This is a card of…

Ideology

Conflict

Arrogance

Crusading

“Arrogance is in everything I do. It is in my gestures, the harshness of my voice, in the glow of my gaze, in my sinewy, tormented face.”

-Coco Chanel

The Knight of Swords has much less inquisitiveness than the Page of the suit. She’s not looking to learn anymore- she knows. And it’s her mission to put that knowledge into action.

She’s riding full-tilt into the world to spread the word of truth. This isn’t always a bad thing. Galileo was on a Knight-of-Swords-style mission that changed our understanding of our place in the universe. John Brown’s steadfast devotion to Abolition convinced many that slavery was a crime despite being a norm. (It is worth remembering, all you Knight-of-Swords-types out there, that while their beliefs have been vindicated by history, things didn’t work out so great for them personally.)

The Knight of Swords is so certain of the rightness of her beliefs she often fails to think practically about the best way to bring them forward. She can easily fall into blind ideology, divorced from nuance and closed to new information. Her treatment of those who disagree with (she would say oppose) her can be cruel and cold. The Knight of Swords blocks and unfriends with abandon.

There are situations in which a Knight of Swords is just what’s needed. She mounts a sharp, effective legal strategy. Her rigorous intellect can cut through complacency and convention when “the way we’ve always done it” needs to change. But she can get so caught up in her crusade that she doesn’t realize she’s crossed the line into a rigid adherence to her own view, that she’s not using the greatest gift of Swords: she’s not thinking.

Her Knight’s motion taken to the extremes of compulsion can lead to a rigid ideological intolerance, a harsh judgmental cynicism, or a cruel dismissal of the suffering of ‘inferiors’.