Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Tag: Queen of Swords

  • Queen of Swords | House Moving Tale of Woe

    Queen of Swords | House Moving Tale of Woe

    So, Thursday rolled around – the date that we’d all been dreading – the day that my mother was moving to an apartment in an ‘independent living’ complex.

    Why the dread? The flat is lovely and I expect her to be much happier living there with lots of people around her and lots of emergency cords in case she has a fall. BUT she has lived in a 3-bed semi for 56 years and it is pretty full of 56 years of tat.

    By Saturday evening she was a weeping rag of a woman, sitting in her little armchair unable to process any more requests from my SIL or myself about what was to stay and what was to go.

    And my SIL and I were getting tired and fed up – irritated at the sheer volume of crap that we were packing at one end, unpacking at the other end and trying to find a home for.

    The laws of physics states – you cannot cram the entire contents of a 3-bed semi into a 1-bed flat.

    But by God, we have tried.

    I was a ruthlessly efficient Queen of Swords, able to bin off boxfuls of charity lapel pins as easily as my old Mother’s Day presents that had been quietly punted to a shoebox in her wardrobe as soon as every Mother’s Day was over.

    My SIL was more caring – constantly monitoring my mother’s physical needs over the day – cups of tea, glasses of water, enforced breaks for lunch etc.  A healthy Queen of Pentacles.

    ‘What about this?’ I say tersely as I stand before her holding a china nut-bowl in a raffia basket.

    “I am taking that with me,” says mother defiantly.

    “When was the last time you used this, mum?” I ask (knowing full well that it has never been out of its box). 

    “I’m planning on having some get togethers in my new flat.  I’ll need it.”

    I pack it with a sigh.

    I pull out another nut bowl, this time with bright Spanish-style flowers painted on it.  “Can I put this one in the charity box then?” I ask.

    Out comes the hankie.  “No,” she weeps.  “That was the last thing that your dad bought me on our last holiday together.”

    Only someone with a heart of stone would have thrown it into the charity box.  I considered it, because I am that heart of stone.

    “Could you maybe just take this one and put out the other one?”

    Mum shakes her head.  “No, the other one was a gift from Old Andrew, my old friend from the art class.  Do you remember him?”

    I do.  I also know that Old Andrew was probably glad to get rid of the raffia-swaddled nut bowl back in 1971 when he passed it on to mum.

    And so the days went on …. and out of 3-bedrooms, we have only one large box of outgoing items for the Salvation Army.  We have moved, however, many, MANY boxes of stuff that SHOULD go to the Salvation Army into her new house.

    So, here’s what this Queen of Swords would advise you all who are still to move their aged parents.

    1     Start thinning down everything NOW, long before your folks need to move – clothes, the drinks cabinet, the contents of the garage,  bedding, kitchen cupboard stuff.   Does my mother need THREE vacuum cleaners for a 1-bed apartment. A 1-bed apartment that she will pay a cleaner to actually clean for her.  Apparently she does.  *rolls eyes* 

    2     Try to encourage your folks to see objects as are they are, not as the stories they attach to those objects.  Those stories tie you to that clutter.  Without that story would you want that thing in your life? Old Andrew lives on in my mother’s heart, not in his nut bowl. 

    3    Prepare for your own move – to sheltered housing or even just your next house move – and thin down your own stuff.  I’m starting this week!

    4    Stop buying new stuff unless you are replacing old stuff.  I promise you, you do not need 15 coats, mum.

    5    Don’t hang on to things just because they are ‘good’ or may be useful.  Get ‘good’ stuff that you don’t ever use out into the charity boxes so that someone else WILL find it useful.

    6    Don’t put out anything shabby for the charity shops.  If it’s not fit for you to wear/use, it won’t be fit for anyone else either.

  • Feminism | The Tarot Queens

    For the past ten days or so, I have been feeling as though I am living through the looking glass – and it’s not good, with cake that says ‘Eat Me’. I’m not even an American.  What a challenge it is to be a liberally-minded American at the moment, because:

    YES, Trump wants to build an actual wall.

