Book T no. 39 · Five of Swords · decan: Venus in Aquarius
Lord of Defeat
Five of Swords · Lord of Defeat
Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it.
Book T (1912)
TWO Rayed Angelic Hands each holding two swords nearly upright, but falling apart of each other, right and left of the card. A third hand holds a sword upright in the centre as though it had disunited them. The petals of the rose, which in the four had been reinstated in the centre, are torn asunder and falling. Above and below are Venus and Aquarius for Decan.
Contest finished and decided against the person; failure, defeat, anxiety, trouble, poverty, avarice, grieving after gain, laborious, unresting; loss and vileness of nature; malicious, slanderous, lying, spiteful and tale-bearing. A busybody and separator of friends, hating to see peace and love between others. Cruel, yet cowardly, thankless and unreliable. Clever and quick in thought and speech. Feelings of pity easily roused, but unenduring.
Geburah of ו (Defeat, loss, malice, spite, slander, evil-speaking).
Herein the Angels אניאל and חעמיה bear rule.
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. 39 of Book T's 78 titles · Five of Swords · decan: Venus in Aquarius
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
A disdainful man looks after two retreating and dejected figures. Their swords lie upon the ground. He carries two others on his left shoulder, and a third sword is in his right hand, point to earth. He is the master in possession of the field. Divinatory Meanings : Degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonour, loss, with the variants and analogues of these. Reversed : The same; burial and obsequies.
Picture sets
Book T deck, SVG. PlayfulProcess (line art traced from the composite). CC-BY-SA-4.0.
Book T deck, composite. Composite by PlayfulProcess: AI-painted elements (gemini-2.5-flash-image: hand from a cloud, sword, rose, sky) placed by script in the layout Book T describes, so every count is exact. 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.