1. Tarot
2. Card meanings
3. Queen of Swords

Minor Arcana · Swords

Queen of Swords

• familiarity with sorrow
• absence
• separation

Upright meaning

Clear-sighted experience. Waite says her countenance suggests familiarity with sorrow: honesty learned the hard way, offered with grace.

Reversed meaning

Reversed, Waite gives artifice and prudery. A prompt to keep clarity from turning cold.

• artifice
• prudery

Symbolism

A queen raises a sword upright, her other hand extended, her face severe but chastened.

Group

Minor Arcana · Swords

Element, astrology

Not given by Waite, so we give none

Source

Our own plain-English summary of A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1911), Part III §2 (The Lesser Arcana). The keywords are Waite’s own words. Waite’s fortune-telling lists also contain harsher terms; we keep to the reflective readings he gives and never state an event as certain.

Tarot is a tool for reflection, not a prediction of fixed outcomes. This is not medical, legal or financial advice.