Minor Arcana · Swords · Air
Page 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)
A lithe, active figure holds a sword upright in both hands, while in the act of swift walking. He is passing over rugged land, and about his way the clouds are collocated wildly. He is alert and lithe, looking this way and that, as if an expected enemy might appear at any moment.
A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), public domain.
In the Golden Dawn's Book T (1912)
AN AMAZON figure with waving hair, slighter than the Rose of the Palace of Fire. Her attire is similar. The Feet seem springy, giving the idea of swiftness. Weight changing from one foot to another and body swinging around. She is a mixture of Minerva and Diana: her mantle resembles the AEgis of Minerva. She wears as a crest the head of the Medusa with serpent hair. She holds a sword in one hand; and the other rests upon a small silver altar with grey smoke (no fire) ascending from it. Beneath her feet are white clouds.
Wisdom, strength, acuteness; subtlety in material things: grace and dexterity.
If ill dignified, she is frivolous and cunning.
She rules a quadrant of the heavens around Kether.
Earth of Air
Princess and Empress of the Sylphs and Sylphides.
Throne of the Ace of Wands.
Golden Dawn Rank
Book T — Golden Dawn, c. 1888 · the deck's native system (predates this imagery)
RWS Page of Swords = Golden Dawn Princess of Swords — Earth 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 Princess, "an Amazon figure", "a mixture of Minerva and Diana", one hand on a small silver altar. The picture is a page who "holds a sword upright in both hands, while in the act of swift walking" (Waite).
Correspondences
Rules one quadrant of the heavens around the North Pole (with the Ace). As Earth of Air, this court is the earth 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.