Off With Their Heads! An Exploration of the Queen of Swords & Kālī
It's tough to find a deity as terrifying, yet awe-inspiring as the Hindu goddess Kali. Her name is derived from the Sanskrit word kala, which can be taken as kālá (time) or kāla (black), and thus she is considered to be both the ruler of time and the dark, or black goddess. This is certainly fitting upon first glance, as she is often looked upon as a goddess of death and destruction, brandishing a sword and holding a severed head by the hair as she flicks her bloody tongue and shows off her signature necklace of human skulls and her girdle of human arms. To others, however, she is the Great Mother, who watches over and cares for her children, shielding them from the inevitable pains that arise from life in this temporal realm.
However you approach her, Kali presents a confounding expression of femininity for seekers who are more comfortable with the lighter, more palatable aspects of the Goddess — but lest we forget, she has shown us her shadow in many other forms throughout the ages as well, whether it be Diana, when she transformed Actaeon into a buck and had him torn to bits by his own hounds for catching a glimpse of her bathing, or Demeter, who in her sorrow (and fury at the other Olympians) stopped the world's crops from growing after the abduction of Persephone, or even Cybele*, who drove her lover Attis to castrate himself beneath a pine tree in a fit of jealous rage.
Though we can certainly recognize these stories as depictions of the darker side of the Goddess, few of them strike fear in our hearts like Kali, whose very image suggests the annihilation of all that the ego holds dear. In the same (bloody) vein, the Queen of Swords is often seen by students of Tarot as "the difficult one" when compared to its other queens and feminine figures, perhaps due to her own stern and at times menacing depiction in many decks.
In a recent revisiting of Joseph Campbell's classic The Hero with a Thousand Faces, I came across an illustration of Kali in her usual posture — standing upon her slumbering consort Shiva, holding her sword and a severed head in her left hands while making the gestures to dispel fear and bestow boons with her right — and I was immediately struck by the similarities in their imagery. It made me wonder if, at some point in the evolution of the Tarot, an earlier practitioner had noticed a parallel and embellished the Queen's imagery with a severed head to emphasize this connection.
Disclaimer: Our intention here is not to prove that the modern Queen of Swords was based on Kali, but to demonstrate the universal nature of the archetypes depicted in the Tarot and explore how the depiction of this queen may have evolved over time.
Though our access to research materials is limited as lay scholars, the first occurrence of severed head imagery we could find in relation to the Queen of Swords appears in her description in Samuel Mathers's Book T, which may have been influenced by the author's connection to Eastern traditions by way of Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society. According to Mr. Mathers, the Queen of Swords represents,
"A graceful woman with waving, curling hair, like a Queen seated upon a Throne and crowned. Beneath the Throne are grey cumulus clouds. Her general attire is as that of the Queen of Wands, but she wears as a crest a winged child's head. A drawn sword in one hand, and in the other, a large, bearded, newly severed head of a man.
Intensely perceptive, keen observation, subtle, quick, and confident: often persevering, accurate in superficial things, graceful, fond of dancing and balancing.
If ill dignified, cruel, sly, deceitful, unreliable, though with a good exterior.
Rules from 20 Degree Virgo to 20 Degree Libra."
(It is interesting to note that the festival of Kali, known variously as the Kali Puja, Shyama Puja, or the Mahanisha Puja, is celebrated on the new moon of the Hindu month of Ashwayuja, which begins when the Sun enters Virgo, or Kartika, which begins when the Sun enters Libra, depending on the tradition.)
