Dodal, linked reproduction
Sept d'Épées
Jean Dodal’s Marseille pack · Lyon, 1701–1715.
Read the BnF catalogue record ↗One blade and several competing directions
The relation between one prominent sword and the others changes across the designs.
Start with the pictures
Seven of Swords
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 241
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Dodal
Sept d'Épées
A straight central sword runs inside three pairs of curved blades. The surrounding floral details and paired edges preserve the balanced outline.
Smith
Seven of Swords
A figure carries five swords away while looking back. Two swords remain planted near a camp of tents.
Harris
Seven of Swords · 7
Six smaller weapons fan inward against one larger upright sword. Their varied shapes and angled points make the central blade stand apart.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite gives plans, attempts and hopes alongside quarrels and possible failure. He explicitly calls the design’s import uncertain because the received meanings disagree; a single keyword such as theft does not exhaust his account.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley calls the card Futility and associates the Moon in Aquarius with vacillation and uncertain compromise. He describes the smaller swords impinging on the larger one as a contest between divided forces.
Which force is divided here, and which remains concentrated?
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.