Book T no. 28 · Three of Swords · decan: Saturn in Libra
Lord of Sorrow
Three of Swords · Lord of Sorrow
Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it.
Book T (1912)
THREE White Radiating Angelic Hands, issuing from clouds, and holding three swords upright (as though the central sword had struck apart the two others, which were crossed in the preceding symbol): the central sword cuts asunder the rose of five petals, which in the previous symbol grew at the junction of the swords; its petals are falling, and no white rays issue from it.
Above and below the central sword are the symbols of Saturn and Libra.
Disruption, interruption, separation, quarrelling; sowing of discord and strife, mischief-making, sorrow and tears; yet mirth in Platonic pleasures; singing, faithfulness in promises, honesty in money transactions, selfish and dissipated, yet sometimes generous: deceitful in words and repetitions; the whole according to dignity.
Binah of ו (Unhappiness, sorrow, and tears).
Herein rule the Great Angels הריאל and הקמיה as Lords of the Decan.
Book T as printed in The Equinox I(8), 1912, public domain (notes in square brackets are Crowley's).
In Book T's table
No. 28 of Book T's 78 titles · Three of Swords · decan: Saturn in Libra
Correspondences
Waite, Pictorial Key (1911)
A. E. Waite, a member of the Golden Dawn, in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911) · public domain · he describes the Rider-Waite-Smith picture of this card, not Book T's
Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind. Divinatory Meanings : Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being too simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration. Reversed : Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion.
Picture sets
Book T deck, SVG. PlayfulProcess (line art traced from the AI painting). CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Book T deck, painting. AI painting (gemini-2.5-flash-image) from Book T's words, prompt by PlayfulProcess. CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Book T deck, iconography. PlayfulProcess: glyphs drawn for this deck, composed by script (scripts/build_book_t_iconography.py) from the card's own metadata, placed as Book T (1912) places them. CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Book T deck, full imagery. PlayfulProcess: parts drawn for this deck (tarot/book-t/parts, tarot/book-t/glyphs), composed by script (scripts/build_book_t_full_imagery.py) from a spec per card that follows Book T (1912). CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Book T deck, linocut. PlayfulProcess: a linocut printing of the full imagery, composed by script (scripts/build_book_t_linocut.py) from the same spec per card, which follows Book T (1912). CC-BY-SA-4.0.