MINOR ARCANA · SWORDS · AIR
Page of Swords
Tarot card meaning
UPRIGHT
Curiosity, vigilance, new ideas.
REVERSED
Gossip, all talk, hasty words.
The card
The Page of Swords is one of the four court cards of Swords, the suit of Air: thought, conflict and truth.
In the Golden Dawn's scheme each court card is an element within its suit's element: the Page of Swords is Earth of Air.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: The Princess of Swords. Crowley's courts are Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess, so this is the card the Rider–Waite–Smith deck calls the Page.
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:
A lithe, active figure holds a sword upright in both hands, while in the act of swift walking. He is passing over rugged land, and about his way the clouds are collocated wildly. He is alert and lithe, looking this way and that, as if an expected enemy might appear at any moment. DIVINATORY MEANINGS Authority, overseeing, secret service, vigilance, spying, examination, and the qualities thereto belonging. REVERSED More evil side of these qualities; what is unforeseen, unprepared state; sickness is also intimated.
FURTHER MEANINGS An indiscreet person will pry into the Querent's secrets. REVERSED Astonishing news.
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: Valet (the knave) of Épées (swords).
Learn more in the lessons
- Reading the Court Cards · 16 min
- The Tarot & the Stars — Decans, Pips & Courts · 16 min
- The Structure of the Tarot · 14 min · free
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.