    YES, Trump shuts out Syrian refugees from America (allegedly for only a set period of time. We’ll see)  Dear America, what happened to ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore’?

    How sad that it should come to this. (more…)

  • Crow Moon| March 2016 |

    The March full moon has a lovely selection of names that speak of the quickening of the soil and the spirit of Spring:

    Sap Moon
    Worm Moon
    Crow Moon
    Lenten Moon

    I have chosen the Crow Moon to celebrate the full moon of the 23rd because I am surrounded by the flappy black blighters.

    Lots of people hate them – frightening off the songbirds from the bird tables as they craftily work out how to burgle your squirrel-proof feeder.


    They are absolutely the noisiest neighbours in the history of Christendom.

    Many years ago, we were in a BBC Scotland gardening programme called The Beechgrove Garden.  When the producer turned up to ask me some preliminary questions, he was astounded by the amount of noise that the crows were making.  I was surprised- after half a dozen years, they failed to even register with me as being vocal!

    Now nearly 20 years later, I adore my great dark neighbours.  They’re clever, cruel and vastly entertaining to watch.

    I’ve hand-reared fallen chicks – wary-eyed feather dusters – with, erm, let’s say, VARYING degrees of success.

    I’ve rescued one who dangled by a claw from a bird feeder.

    I love their rhythms – wheeling noisily into the sky at dawn and then at dusk dropping into the treetops and settling in waves, like a black tide.

    At this time of year they toil through the skies clutching enormous twigs (usually the spring clippings from some garden border!) often so large that if one plummets from a distracted beak, you can get quite a startle as it clatters onto the pavement!

    The Crow Moon is, for me, a time when Spring arrives proper.  The ground is warming up, the sap is rising, the worms are working madly beneath the ground, pushing up their casts onto lawns all over the land.

    I choose The Queen of Swords from the Mary El to illustrate the Crow Moon.

    What is pulsing into life?

    The creative intellect of the Queen of Swords is what!

    As the year gathers power, so does our Swords energy – communication, brain stuff, book-learning, natural intelligence …. coupled with the Queen’s spirit – protective, nurturing and creative.

    Got a creative project lurking inside you? The Queen is telling you to Get. On. With. it.

  • Tarot Queens | Mothers’ Day

    Last year’s Mother’s Day Tokens
    Still unspent!

    Originally Mothers’ Day was when people returned to their Mother Church.  These days, Mothers’ Day has become a Hallmark schmaltz-fest directed at Mothers everywhere.  In the UK we have Mothering Sunday on the 6th.

    Yes, we know that it’s all a big commercial CON, but woe betide the child who fails to proffer up SOMETHING.

    Sonshine is very partial to buying me mugs.  And the odd musical teddy-bear.  I am hopeful this year of a scented candle 🙂

    The tarot’s Queens are nurturers, guardians and teachers, but how do they mother!?

    Queen of Cups

    Loving. Verily, even in the face of slammed doors and crispy sports socks discovered beneath the bed.  The Queen of Cups represents those times when the temperature of your relationship with your offspring is in the desirable range – loving, caring, empathetic, understanding, friendly. BUT she can also be an emotionally manipulative Quine* if she doesn’t get her own way.

    Mother most likely to:  Keep every scrappily-coloured in heart and crayoned card you ever made for her.

    Queen of Swords

    This is Mrs Sensible Head.  She’s not terribly happy about going along with the Tooth Fairy DECEPTION and if you have a Queen of Swords mother, you will probably be the first in your group to find out that Santa Claus IS NOT REAL. Keen to engage you in philosophical conversation, questions such as ‘Where do dogs go when they die?’ and ‘Was Jesus a real person?’ are the stuff of LIFE to this Queen!!

