← Encyclopedia of Tarot · lesson 61/121
Page of Swords
The Page of Swords is the mind as a beginner: curious, alert, eager to learn and quick to ask questions. As a person, it can be a young or youthful thinker, a student or someone sharp-eyed and talkative. As a situation, it often points to news, fresh ideas, research, or the need to keep one's wits about one.
The image
A young figure stands on a windswept hill holding a sword upright in both hands, looking over one shoulder. Clouds are piled in the sky, birds fly overhead, and the trees bend in the wind. Waite saw someone "alert and lithe, looking this way and that". The wind and birds are usually read as the restless movement of thought, and the raised sword as readiness rather than attack.
Upright
Curiosity, vigilance, quick thinking, learning, honest questions, messages. Waite lists "vigilance, spying, examination". The card can be encouraging — a lively mind setting out — or a reminder that watchfulness can slide into gossip or suspicion.
Reversed
Waite's reversal gives "astonishing news" and the unforeseen. Modern readers often see scattered thinking, words spoken without care, defensiveness or ideas with no follow-through. Some readers do not use reversals.
Correspondences
A court card of the Minor Arcana, the Page of the suit of Swords, element Air. In the Golden Dawn system, which most English-language decks follow, the Page is the Princess, Earth of Air: the airy mind made concrete and practical. The Order named her the Princess of the Rushing Winds. The Princesses are not given a span of the zodiac.
In a reading
As a person, someone young in spirit and quick with questions. As advice: find out more before acting. Next to the Seven of Swords, take care with secrets and what is passed on.
In astrology
The Golden Dawn's correspondences, which most English-language decks follow (French, Marseille-based tradition differs for some Major Arcana).
Element: Air — the element of Gemini, Libra and Aquarius