Dodal, linked reproduction
Deux d'Épées
Jean Dodal’s Marseille pack · Lyon, 1701–1715.
Read the BnF catalogue record ↗Where is the balance held?
Compare balance maintained by a person with balance built into a pattern.
Start with the pictures
Two of Swords
Pamela Colman Smith · 1922 printing, p. 251
Open the source scan page ↗Notice what changes
Dodal
Deux d'Épées
Two curved swords enclose an almond-shaped space around a central flower. Their ends cross above and below; small ornaments fill the corners.
Smith
Two of Swords
A blindfolded figure sits before the sea with two swords crossed upward. A crescent moon hangs above the uneven horizon.
Harris
Two of Swords · 2
Two straight swords cross at a blue flower. Pale rays spread from their meeting into a symmetrical geometric field.
Open Harris’s painting and reference page ↗Now read the authors
Waite’s explanation
Waite includes balance, courage and a qualified kind of concord. He cautions that favourable readings need to be considered in the context of the Swords suit.
Crowley’s explanation
Crowley calls the card Peace and connects Chokmah and the Moon in Libra with equilibrium. The blue rose supplies a harmonizing influence within his explanation of a potentially divided element.
What seems to maintain the balance, and what might disturb it?
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.