Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
Interesting. When I was shuffling and cutting the deck in preparation for this weekend’s single-card reading, part of my mind was obviously still on Wednesday’s article, where we had worked with three cards. And so I started by picking out three cards instead of one.
The first one is the one that I’m going to be working with today: the Queen of Swords. But I think it is significant that the second card that I had drawn was the 7 of Wands, the star of last weekend’s reading.
For me, that marks an obvious progression; and a nod to the idea that the cards are all connected, and that the stories that they tell have no end and no beginning, but work together to mirror the flow of life.
So, to the Queen of Swords — specifically the Queen from the Rider-Waite Smith deck, which I am going to be working from today.
The little white book that accompanies the Rider-Waite Smith deck has, I feel, a rather narrow definition of the Queen of Swords, associating her with such things as “sterility, widowhood, embarrassment”. That’s not to say that these do not apply, but I believe that the cards speak to our light as well as our shadow aspects, and the Queen of Swords is no exception. There is a strength and richness to the imagery that is far from sterile or austere, and, in fact, evokes a sense of the Queen as one who is devoted to nurturing her subjects using the strengths that she has as a ruler.
Court cards (i.e. the King, Queen, Knight and Page) often refer to people rather than situations or things. They tend to come up in a reading when the cards wish to draw the querent’s attention to someone in their life, or to aspects of themselves. This isn’t always the case, but I have found that my own readings have borne this out more often than not.