    Mother most likely to:  Tell you that it’s ‘for your own good’, no matter what.  Bad Cop is a role she is prepared to embrace.  For your own good. Of course.

    Queen of Pentacles

    This Queen is everyone’s favourite aunty – she’s the BEST gift-giver and the comfort-food queen.  When you are ill, she makes you chicken soup and ensures that your pillows are plumped and your bedding is fresh.

    Mother most likely to:  Make you a Tracey Island Thunderbirds birthday cake. Even though you’re 40.  Because she knows that you’ve always wanted one.

    Queen of Wands

    This is the most conflicted Queen – her fiery and watery natures do not sit comfortably together and she can struggle to keep it all together.

    Too much emotional luffy-wuffy neediness seeping her way and she feels dragged down and restricted.  But too much fiery assertiveness can burn out any emotional connection to a frazzled shadow and she can seem like an emotionally cool or unavailable mother.

    The mother most likely to:  Not be able to articulate how much she loves you.  Even though she does.  Also, she may fail to kiss your knee to make it ‘all better’.  But she will take you on the most amazing adventures.

    Which one represents your style of mothering? Or your mother’s style of mothering?

    HAPPY MOTHERING SUNDAY WHEN IT COMES!
    Morgan Greer Tarot – Amazon uk
    *Quine – Aberdonian word, queen
     – when referring to any woman, not an actual queen.
    Short-lived (but much-loved) Scottish Magazine
    was called Harpies and Quines 😀 

  • Queen of Swords | Alexander Daniloff

    I have purchased a companion for the beautiful Queen of Hearts that was gifted to me by Alexander Daniloff: the Queen of Swords.
    Isn’t she pretty and sweet-natured? A far cry from the unhappy profile and bolt-upright sword that we associate with the Rider Waite Smith Queen of Swords, below.

    Often this lady is interpreted flatly as a woman alone/lonely with a harsh tongue as sharp as her sword:  Brainy, but not very nice.  This is certainly PART of the picture, but she is soooo much more than that!

    Add Alexander’s lovely Queen to your mental ‘Queen of Swords’ repertoire! Think of the word play of Dorothy Parker (‘if all the women in this room were laid end to end….I wouldn’t be at all surprised’).

    Alexander’s Queen is the woman at the party who can engage everyone in delightful conversation – chatting as easily with the children as she does with the Lords and Ladies of the land.

    She is a social butterfly – popular and witty.

    Her conversation can be as light as the clouds and as sweet as angels.

    But …

    Irritate her with your clumsy bumbling or try to impress her by embroidering on the truth (or out and out lying!) and you will be smacked down by the barb in her waspish comment.

    Be careful or it will be YOU who finds yourself frozen out of the party scene 🙂

    Fancy one of these paintings for yourself? Check out what Alexander has available here on his facebook page  or on his website

  • Pholarchos Tarot | Carmen Sorrenti |

    Queen of Swords
    You can never have too many owls!

    Amongst the presentations at the Tarot Museum’s garden parties was a display of four Tarot Queen paintings by Carmen Sorrenti.  


    There was so much going on and loads of people interested in talking with Carmen, I waited until I got home and then dropped her an e-mail to see whether she was up for being interrogated interviewed for m’blog.


    Fortunately for you, dear reader – she is!
    Me:  Fantastic images you’ve got going here, Carmen – you need to tell me aaaaallll about your self and your deck! 


    First of all – how did you get involved in creating Tarot art – Did your background in acting attract you to the Tarot? 

    Carmen:  “Yes, I was an actress, trained at The Guildhall in London. The theatre is a great place for exploring different worlds. I want each image to be first and foremost an inner feeling.

    Carmen!

    “Where possible, by Grace, I want to recreate the atmospheres of potent dreams where colours are more vibrant, the air has a numinosity about it – the inner experience of the archetype, a full on immersion rather than an illustration – like becoming, for a moment, the inner workings of the card. Perhaps it is tied to that famous God of Theatre, Dionysus, and his ecstatic abandon.