Since the card descriptions of Book T were only available to Inner Order initiates of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at that time, and the first mass-produced G.D. deck wasn't available until Israel Regardie's collaboration with Robert Wang in the late 1970s, we assume that the first publicly available depiction of the Queen of Swords in this light appeared in the early 1940s with the release of the Thoth deck designed by Aleister Crowley and brought to life by Lady Frieda Harris. From that point on, it would appear that many other modern esoteric Tarots began to depict the severed head in relation to the Queen of Swords as well:
Pictured Above: Thoth Tarot, Golden Dawn Tarot, Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot, Hermetic Tarot
As I searched the RWS Queen of Swords for any other possible Kali connections, I was immediately drawn to her hand gesture, so I searched for other depictions throughout the history of Tarot to confirm my suspicion. It didn't take long to find a series of hand signals somewhat similar to the so-called "gestures which dispel fear and grant boons" in many other versions of this queen, both prior to and subsequent to Mathers's manuscript, from the Visconti-Sforza deck from the 1400s all the way up to the now-classic image of the Waite-Smith Tarot:
Pictured Above: Minchiate Florentine Tarot, Tarot de Marseilles, Visconti-Sforza Tarot, RWS
This contrasting imagery of malevolence and mercy suggests that the Queen of Swords and Kali are complex, multi-faceted expressions of the feminine power — giving us life, and yet taking it away from us once we pass beyond this world of forms... destroying enemies and egoistic delusions, but also protecting and enlightening those who earn her esteem... conquering her lover, and yet sustaining him in her dark embrace. As Joseph Campbell states in The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
"The Hindu goddess Kālī is frequently shown standing on the prostrate form of the god Śiva, her spouse. She brandishes the sword of death, i.e. spiritual discipline. The blood-dripping human head tells the devotee that he that loseth his life for her sake shall find it. The gestures of 'fear not' and 'bestowing boons' teach that she protects her children, that the pairs of opposites of the universal agony are not what they seem, and that for one centred in eternity the phantasmagoria of temporal 'goods' and 'evils' is but a reflex of the mind — as the goddess herself, though apparently trampling down the god, is actually his blissful dream."
It is said in some Tantric traditions that the devotee can attain salvation by confronting and embracing the darkest aspects of the goddess on her own terms and in her own domain — in the darkest hour of night on a cremation ground, or shmashana. As the supreme symbol of death and destruction, she helps us to overcome the fear of our own annihilation and thus gain freedom over death and the sorrows of life. In this respect, she is the bestower of the ultimate boon. Perhaps this is the reason Kali is also worshipped as a goddess of liberation and transcendental wisdom, which is certainly befitting of the Queen of Swords as well, once we learn to accept and embrace the lessons she has to teach us.
"She was Cosmic Power, the totality of the universe, the harmonization of all the pairs of opposites, combining wonderfully the terror of absolute destruction with an impersonal, yet motherly reassurance. As change, the river of time, the fluidity of life, the goddess at once creates, preserves, and destroys. Her name is Kālī, the Black One; her title: The Ferry Across the Ocean of Existence."
*How’s that for a Queen of Swords?
Note: The astute reader will also find many interesting connections between Kali and the third sphere of Binah on the Qabalistic Tree of Life — the ruler of time/Saturn, the bestower of life and death/form and formlessness, the "Ferry Across the Ocean of Existence"/the Great Ocean, the Dark/Black One, the Great Mother/Aima, etc.
Also of Note: Since there are sixteen court cards in the Tarot and also sixteen figures/tetragrams in Geomancy, we often associate the two, and we typically link the Queen of Swords with Tristitia, the sorrowful Saturnian figure ruled by Aquarius. This effectively bridges the gap of correspondences between Kali, The Queen of Swords, and the sphere of Binah, which all the Queens are connected to by virtue of Heh, the second letter of the Tetragrammaton. We consider this to be yet another demonstration of the universal nature of Tarot symbolism.
““O Destructress of the sins
of the three worlds,
auspicious Kālikā, who in
Thy upper lotus-like left hand
holdest a sword and in the
lower left hand a severed
head; who with Thy upper
right hand maketh the
gesture which dispels fear,
and with Thy lower right
hand that which grants
boons; they, O Mother with
gaping mouth, who reciting
Thy name, meditate this
way upon the greatness of
Thy mantra, possess the eight
great powers of the Three
Eyed One in the palm of
their hands.””