Queen of Blades

The Queen, as I read the cards, is the unconscious, but external, portion of ourselves. This is a little difficult on the surface, but it’s most obvious in our relationship behaviors- the things we do in relating to other people that stem from instinct, rather than premeditation. The Queen is the seat of our unconscious self, and the way we interact with the people and world around us. The suit of blades is the suit first of the intellect, and second of lessons learned, often through pain.

The Queen of Blades is a smart and potentially dangerous person. Traditionally she is read as a “barren or widowed woman”, since those were the most severe losses a woman could be considered to experience. She is tempered, perhaps embittered, by loss, and careful not to put herself into a position where she could lose again.

This is a card of chilling calculation, of emotional distance and pain, of  lessons learned and innocence brutally disregarded.  This is once burned, twice shy, and likely plotting retribution for any humiliation suffered in the initial encounter.

Where have you suffered the wounds that you remember decades later? Who has so betrayed your trust that you will never see them the same way again? What little innocences have you lost that you can never regain?

Where have you become stronger through the temperance of suffering? What difficult lessons have you learned that serve you now, even if the learning was more painful than perhaps it needed to be?