The Queen of Swords is one of the Court Cards of the Tarot. On the Decan Wheel, she rules from September 12 to October 12. Keywords include: clarity, perception, honesty & truthfulness, accuracy, insightfulness, keen & intelligent, discerning and sometimes intimidating or critical.
Many people choose a Court Card to be their Significator in a Tarot reading; a card that represents themselves. If your birthday is between September 12 to October 12, then choosing the Queen as your Significator may be appropriate! Or, you may choose this card because you resonate with its qualities, regardless of the dates, and that is perfectly acceptable as well.
Drawing the Queen of Swords can indicate a person, personality, behavior, or even mood. A question you may ask yourself is, what is your relationship with truth? The Queen doesn’t have much tolerance for deception or lies. With her sword she cuts away the clutter to find the truth. She is driven to clean us the mess and determine what’s really going on. Does this sound like you, or someone you know? How is this affecting the issue at hand?
Associated Minor Cards
The 3 Minor Cards associated with the Knight of Wands are the 10 of Disks (Lord of Wealth), 2 of Swords (Lord of Peace Restored) and 3 of Swords (Lord of Sorrow). If your birthday falls within the time allocated to the Queen of Swords, you may want to intuit how these cards connect to your life and experiences.
QABALAH Considerations
On the Qabalistic Tree of Life, the Queens of the Tarot are assigned to the sephirah Binah, which means Understanding, which as the consort of the King, comes in useful. When seen in a “Jacobs Ladder” configuration, the Queen of Swords is Binah in the World of Yetzirah (Air/Swords). The Queens also represent the first Heh in the Holy Tetragrammaton “Yod Heh Vau Heh”, which is the divine mother aspect of creation; it the mother matrix that gives shape to the spark from Yod, associated with the divine breath. When the Tree of Life is shown as as representing only the World of Yetzirah, it is colored according to a particular set of colors developed by the Golden Dawn. Because of the correspondences between Heh = Binah = Queens, the color scale for Yetzirah is called the King Scale.
The Decan Wheel
And for those of you who like math, if you take a look at the Decan Wheel below, you will see that it has several divisions. A circle is 360 degrees, and a Decan is 10 degrees, so there are 36 Decans in a circle, which correspond to approximately 10-11 days each, seen as a year.
There are 40 minor cards, (Aces thru 10’s, 4 suits) but the Aces have been removed, leaving 36 minor cards (2’s thru 10’s, 4 suits) So there is one Decan for every minor card in the tarot minus Aces (36 x 10 = 360.)
Now for the Court Cards: there are 16 Court Cards, but the Princesses have been removed, leaving 12. So each of the Court cards gets 30 degrees (12 x 30 = 360). You can see by studying the Wheel that for every Court Card there are 3 associated minor cards, with corresponding dates. At the center of the Wheel are the 12 Zodiac signs, however they do not align directly with the 12 Court Cards. The consensus is that the sign with the 2 out of the 3 Decans aligned with the Court Card is the sign usually connected with that Court Card. For example, the Queen of Swords covers one Decan of Virgo and two Decans of Libra, so she is more often associated with the sign of Libra. (Note, the C, F, M at the very center of the Wheel indicate if the Zodiac sign is Cardinal, Fixed or Mutable.)
Lastly, we notice that the Aces and Princess that were removed are placed in tandem in the 4 large sections around the outer rim of Wheel. These can also correspond to the listed dates, or seen generally as the seasons between the Equinoxes and the Solstices. Aces are associated with Spirit and the essence or “root of power” of the Elements (Wands = Fire, Cups = Water, Swords = Air, Pentacles = Earth) Princesses are associated with the “boots on the ground” aspect of the Element. Sometimes they are also allocated to space, or quadrants of the globe, rather than time. (Princess of Wands = Asia, Princess of Cups = the Pacific Ocean, Princess of Swords = the Americas, Princess of Pentacles = Europe & Africa) Both the Aces and the Princesses correspond to the three Zodiac signs in their quadrant, and together form the Space/Time continuum of the Wheel.
Consulting the Decan Wheel can help you pick a significator and incorporate time into your readings. Have fun!
Tarot Deciphered by T. Susan Chang & M. M. Meleen
Astrological Keywords by Manly P. Hall
The New A to Z Horiscope Maker and Delineator by Llewellyn George
Qabalistic Tarot by Rober Wang
Astrology for Yourself by Douglass Bloch & Demetra George
A Beginners Guide to Astrology by Lisa Butterworth
The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall