MINOR ARCANA · SWORDS · AIR
Two of Swords
Tarot card meaning · Lord of Peace Restored
UPRIGHT
Stalemate, a difficult decision, avoidance.
REVERSED
Information overload, indecision lifting, lesser of two evils.
The card
The Two of Swords is the second card of Swords, the suit of Air: thought, conflict and truth.
The Golden Dawn named it the Lord of Peace Restored and gave it Moon in Libra, the decan of 0°–10° Libra, which the Sun passes through each year from about 23 September to 3 October.
In Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot: Two 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:
A hoodwinked female figure balances two swords upon her shoulders. DIVINATORY MEANINGS Conformity and the equipoise which it suggests, courage, friendship, concord in a state of arms; another reading gives tenderness, affection, intimacy. The suggestion of harmony and other favourable readings must be considered in a qualified manner, as Swords generally are not symbolical of beneficent forces in human affairs. REVERSED Imposture, falsehood, duplicity, disloyalty.
FURTHER MEANINGS Gifts for a lady, influential protection for a man in search of help. REVERSED Dealings with rogues.
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: Two 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.