    “Later I did some work with the Jodorowskys and their magic acts which are tied to tarot readings with the Marseille deck. So it is the first deck I got to know in more detail.
    “This led me into an intense year of Grof’s holotropic breathwork. I had a remarkable dream during that time to do with tarot, just as I was setting up my first painting exhibit:
    ” ‘I am drawing horse dragons and a potent teacher who uses tarot shows me a thick esoteric manual they all use in the school, their reference manuscript, so I can see how they depict these creatures. A gold object the size of a die falls out and 3 mystery women comment.’

    “So it would seem simultaneous seeds were being planted.
    “Shortly after I started studying astrology at the CPA and got very caught up in the Mythic Tarot. Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene recorded a fabulous audio course on it, which I listened to rather obsessively.”

    Me: You have an amazing link with the Tarot!

    Carmen: I was born shall we say, ‘under its auspices’.  My mother saw her card reader when she was barely a month pregnant. Pina [the reader] saw the pregnancy and warned mum the baby risked dying, but would survive – to remember this.

    Sure enough in the 70s in Positano without a phone, no doctors in town, living alone, she woke in the night in a pool of blood and ran down 300 steps to find help. It was only the tarot reader that kept her focus firm and her spirits up when the doctor finally arrived. 


    Thirty years later I met my partner at the cafe in which Pina’s apartment had been.

    Me:  That’s really spooky!  Is this your first deck or have you been involved in the creation of other decks? 

    Carmen:  I’ve only been involved in the creation of one other deck, for Oltreconfine 13. The book was published last year with the images of 22 different artists and several related articles. I painted The Moon, which was later chosen as one of the winners of the Premio Giorgione, an alchemical art prize in Vicenza.


    Me:  Is there an over-arching theme to your deck? 

    Carmen: “Alchemical symbolism is one of the threads that runs thru the deck – the nigredos/blackenings where some precious thing is found/transformed and integrated into an always greater whole. In fact the Aces are all blindfolded heads where the suit rises out of the top of the cranium. Beginnings where the potential is there, not yet visible to us but fully present.

    Me:  Will your deck be 78 cards?  Is the structure of it entirely your own making or is it related to the RWS, Thoth or Marseille decks? 

    Carmen:  “Pholarchos will be a full 78 card deck which will follow the RWS pretty much… as far as I know! The cards do come in with some surprises… I played with the idea of a deck for ages and every time I put it down, thinking I wouldn’t be up to it, I was metaphorically grabbed by the hair and made to sit up and listen; one of them would be there sat cross-legged, foot swinging impatiently. Okay, I’m being a bit silly, but feelings along those lines 🙂


    “Pholarchos, I should say something about the name of my deck. A pholarchos basically a dream incubator in a cave. Perhaps we’re talking about  the precursors to the dreamers in the temples of Asclepius. There’s some mystery around the use of the word, I go with the version of ‘lord of the lair’… lair as in animal den. And like an animal they would lie there in suspended animation waiting for healing/prophetic dreams. There’s a beautiful book that goes into detail: Peter Kingsley ‘s “In the Dark Places of Wisdom”.

    “This ties in with the theme of my deck. I have a detailed presentation on my website:
     http://www.carmensorrenti.com/Home-PHOLARCHOS_TAROT-2-37.html 

    “It’s to do with us remembering the power of Direct Experience.

    “We’re so used to relying on what we are told, seeking information out in the world, all very valid – and with my gemini ascendant I’m a culprit of info gathering!

    “But we so often forget our other channels of knowledge which are deep and timeless. We think wisdom gets lost, it is always there, often dormant – another reason for the blindfolded Aces.

    “For 2 years I dreamed constantly of plants giving me messages. Each had its own specific presence, showing me, amongst other things, that plant intelligence is not generic.They reminded me of this original way of knowing, thru dreams and thru tuning in.   I woke from several of them knowing that something at the origins, something essential had been lost along the way. And I had to remember this kind of communication.

