On the Old Fire vs Air Argument

Keeping in mind that Tarot cards were originally just a game, but were given esoteric meanings over two centuries from the late sixteenth century to Antoine Court de Gebelin, a French Freemason who published an analysis of Tarot in 1781.

In 1909, A.E. Waite switched Air and Fire on his published works, including his Tarot card designs, as a nod to his vow of secrecy. The idea is those who understand symbols would understand the misdirection.



This has been perpetuated by the publicly published works of the Golden Dawn and many modern books on the occult, which naturally parrot what is written in their predecessors.

There are actually more Tarot decks in circulation today that use the reversed symbols than otherwise, though decks the right way round are not hard to find.

Some of these are:
Art Nouveau Tarot
Australian Animal Tarot
Butler Tarot
Byzantine Tarot
Celtic Dragon Tarot
Dante Tarot
Dreampower Tarot
Fantastical Creatures Tarot
Far Sight Tarot
Legend: Arthurian Tarot
Medieval Enchantment: Nigel Jackson Tarot
PoMo Tarot
Renaissance Tarot
Shapeshifter Tarot
Ship of Fools Tarot
Spellcaster's tarot
The Talking Tarot
Tarot of the Cat People
Whimsical Tarot
Witches Tarot
Women's Tarot
Wormweird Tarot
Zukunfts Tarot

A sword is a martial weapon. It's not something you use for an intellectual purpose. Swords depict action and are associated with Fire. Just look at the Knight of swords, which indicates a matter coming or going in a headlong rush. It's hard to miss the symbols if you examine the cards.

Look at Waite's wands/staves and you see fresh green buds sprouting from them, symbolic of new ideas and creation.

There's a semi-logical argument that whatever way round you learned these associations works for you, but symbols work with the subconscious. On some level, even someone who has only seen a sword in movies knows that it's a martial weapon. It is subtleties like this that can make or break the success of a magical working.

Those who insist on believing the reversed symbols because that's how they learned it will carry on and ignore all logical argument, but I can only suggest we respect each other's differences and keep on conjuring in whatever ways seems good to us.

It was only a game until we started adding esoteric symbols after all.