Minor Arcana, Swords
Knight of Swords
speed, courage, confrontation, drive
Upright
Sword raised, a rider charges at full speed, and the clouds and trees are torn by the wind. Waite pairs skill, bravery and capacity with wrath, war and ruin. He says any link to death depends on other cards, and we make no such forecast.
A colleague pushing hard or your own urge to fix a problem today may fit this picture. Speed helps when the facts are clear and the need is urgent. Check who stands in the path first.
Reversed
The charge loses its skill once the card turns. Waite lists only imprudence, incapacity and extravagance, which reads like promising too much, spending too fast or arguing before you have the facts.
Pull the horse up. Before you resign on impulse or fire off a complaint, check whether you can do what you are threatening to do. Slow the pace for a week and fix one mistake the rush has already made.
A card is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.
In Waite's words
Upright: Skill, bravery, capacity, defence, address, enmity, wrath, war, destruction, opposition, resistance, ruin. There is therefore a sense in which the card signifies death, but it carries this meaning only in its proximity to other cards of fatality.
Reversed: Imprudence, incapacity, extravagance.
From A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), Part 3, on Wikisource. The meanings above are by Cast & Chart.
Card art by Pamela Colman Smith, 1909, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.