    “Now if I want to know, for example, about the properties of a plant, I listen first to the plant, then check with other sources. And so with everything else.”

    Me:  These four Queens, tell me about your Royal families – what is the structure of them – Page, Knight, Queen, King…. or something different?!
    Carmen: “I’m using the classical court names except for the Pages who become Ladies for a simple gender reason. We get 2 pairs, the brothers and sisters of alchemy. 

    “Even the Magician is a mercurial hermaphrodite with a female head and a male head who is performing alchemical unions of opposites. Below his male head is an alembic-cup alchemizing the wolf/moon femininity, while below the female head we get the cup with the dragon and the sun.

    “I’m also keeping cups/swords/wands/pentacles. I interchange them with air/water/fire/earth when I work as my take on them is linked to the elements and astrology.

    Me:  What medium do you work in – oils, acrylics etc?  
    Carmen:  I use mainly acrylics – some of the faster images get coffee and candle burns on the canvas. I did some portraits on loose canvas for a theatre production of Don Giovanni’s lovers. It was set in an underground ancient space in the centre of Rome, cavernous and damp. They needed to blend in, raw and lived in. I want some of the images to show more of the unconfined energy involved, rather than the form fully manifest in it’s pristine and presentable skin, its ‘mask’. It got me thinking. The strokes are much faster and less precise, they bump into each other and the life around them.
    Me:  How do you decide what elements to include in your paintings – the more I look into them, the more I can see.  The Queen of Wands, for example, has a fire triangle present, also a slash of cool blue at her forehead which (for me!) works perfectly with this idea that she is both water and fire – two elements that constantly war, one threatening to cancel out the other.  Well, that’s what I see anyway, but you’re the artist! Explain the card to me *grin* 
    Queen of Wands

    Carmen:  “The spray of blue water in the Queen of Wands!  Of course with any layered image there are several levels of meaning, as with dreams – it’s partly what interests me about a symbol.

    “So I’ll pull out one strand I’m keen on. The elements are never pure within us, luckily! Fire by itself can consume you right through. I have an amusing anecdote about my father.

    “He has a major astrological conjunction in aries and fittingly, he competes in professional marches in which he pushes himself so hard you find him screaming on the track as he goes, refusing to stop no matter what. He’s been known to collapse at the finishing line where they’ve had to scoop him up and carry him into a hot bath (water element) to soothe the general cramping paralysing his body.
    This kind of vulcanic outpouring can take you far, can create empires even, but it can also burn you to a crisp unless it is touched by the rhythms of water, the ebb and flow, the dark lunar moisture, the emotional needs and deep undercurrents.
    Water and fire fight, but they need each other.

    “All these Queens have some hybrid nuance.  I see them as those who can manage their element, keep its balance, know it deeply – alchemical containers. So this involves bringing in the other elements where necessary.
    “Each one has at least one animal friend that she dialogues with.
    Queen of Cups

    “The animals represent the element as much as the Queens do.

    “Cups has coral spawning; it seems that, led by the full moon at the end of summer, all coral across the world spawns in unison. She also has the wild cat, the feral, dangerous emotions she knows how to navigate.

    “Wands has the snakes/dragon of regeneration.

    “Swords has the far sighted owls.

    “Pentacles has the Venusian bull sumptuously munching. Well, that’s me messing around, humour is my sanity check in all this.

    “Each painting is like a mini production with its characters, stories, struggles, hopes – where I can tell the whole story as opposed to just my part. I guess I was always more of a storyteller than an actress, one role is too confining.
    Queen of Pentacles
    you need a comb for that fringe!

    Me:  What’s your favourite card so far?

