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Alchemical Tarot — Knight of Swords

· Tarot

Hot blood, cool thinking. The Knight of Swords charges ahead with a barbaric yawp, his sword rending the heavens asunder.

He’s like a race-car driver, high on adrenaline, making fast decisions in the zone, charging ahead.

This card is like the rune Raido, but on steroids. Raido is about journeying forward, making steady progress from a unified will that harnesses all aspects of the self in service of your vision. The dyad of horse and rider are the dyad of passion and reason, with reason holding the reins and ultimately deciding the course of the journey.

In Tarot, the Knight of Swords takes this concept and amps up the stakes.

Although Swords are about intellectual thought, you can see there’s a lot of flaming red-hot emotion wrapped up in this Knight’s quest (and his clothes); and even a red heart on his horse, who is his primal passion. The armored knight is the thinker in this dyad, but his flaming raw soul is what’s driving him, what’s fuelling his mighty speed.

If inverted

While the Knight of Swords slices the heavens apart with his blazing brains and Aries-esque right-here-right-now action, you might want to ask yourself: is all this full-speed-charging-ahead really right for your current situation?

If inverted, either such ferocious speed is happening and you might want to check in with yourself and see if you really want to be moving this fast right now, or, it’s not happening and maybe you could try some of that. Or this speed is in the offing and you’re not quite ready to charge forth. But if charging-ahead is not happening and you wish it were, you need to have a look: are you really harmonising passion and reason and acting from a unified will? Because if you try to get ahead with only one of them, you’re not going to make it. You need both.

What do you think of the Knight of Swords? Do you find him sexy? All that can-do, making stuff happen, scattering the clouds before him with all his drive? Do you find him impetuous and prone to shoot from the hip, and more looking before leaping would behoove him? Do you think it would be helpful to be like him in your situation, or do you think he’s a warning to measure thrice and cut once?

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You’ll see some of this surprisingly heated emotion for a cerebral suit in the King of Swords too; but as the fully-matured version of the masculine form of this energy, he keeps this driving passion sexily hidden under wraps, where it motivates him but doesn’t exhaust the world with the noise and flash and dazzle and testosterone-fuelled rampaging of callow youth. Something to look forward to!