SWORDS. QUEEN.
Her right hand raises the weapon vertically and the hilt rests on an arm of her royal chair; the left hand is extended, the arm raised; her countenance is severe but chastened; it suggests familiarity with sorrow. It does not represent mercy, and, her sword notwithstanding, she is scarcely a symbol of power.
Divinatory Meanings:
Widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence, sterility, mourning, privation, separation.
Reversed:
Malice, bigotry, artifice, prudery, bale, deceit.
SWORDS. KNIGHT.
He is riding in full course, as if scattering his enemies. In the design he is really a proto-typical hero of romantic chivalry. He might almost be Galahad, whose sword is swift and sure because he is clean of heart.
Divinatory Meanings:
Skill, bravery, capacity, defense, address, enmity, wrath, war, destruction, opposition, resistance, ruin. There is therefore a sense in which the card signifies death, but it carries this meaning only in its proximity to other cards of fatality.
Reversed:
Imprudence, incapacity, extravagance.
