Dodal, linked reproduction
Reine d'Espeies
Jean Dodal’s Marseille pack · Lyon, 1701–1715.
Read the BnF catalogue record ↗What does the free hand hold?
An upright sword remains recognizable while the other hand changes the scene substantially.
Start with the pictures
Queen of Swords
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 229
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Dodal
Reine d'Espeies
A crowned seated figure holds a sword upright beside the body. The other hand rests near the abdomen, and the blade remains distinct against the pale background.
Smith
Queen of Swords
A crowned figure sits in profile, holding a sword upright while extending the other hand. Clouds gather behind the decorated throne.
Harris
Queen of Swords · Queen
A seated figure occupies a throne of pale cloud. One hand holds a sword; the other carries a severed head below the seat.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite reads a severity shaped by sorrow and explicitly resists making the sword a simple emblem of power here. His collected meanings emphasize absence and separation.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley describes a throne in the clouds, a sword in one hand and a severed head in the other. He reads the figure as lucid perception and the mind’s liberation.
How does the object—or absence of one—in the other hand change your reading of the sword?
Write one thing you can point to in the image, one interpretation from a named author, and one inference of your own. Keeping the three separate gives you something useful to revisit.
Sources and image credits
The Dodal cards are one early-eighteenth-century Marseille witness. The black-and-white Smith plates come from the 1922 Rider reprint, whose title verso lists first publication in 1910. Colours in later editions can differ.
Foolmade supplies the linked Dodal reproductions. Its surrounding commentary is not the basis for our historical claims. These images are linked externally; the Smith illustration reuses the public-domain source scan with its full page context.
Harris’s paintings are linked on their host’s reference pages. Crowley’s text is the separately identified Thelemagick transcription of The Book of Thoth. Neither a modern reproduction nor a transcription replaces examination of the original artwork or edition.