4 of Swords

The suit of swords belongs to the Italian suit system, with cups, coins and batons. Reference sources say these Latin suits came into Europe in the 1370s from cards imported from Mamluk Egypt and Moorish Granada. Tarot itself began in northern Italy in the 15th century as a trick-taking card game, and it kept the Italian suits.

In the northern Italian pattern the swords are drawn curved and cross one another. Early tarot decks usually gave the numbered cards plain pip designs, so a Four of Swords of that period would show four swords and no scene. The Marseille pattern, with surviving examples from the 17th century onward, draws the swords as curved abstract lines forming an almond-like shape. Even-numbered cards, the Four included, show only these lines, while odd-numbered cards add one fully drawn sword.

The Sola Busca deck, made around 1491 and generally described as the earliest complete surviving tarot, is the first known to illustrate every numbered card with a figure or scene.

Pamela Colman Smith drew the Rider-Waite-Smith deck to A. E. Waite’s instructions, and William Rider & Son of London first published it in December 1909. Unlike most earlier decks, which kept simple designs for the numbered cards with rare exceptions, Smith drew a small scene for each of them.

On the Four of Swords the scene is a knight carved in stone, lying on a tomb with his hands joined in prayer. Waite’s own text describes it this way (quoted below), and he says that the ideas of tomb and coffin suggested the design. Scholars have pointed to Sola Busca photographs that Smith probably saw in London around 1907, as an influence on her minor cards in general.

This image has no counterpart in the plain pip designs of the Italian and Marseille decks, where the card is only four swords.