Card Meaning: Queen Of Swords
Element: Air.
Astrology:
Gemini, Libra and Aquarius.
Age: woman of any age.
Appearance: fair/brown hair, grey/green eyes.
General
Watery identity of the feminine card Queen with airy disposition of the Swords
suit again bring to surface potential strife between emotions and intellect.
That is one of the reasons this card traditionally is not deemed a very good
counsel, no matter how high intellectual and intuitive capabilities the Queen of
Swords has. Her face indicates that she is a person that knows much about the
life and that her experience wasn't positive all the time, she surely knows
suffering. Maybe that is the reason her sword is positioned as she is trying to
warn people not to come close, on the other hand she is reaching her hand for
the ones she knows are not going to hurt her. It is interesting that her hand is
showing the direction of the wind, suggesting good support for materializing of
thoughts and ideas into an action. Clouds on the card are stuffed to the bottom
of the card while on the top are clear skies, maybe a message that a clarity of
thought is based on increased awareness through suffering and bad experiences.
The ornaments on the throne and butterflies on her crown suggest that her mind
is swift and her insight almost unpaired. The Queen of Swords is honest, direct
and sharp as a sword. Her wisdom enables her to see through the lies and call
things for what they are. As a such, she is not too popular.
Reading
Positive: independent ,intelligent, subtle, honest, perceptive, astute, direct,
open, autonomy, self-control.
Negative: intolerant, distant, critical, brutal, vengeful, malicious, critical,
frustrated, solitude, deceitful.
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. It does not represent
mercy, and, her sword notwithstanding, she is scarcely a symbol of power.
Divinatory Meanings: Widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence,
sterility, mourning, privation, separation. Reversed: Malice, bigotry,
artifice, prudery, bale, deceit.
— The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, by A.E. Waite