cutting away what no longer serves a purpose, adopting a new perspective.
Decans/Timing: 20 Taurus to 20 Gemini. Tropical, 11 May10 June. Sidereal, 04 June06 July.
Astrology: Fire of Air.
Associated Trumps: The High Priest and the Lovers.
Rider Waite: 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. Divinatory Meanings: A hero of romantic chivalry scattering his enemies, skill, bravery, capacity, defense, 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; (R) imprudence, incapacity, extravagance.
When Knight of Swords is upright you can pretty much take it that life is going well but that’s when life takes us by surprise. If Knight of Swords is unclear it may help to choose a card from the Major Arcana to provide more insight into what it is Knight of Swords is trying to tell you. If you had a particular issue in mind, or want to seek clarification on something else, you can also choose again to get more guidance.
This chosen card is part of your upright card reading for Knight of Swords using cards from the Rider Waite Tarot Deck. You will find many more tarot pages that will be of great help if you need tarot card meanings. Use the search at the bottom of the page. We have some amazing tarot books for you to browse. Please see below.
Here are some snippets from a few of my favorite books
Book Details
Creative Tarot: Which is, essentially, what the imagery of the tarot does as well. Every gesture, every color, every archetype and figure stands in for something greater, something very personal and meaningful to us. Its no wonder, then, that surrealists were drawn to the tarot.
Complete Book of Tarot: The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, published in 1909, undoubtedly the most popular deck of the last century. It has been cloned many, many times.
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Tarot Triumphs: There is not one single ‘true’ Tarot pack because of the variations in traditional designs of the Triumphs and the branching lines of transmission into different countries and cultures. This may indeed be a good thing; the Tarot’s own ‘triumph’ is that the archetypal images on the cards are so strong that the actual designs can take a modicum of variation and still retain their magnetism. Anything genuinely mythical has the capacity to appear in a range of representations: there are many differing images of the Holy Grail or the Green Man, for instance. A good divinatory system has room for adaptation; one where every detail is legislated quickly becomes dated and rigid.2 It is fascinating to compare these differing Tarot designs and to pick out variations in detail, but more as a way of enhancing our understanding and confirming the real essence of the card, rather than pointing the way to a ‘correct’ version of Tarot.