    Carmen:  “My favourite is probably the Delphic High Priestess, her head cracked open to the voices she hears. It reminds me of the Pythia’s words at the beginning of Aeschylus’ Eumenides:
    “First, in this prayer, of all the Gods I name 
    The prophet-mother Earth; and Themis next, 
    Second who sat – for so with truth is said – 
    On this her mother’s shrine oracular.”
    (Morshead’s translation)
    Me:  What card are you least looking forward to creating?
    Carmen:  “The hardest card might be the Devil but not for the content. It’s the fixity of the image in the collective imagination – the horns, leering eyes and eternal flames, the opposite of God with the long white beard. Like fossils. I want to get away from how we expect to see the Devil.
    “The Tens are hard too, as they have a lot to do with having arrived somewhere, a completness. Painting is high adventure for me, with horse and armour. A Ten is like someone saying;  ‘we’ve arrived at the castle gates, journey over, get down now’.  I don’t think so…
    Me:  How long will it take you to complete the deck?   And after completion – what next?! 
    Carmen:  “I’m hoping I’ll be done this time next year. Might be a bit ambitious, I’ll have to check in with the cross-legged lady! Publishing has a few options open so we’ll see how it pans out.
    “I would also like for the exhibit of the original paintings to tour and for it to be an event with music, poetry and performance celebrating the Tarot. This could even combine seminars with people creating their own cards in different mediums.
    Me:  That sounds like a fantastic event – you can count me in on a return to Riola to celebrate this!
    “Carmen:  Good! I’d like to thank Arnell Ando and Michael McAteer for inviting me to the Tarot Museum in Riola during your Tarot tour. They are really inspiring people.

    You can find Carmen’s work at:

  • Your Tarot Court Card Theme for 2015

    Just a bit of Tarot Court Card fun to kick us off into the New Year!

    Lots of tarot buzz on Social Media about THEMES for the year, as inspired by the Major Arcana card that your personal year correlates to.

    To find our what your personal year card is, take your day and month of birth and add to 35 (ie 20+15, the current year).

    Here’s an example: mine!

       13
    +  8
      35
      56


    Since there is no Major Arcana card numbered 56 (hey, we’re not using Minchiates here, people!), these digits need to be further reduced by adding them together, giving us a total of 11.

    My theme for the year will be inspired by Justice (or Strength, depending what sort of deck you are using).  I’m going for Justice 🙂

    But since my blog focuses on the Court Cards, I thought we’d have a little fun and extend the exercise further:

    Instead of adding up your digits, above, until they total 22 or under (ie the number of Major Arcana cards we have), total them up until they are 17 or less.

    I numbered the Page of Pentacles, the lowliest of the lowly, as 1.  But your numbers will not reduce to one, so I’ve also accorded him 17 (because he’s also VERY special, as well as being the lowliest of the lowly).

    So, if you add up to 17, then you are having a Page of Pents year 🙂

    Taking my example again, this means that my 11 – Justice year – becomes further compounded by Court Card 11…. wouldn’t you believe it?! The Queen of Swords!

    Have a try yourself and tell me who you end up with as your Court Card theme for the year!

    Page of Pents (1) or 17
    Page of Cups 2
    Page of Swords 3
    Page of Wands 4

    Knight of Pents 5
    Knight of Cups 6
    Knight of Swords 7
    Knight of Wands 8

    Queen of Pents 9
    Queen of Cups 10
    Queen of Swords 11
    Queen of Wands 12

    King of Pentacles 13
    King of Cups 14
    King of Swords 15
    King on Wands 16

  • Salvador Dali | Tarot in Art | King and Queen of Swords

    I first fell under the spell of Salvador Dali via his magnificent Christ of St John which was bought (amidst great public hooha – petitions and irate letters to the newspapers) for Glasgow City Council’s Kelvingrove Museum in the 1950s.

    I regularly visit the museum to visit the quiet and contemplative little space they have created for the painting.

    From there I was entranced by soft watches that melted like plasticine on a radiator and spindly-legged creatures that roamed fantastical landscapes.  And amidst the hurricane of clever visuals that appealed to children and art collectors alike, he created a set of Tarot cards.

