MINOR ARCANA · SWORDS · AIR
Four of Swords
Tarot card meaning · Lord of Rest from Strife
UPRIGHT
Rest, recovery, contemplation.
REVERSED
Restlessness, burnout, resuming activity.
The card
The Four of Swords is the fourth card of Swords, the suit of Air: thought, conflict and truth.
The Golden Dawn named it the Lord of Rest from Strife and gave it Jupiter in Libra, the decan of 20°–30° Libra, which the Sun passes through each year from about 13 to 23 October.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: Four of Swords, with the title and the zodiac decan from the Golden Dawn, as shown above.
In Waite's words
Arthur Edward Waite designed the deck that Pamela Colman Smith drew, and explained it in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911). His text, with his spelling:
The effigy of a knight in the attitude of prayer, at full length upon his tomb. DIVINATORY MEANINGS Vigilance, retreat, solitude, hermit's repose, exile, tomb and coffin. It is these last that have suggested the design. REVERSED Wise administration, circumspection, economy, avarice, precaution, testament.
FURTHER MEANINGS A bad card, but if reversed a qualified success may be expected by wise administration of affairs. REVERSED A certain success following wise administration.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), Part III §§ 2 and 4. Public domain; text from the 1922 printing on Wikisource.
Related cards
The same card in the other suits
In three historical decks
The same card as it was painted in fifteenth-century Milan, printed in the French pattern of the Tarot de Marseille, and drawn by Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider–Waite–Smith deck.
In the Tarot de Marseille: Four of Épées (swords). The numbered cards carry no scene, only the suit's symbols arranged as on a playing card, so they are read from the number and the pattern.
Learn more in the lessons
- The Tarot & the Stars — Decans, Pips & Courts · 16 min
- The Structure of the Tarot · 14 min · free
- Reading the Cards · 16 min
Images: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909 (public domain); the RWS1909 scans on Wikimedia Commons. Lequart, Paris, c. 1890 (public domain); scans from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica), via Wikimedia Commons. Attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, mid-15th century (public domain); scans by David Madore, via Wikimedia Commons.