Book T no. 15 · King of Swords · Air of Air
Prince of the Chariot of the Winds
King of Swords · The Prince of the Chariot of the Winds
Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it.
Book T (1912)
A WINGED King with Winged Crown, seated in a chariot drawn by Arch Fays, represented as winged youths very slightly dressed, with butterfly wings: heads encircled by a fillet with a pentagram thereon: and holding wands surmounted by pentagrams, the same butterfly wings on their feet and fillets. General equipment as the King of Wands: but he bears as a crest a winged angelic head with a pentagram on the brows. Beneath the chariot are grey nimbus clouds. His hair long and waving in serpentine whirls, and whorl figures compose the scales of his armour. A drawn sword in one hand; a sickle in the other. With the sword he rules, with the sickle he slays.
Full of ideas and thoughts and designs, distrustful, suspicious, firm in friendship and enmity; careful, observant, slow, over-cautious, symbolizes Α and Ω; he slays as fast as he creates.
Rules from 20 Degree Capricorn to 20 Degree Aquarius.
Air of Air
Prince and Emperor of the Sylphs and Sylphides.
Book T as printed in The Equinox I(8), 1912, public domain (notes in square brackets are Crowley's).
If ill dignified
Book T (1912): its words for the card when it falls ill dignified, set apart from its text
If ill dignified: harsh, malicious, plotting; obstinate, yet hesitating; unreliable.
In Book T's table
No. 15 of Book T's 78 titles · Prince of Swords (the 1912 list calls it the King of Swords) · Air of Air
Correspondences
Rules 20° Capricorn – 20° Aquarius. As Air of Air, this court is the air aspect of a keen and restless suit.
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
He sits in judgment, holding the unsheathed sign of his suit. He recalls, of course, the conventional Symbol of Justice in the Trumps Major, and he may represent this virtue, but he is rather the power of life and death, in virtue of his office. Divinatory Meanings: Whatsoever arises out of the idea of judgment and all its connexions-power, command, authority, militant intelligence, law, offices of the crown, and so forth. Reversed : Cruelty, perversity, barbarity, perfidy, evil intention.
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.