    And no, I don’t own a copy…… *weeps sadly into her morning coffee*

    ……YET *flicks gaze sideways to make sure hubby isn’t listening*

    The deck was published when the artist was 80 years old – a tribute to his wife and muse, Gala .

    I came across these two beauties which were sold at Christies in London back in 2008.  They had been bought from an anonymous seller five years earlier (also at Christies) and were now being sold by the Judith and Abraham Amar Foundation, in aid of charity.  

    Dali’s work is not always actually Dali’s work, but this King and Queen have been authenticated by the late Robert Descharnes and his son Nicolas, both internationally acclaimed experts in Dali’s work.
    The two images are about A4 sized and are gouache and collage on paper.  With their butterfly motifs, these were both intended to be the images for his Tarot deck’s King and Queen of Swords.  However, in the completed Tarot deck, the King has lost his butterfly motif and has been transformed into the King of Cups.
    And their sale price?
    Queen  £12,500
    King £10,625
    You’re going to need more than a paper-round to finance your Tarot in Art addiction 😀
    Ever purchased a bit of Tarot art from an artist that you love?

  • Court Couples | King and Queen of Swords

    Court Couples | King and Queen of Swords

    The Fey Tarot published by Lo Scarabeo is one of my favourites, even though it’s jam-packed with fairies, I confess.  I find that it’s a great deck to read with, especially if you’re a RWS devotee.

    Today I’m presenting the King and Queen of Swords to you *sweeps a long, low bow*…..

    I’m a little bit in love with this King of Swords, if I’m honest.

    Even though the wind buffets him relentlessly, blowing the autumnal leaves hither and thither, he remains at his post.  The scars of battle (life? love?) have marked him and even on his throne he is clad for conflict.

    His hands are encased in armour- even his finger tips – can he no longer feel anything (emotionally? physically?)  Does he need to remember that you don’t need your armour at all times, that sometimes it’s safe to let yourself be exposed? Even if it leads to more wounds?

    His consort is the Queen of Swords.  Her hair tumbles around her face and shoulders like water and she gazes out at us with a serious demeanor.  Unlike the king who is in some desolate wilderness, she is in a built-up area – civilisation.   And indeed this Queen is erudite, witty, clever and – I suspect – an excellent dancer and chess player.

    If the eyes are windows to the soul, what are the windows in this card? The eyes of the soul?  Although she is beautiful, her blue lips and skin tone make her chilly-looking – ‘Noli Mi Tangere‘

    Does she look like the sort of woman that the King needs to cuddle up to?!

    Maybe her sword, emblazoned onto her third eye, cuts her off from the King.  Introspective and thoughtful, I can imagine the verbal traps that she could set for him (‘what do you mean my bum doesn’t look big in THIS? Are you saying that it looks big in other things?’)

    Even when you switch the King and Queen around, there’s not much change in the tension between them, is there?

    The Fey Tarot has colours allocated to the suits and Swords are allocated red – something that I associate more with Wands, to be honest.  The passion of red doesn’t really suit the cerebral approach of the Swords family – but here, I think it works on these two cards.  I think their love of order and of duty – doing The Right Thing, just because it IS the right thing – doesn’t mean that they don’t have strong passions – far from it.  And the red border reminds me that they are passionate people.

    But I wonder where that leaves them?

    Perhaps if I got into full Queen of Wands mode, I could persuade him to come down from that throne and step out of his armour?!

    The Fey Tarot is published by Lo Scarabeo,  accompanying book by Riccardo Minetti, artwork by Maria Agham.

    King | Queen | Swords | Fey Tarot | Tarot Thrones

  • Meet the Swords!

    So far we’ve met the Wands family and today it’s the turn of the Swords – which is entirely appropriate given the recent Spring Equinox.  As with the Wands, I find that taking a look at the rest of the Swords realm gives me good clues as to what I can expect from the ruling family.

