Minor Arcana · Swords · Air
King of Swords
Read to know yourself, not to surrender yourself: relate to the card; never obey it. These are what two traditions wrote, not predictions.
In Waite's words: The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1911)
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.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), public domain.
In the Golden Dawn's 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 GR:Alpha and GR:Omega; he slays as fast as he creates.
If ill dignified: harsh, malicious, plotting; obstinate, yet hesitating; unreliable.
Rules from 20 Degree Capricorn to 20 Degree Aquarius.
Air of Air
Prince and Emperor of the Sylphs and Sylphides.
Golden Dawn Rank
Book T — Golden Dawn, c. 1888 · the deck's native system (predates this imagery)
RWS King of Swords = Golden Dawn Prince of Swords — Air of Air.
Editorial note · where Book T's figure and the picture differ. The picture is Pamela Colman Smith's (1909); Waite's words are from The Pictorial Key (1911).
Book T's figure is a Prince: winged, "seated in a chariot drawn by Arch Fays", with a sword in one hand and a sickle in the other. The picture is a King who "sits in judgment, holding the unsheathed sign of his suit" (Waite).
Correspondences
Rules 21° Capricorn – 20° Aquarius. As Air of Air, this court is the air aspect of a keen and restless suit.
Book T as printed in The Equinox I(8), 1912, public domain (notes in square brackets are Crowley's). The correspondences are this site's compilation from Book T. Open it in the Golden Dawn deck.