Princess of Swords

A young woman in a helmet crowned with Medusa's head stands ready with a sword before an altar, under a stormy sky and dark, fallen clouds.

The final Heh of the Vau: Earth of Air, thought made body, the mind as a practical instrument. She is the throne of the Ace of Swords and rules the quadrant of the earth called the Americas. Crowley's hexagram, 18, Work on what has been Spoiled, is the mountain over the wind: the settling of disorder by firm action.

The Princesses rule no decans. Each holds the throne of her suit's Ace and governs one quadrant of the earth, counted from the meridian of the Great Pyramid, and the corresponding quadrant of the heavens around the North Pole.

Crowley builds each court's hexagram from two trigrams, the suit below and the rank above: Swords give Wind, Princesss give Mountain. The result is hexagram 18, Ku, Work on what has been Spoiled (Mountain over Wind). See I Ching and the courts.

Thinking embodied: intellect used to fix what is actually wrong. As an inner figure, the anima as the one who ends the argument. The four ranks are often read as the four ways the suit's function can be lived: the Knight extraverted and initiating, the Queen introverted and sustaining, the Prince as its intellectual form, the Princess as its embodied form.

This card corresponds to the Rider-Waite Page of Swords. Crowley renamed the ranks to follow the letters of the Name: Knight (Yod), Queen (Heh), Prince (Vau), Princess (final Heh), so that the Thoth Knight is the Waite King and the Thoth Prince the Waite Knight. The figures' mounts follow the Golden Dawn: Knights on horses, Queens on thrones, Princes in chariots, Princesses on foot.