    Decision, Frustration, self-limiting beliefs, grief, thought, mental agility, drama queen behaviour, honesty

    In my system, Swords are associated with:

    Air
    Spring Equinox
    Dawn
    Mental faculties/communication
    East

    Other systems are available, so just find one that works for you and stick with it!

                   

    The first thing that I notice about these two cards is the wind lifting their clothing and hair.  Their thrones are quite plain – which suits them, they’re plain-speaking sort of people. Behind them both we have a sky unfolding into a bright, but cloudy dawn.  The landscape that they sit in is harsh, with little in the way of greenery to take the hard edge off.  The Queen at least sits by a distant tree – but it looks gnarled by the wind at best or bonsai-ed to tiny, clipped perfection by the Queen’s blade.

    Neither of the two of them looks much like fun.

    The King engages with us, looking out directly, but the Queen faces off to the right, her eyes downcast, focusing on the blade in her hand.  She is barefoot – on stone – her feet will be cold; she feels austere, distant.  She looks self-contained.  What do you think her positioning with her back to her Consort means.  Even if you place them the other way around, she is still not engaged with him, her gaze is elsewhere.

    The King of Swords is Fire of Air – a productive mingling of elements that means he is well-suited to his Kingly role – able to take action, but more importantly, able to think through the ramifications of his actions before he steps away from his throne. But left unattended – air and fire can rage out of hand! He’s not got great emotional input into what he does – he’s hard on others, and hard on himself too.

    The Queen is Water of Air – another blending of elements that show that her emotional base and her thoughts are quite congruent (think of air and water coming together to make bubbles!) Although she doesn’t look it, there IS an effervescence about the Queen of Swords.  Witty and clued-up, she’s ideal company at a party.  Just watch out that she doesn’t get too handy with that little blade though – her honesty can be cutting.

    Traditionally, she is associated with a woman on her own.  Not necessarily a widow or divorcee.  One can be married and feel quite alone too.

    They both seem older than the Wands – the King with his high forehead (receding hair?!) and the Queen with her beautiful grey locks.

    What about the Juniors?

    The Prince of Swords is not on a hilltop like his parents – therefore he’s not got the same breadth of vision as they do.  Look at the Wind in this card!  The grass is blown flat, his cloak flies out behind him.  This character is Air of Air – with no other elements to moderate him.  He’s someone whose thoughts are still being formed and as a result, he flies about – latching on to one thing only to discard it when he learns something else.  Consistency is not his strong point!

    Although his parents have their swords drawn, neither of the two of them look much like they are going to give you a jab.  Not so the Prince of Swords – shield up, sword out, riding to the attack.  He has much in common with the Prince of Wands – both rattle into action at the drop of a hat – but whereas the Prince of Wands is motivated by the thrill of the chase, the Prince of Swords is motivated by what he believes is right or wrong.  Trouble is, he’s not always right about what he thinks is wrong!

    The most junior member of the clan is the Princess of Swords.  Again, a lot of wind in this card! The Princess’s robes are whipped almost to shreds by the wind blowing around her.  Like her mother, she stands barefoot, but unlike her mother, her stony surroundings are tempered into softness by the beauty of spring blossom.

    As far as elemental associations go, the Princess of Swords has the most trouble – she’s Earth of Air.  Look how she winds a green ribbon (earth) around her blade (air).  That’s just going to get ripped to bits!  Still, she’s got to learn…..also, she might want to think about how she’s holding her sword – that’s going to be a lot worse than a paper cut!

    Blessed with a quick mind, The Princess is also shackled to a slow experiential curve.  She’s keen to learn a lot of things, but it will take time to put them into practise – this can manifest as frustration, bad temper, and a tendancy to gossip…and shredded ribbons 🙂

    What do you think about the Swords?

    The Sword family are provided courtesy of the DruidCraft Tarot.  Published by Eddison Sadd (Connections). Artwork Will Worthington and words by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm.