Queen of Swords

The picture

A queen sits in profile on a stone throne, and the throne is above the clouds. They bank up on both sides of her and the only ground in the card is a small strip at the very bottom.

Her right hand holds a sword upright. Her left is raised, palm open and turned up, extended toward the space in front of her.

The crown is set with butterflies. The armrest ends in a crescent. A cherub's face is carved into the side panel. Her cloak is patterned with clouds.

One bird flies in the clear air above her.

Upright

Judgement made honest by experience rather than merely sharpened by it.

Waite writes that her face is familiar with sorrow, and that is what separates this card from cleverness. The discernment was paid for, and the price is why it can be trusted.

The open hand matters as much as the blade. She is not only cutting; she is receiving — listening, taking the thing in, letting it get all the way to her before she assesses it. This is the figure who will tell you the truth and has earned the standing to.

She is wearing the clouds

Her cloak is printed with cloud shapes, and she is sitting above the clouds.

That is a specific piece of drawing and it is not decoration. She has been in the weather. It is on her — worn, carried, part of what she puts on — and she is now sitting at an altitude where the weather is beneath her and the air is completely clear.

Both facts are required. Somebody who had never been in the cloud would have nothing on the cloak and no reason for the sorrow in the face; somebody still in it could not see the single bird or hold the blade that steady. The card is about the position you can only reach by having come up through the thing you are now above.

Which is also why the raised hand is not a gesture of welcome. It is open, level, waiting. She has been given bad information before.

Reversed

The edge turned outward. Discernment curdled into contempt, precision used for damage, accuracy deployed because it is available rather than because it helps.

Honesty can also become a licence for coldness — the truth told exactly, at the wrong hour, to somebody in no condition to use it, and defended afterwards on the grounds that it was true.

As a person

Whoever in the situation will say the accurate thing. Frequently the person other people go to last and should have gone to first.

An older tradition read her as a widow, sour and unforgiving. What the picture shows is clarity that cost something, and that is not the same as damage. The open hand is the argument against the coldness reading, and it is drawn larger than the sword hand.

In a reading

In an advice position: be straight, and start with yourself, because this card is quite capable of noticing where the straightness stops.

With the King, discernment against principle. Among cups, the oldest tension in the deck, and neither card wins it.