Swords · Minor Arcana
He sits in judgment, holding the unsheathed sign of his suit.
The King sits upright, sword balanced in one hand, the other ready to speak. He is reason at its highest — the law grown wise, the judge who sees through pretence. You are being asked to think like a king: clearly, without flattery, from a place of principle.
Element
Air
Numerology
14— mastery of outer realm, authority, leadership, command
What the card says to you is truer than what anyone else says it means.
Cards often seen near this one
King of Swords by life area
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.
Source: “The Pictorial Key to the Tarot” by A.E. Waite (1910). Public domain.
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