Queen of Swords: sword up, hand out

Start with the picture: one hand keeps the sword upright, the other reaches out

Waite begins with the hands. Her right hand raises the weapon vertically and the hilt rests on an arm of her royal chair; the left hand is extended, the arm raised. Then the face: severe but chastened, suggesting familiarity with sorrow. Two negations follow: it does not represent mercy, and, her sword notwithstanding, she is scarcely a symbol of power.

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BaZiFlow original Queen of Swords

The original Rider-Waite-Smith card shows the queen in profile on a high stone chair, crowned, with a straight blade that rises well above her crown. Her raised left hand is open, palm outward; the front of the chair carries a carved child-like face; behind her are banks of cloud, a dark tree at lower left and a small bird in the sky. Three layers: the sword stays upright, the hand reaches out, the face holds its feeling in.

What Waite lists: a list made almost entirely of absences

The divinatory meanings read: widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence, sterility, mourning, privation, separation. Sort them and nearly every word says that something is missing: a person is gone, something that should be there is not, and the feelings that follow.

Widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence, sterility, mourning, privation, separation.

The extras have only two lines for this card: upright, "a widow"; reversed, "a bad woman, with ill-will towards the Querent". Both are old person-style readings, set here for comparison.

Two negations and one expression: what Waite actually draws

Half of Waite's portrait is made of what she is not: the face is "severe but chastened"; it "does not represent mercy"; and "her sword notwithstanding, she is scarcely a symbol of power". All three move aside the two impressions a reader reaches for first: the cold judge, and the queen who holds power.

Reading "severe but chastened" as "strict, with measure" and the open hand as "handing the choice back" lets the card become questions you can put to a particular task. They are borrowed readings, and the next section marks them as such.

How to read it: a red pen and an open hand

The card comes with a shape of three things: the sword upright, the face held in, the hand reaching out. Carried to proofreading and editing, they become three habits when you mark up someone else's draft.

1. 1

   Sword upright: name the exact spot

   The blade stays vertical and is not swung. A note points to a page, a line, a word, and deals only with what can be pointed to; "the whole thing feels off" is not yet one spot.

2. 2

   Face held in: firm, with the basis shown

   Cut what has to be cut, without cushioning it, but write one line of basis beside each cut: house style, a figure, an earlier paragraph. The tone lands on the draft and not on its author.

3. 3

   Hand out: give the decision back

   Waite does not explain this hand. In teaching it can be read as offering the choice: attach an alternative wording or a question to each note, and let the author decide.

An example: a volunteer editor receives a draft for a neighborhood book club newsletter. One sentence says "our collection holds a hundred thousand volumes", while the annual count is eighty thousand. See how her notes carry the three habits:

Reversed, and cards that share her seat: from "lack" to "intent"

Waite's reversed list for the Queen of Swords is: malice, bigotry, artifice, prudery, bale, deceit. Set against the upright list, the center moves: upright describes what is missing in a situation; reversed describes faults in a person's intent.