Every Tarot Card: Knight of Swords
A few years ago, a kindly soul on the Hermetic Houe of Life server asked if I had yet written posts on the meanings of tarot cards individually, as they were hoping to read my thoughts on them. I had not, at that time. I briefly took a run at it, but I find now that I was very deeply in the weeds of Case's Qabalah at the time and that doesn't really reflect how I read or use the cards nowadays. So I'm starting over. Joy.
At any rate, here's the
Knight of Swords
A young man going to war, astride a fairly vigorous steed, the Knight of Swords is probably the knight that is most likely to indicate conflict. However, it's also motion, swift things that do not necessarily last, and speech, particularly fast talking.
The knights and the jacks were sometimes traditionally described as the "thought of the king and queen," of their suit that is, the thing they are thinking about. I believe you see that more often in things like traditional cartomancy and Lenormand, as the king and the queen are guaranteed to also be on the table. But it's worth keeping in mind, just in case one of them shows up for you.
All the knights are messengers, and people duty-bound to serve those kings and queens. So too here.
Astrology
The Golden Dawn astrological correspondence -- and for these posts, unless I say otherwise, that's what I'll be putting in the astrology section -- is technically the last decan of Capricorn and the first and second decans of Aquarius. This is often simplified to just Aquarius. The Knight of Swords, then, can indicate an outsider, a free thinker, but someone who isn't necessarily reliable -- as each sign progresses, it veers sharply away from the previous sign, and Capricorn is usually pretty reliable if you can convince it that it's in its own best interest to help you. Aquarius will want to argue about it, but they'll forget the next day.
Notably, I have my first house in Aquarius, so I'm allowed the honesty here.
Since the Knight of Swords is Aquarius's card in the court, that means it's related to Saturn, the ruler of that sign. Saturn is typically thought of as slow, so it may seem odd to think of it in the same breath as the swift knight. I think often of how Saturn is dignified in Libra, and how Saturn is also the planet of legal agreements and contracts. The knight speeds forward because he has agreed to, and heads into battle to settle a breach of some kind -- though perhaps the knight himself isn't thinking all that much about it.
Elements
All the swords are air cards, and all the knights are air cards, so this card is the pure expression of the element. That means it signifies a lack of staying power, a tendency to words, a lack of composure, and even a chatterbox. The Golden Dawn considered this not just "air twice" but "the airy part of air," which is to say, the thing about air that makes it itself -- it's adaptable, swift, and causes both speech and silence (if the wind takes your breath away).
Qabalah
The knights are associated with Tiphareth, the sixth sephirah, and the one in the post-Christian symbolism of Qabalah associated with sacrificial gods like Christ. They have something to prove and death is the way they will do it. Via the paths of the Tree of Life, this card is then also associated by connection with the Lovers, Priestess, Emperor, Justice, Hermit, Devil, Death, and Temperance cards. All of the paths these cards correspond to link up to the sphere of Tiphareth.
This can be complicated since a lot of the talk about Qabalah and tarot will be at least influenced by the Golden Dawn who renamed these cards the "princes" in their allegory of the Tetragrammaton -- the prince, or the knight, is the son who is sent out by the queen to find the princess and wed her, revitalizing the world and becoming, eventually, the king again. The knight is the Vav of the four-lettered name of G-d, the nail that brings things together.
Synthesis
I use the astrology quite often, and the qabalah less so, but the idea of the knight as questing to find something is a valuable one -- but one need not appeal to Qabalah to look at a knight on horseback and imagine they are on a quest of some sort, and to imagine they would be sent out by a king or a queen.
Like all courts, the Knight of Swords could indicate a person specifically in a reading, such as a fast-talking student or simply someone with a significant Aquarius placement.