Seeking information regarding the 'priest' of 'swords'.

I posted this message to the LiveJournal Tarot community, and someone suggested that I try asking here.

Please bear with me - I have very limited experience with the tarot, but I am delving into personal mythology and I need some help.

I can find no literal reference to the "priest of swords", however the term sounds very familiar and I was hoping that it originated somewhere within the tarot. Tell me, are there any other cards commonly known as the priest of swords, or swords that have some association with a priest?

Please, tell me anything and everything you know.

Also, if you can suggest other communities or areas within this forum that I may be able to post this to, I would be enormously grateful.

My thanks.


Ashleigh Ann

Hi Ashleigh Ann, welcome to Aeclectic!

Tarot decks have 22 picture cards (called Major Arcana cards) with archetypal titles like "The Emperor," "The Moon," etc. Then there are 56 Minor Arcana cards which are similar in structure to playing cards, and are divided into four suits, one of which is Swords. The "face" cards (i.e. as in playing cards' Jack, Queen and King) are Page, Knight, Queen and King.

So, there is a Page of Swords, a Knight of Swords, a Queen of Swords, and a King of Swords. But there's no Priest. Now, there is some variation of these ranks among different decks, for instance some decks use Prince and Princess instead of Knight and Page. But no deck, to my knowledge, has used Priest as a rank.

There is a priest of sorts in the Major Arcana cards. His original name was Le Pape (the Pope), and in most modern decks his title is The Hierophant. In some decks he's called The Priest. But it wouldn't be Priest of Swords, since Swords cards would only be in the Minors, as discussed above.

Personally I think you're probably remembering some reference to something in literature or gaming, where someone created the title "Priest of Swords" as a suggestive tarot-sounding but inaccurate element.

Or maybe you just dreamed it!

-- Lee

The only Priest of Swords I know of occurs in the cards that are used in "Cerebus" comics. These are apparently a lot like Tarot cards, but not the same.

Now, in a Golden Dawn or Thoth deck, you can get a Prince of Swords, which would be the same card that is a King of Swords in regular Tarot.

I suppose you could consider some kind of monk who practices kendo or similar martial arts as a priest of swords. This would be more up the lines of anime or martial arts fantasy than Tarot, though.

Where did you first come across this Priest of Swords? Some context might help.

Lee said:

Personally I think you're probably remembering some reference to something in literature or gaming, where someone created the title "Priest of Swords" as a suggestive tarot-sounding but inaccurate element.

Click to expand...

I agree with Lee here that this sounds more like something from a game like Magic The Gathering for instance. Perhaps you could find out from a Magic The Gathering forum whether there is a card called the Priest of Swords.

Or perhaps a well-known Role Playing game - Dungeons and Dragons type.

It's not a historical Tarot term that I have ever heard of.

My google.com search led me to this:

Priest of Swords from the Thresh deck (a role-playing card game deck?)
http://web.mit.edu/boojum/www/Cards/swords.priest.html

There is also the sword referred to as the ecclesiastical sword, which I mention in the thread in the Marseille section on VIII - Justice.

I'm unsure in what context you first came across the 'Priest of Swords', for, apart from perhaps the Sumarai or as a more colloquial Knight Templar possible appelation, I am unfamiliar with the term.

D.H.Lawrence is on occasion called the priest of love,
which may for some translate to the priest of words...

L'Abbé d'Epee (Jacob Rodriguez Pereira 1715-1780) was the first to systematically teach sign language to the deaf.
http://www.bassindarcachon-genealogie.org/chroniq/10_04_02.htm

"Abbé" is a common French word for a Catholic priest, and his name is d'Epee - of Sword, or of the Sword.

So - Father of Sword, Priest of Sword.

Sorry it's in the singular, so not quite an exact match!

Thank you all for looking into it. I didn't expect so many people to respond. =) The relation to Justice and the Knights Templar both carry some bearing. (I once woke up with XI embedded in my forehead.)

The backstory is long and involved; here is the gist of it: Awhile back, some dear friends and I had a paranormal experience that named each of us roles in recording/acting as a record of the 'end' of [a] 'world'.

Seven individuals were said to be involved, however at the time there were only four of us - named the hunter, the sacrifice, the knight and the priest of swords.

Since then I have encountered frequent references to the Grail, Edgar Cayce, Mary Immaculate and Mary Magdalene, Atlantis/Bimini, the Hall of Records, and various other religious and historical references which I'd never previously heard of.