As you may recall, in this deck the court cards are all aspects of the Goddess – Maiden, Mother and Crone.  The Crone of Blades is the closest I can get to the King of Swords, and she represents the Air aspect of the Crone.  This card is associated with Aquarius. In this card, a black-haired woman rides a great white eagle against a black and starry sky.  A golden full moon rises behind jagged mountain peaks, along the shoreline of a dark sea.  In her left hand she carries scissors, and in her right a lantern, which shoots out rays of light so that the image is filled with alternating light and darkness.  She wears a purple sleeveless tunic and her black hair flies out behind her as the eagle extends its talons, as if about to land on a mountaintop.

The cold and starry landscape gives the impression of strong, dispassionate, clear intelligence.  One gets the impression that this Crone sees and knows the absolute truth of the matter, stripped to its bare essentials.  Her scissors are used to cut away extraneous issues and irrelevant arguments.  Her lantern shines its cold, clear light into every crevasse, no matter how hidden or remote.  The eagle is her protector and companion, and is equally fierce and uncompromising.  Yet there is a feeling of honor and righteousness to her stern but wise expression.  If your heart is pure, you have nothing to fear from her.  And if it is only a little sullied :-), she will help you cleanse it.  She is not without compassion, but she sees and understands the greater pattern and does not hesitate to act as required.

The Goddess depicted on this card is the Mayan moon goddess Ix Chel.  In her Crone form, Ix Chel was the goddess of medicine and healing, as well as child-birth, perhaps another place where her scissors are used to cut the umbilical cord.  She is a fiercely independent goddess, who learned to make herself invisible (like the new moon) to escape the attentions of the sun god.  The authors say that she “cuts away stifling thought patterns and previously-held ideas that keep us from moving forward.”  They depict her as a scribe and transmitter of written and spoken culture, a wise communicator, and one who “cuts away malignant spells and brings things to closure.”  However, as with many of the goddesses discussed in the book, much of this appears to be made up by the authors to fit the concept of the card, and bears little resemblance to the actual Mayan goddess, who also had a Maiden-form and was the goddess of fertility, creativity, and rainbows.

Thrysse