The Prince of Swords:

The Prince of Swords rules form the 20th degree of Capricorn to the 20th degree of Aquarius. He is the Air of Air, and thus the most purely thinking character in the pack. He represents the process of thought perfectly. The Prince rides upon a chariot supported by purely geometrical figures. It’s like he is riding on a sea of crystals and cutting his way through it. The Chariot is drawn by three little children who look and leap into every direction at the control of their whims: which causes that the Chariot moves but the direction is purely accidental. This on itself is a perfect picture of the mind itself and the modus operandi of Air.

People symbolized by this card will be people that are known for their mental capacities, for their constant ravelling in thoughts. It’s as if they are constantly bombarded with ideas and follow each and every one of them, with the result they usually move nowhere at all. In his right hand the Prince holds a sword with which he creates and cuts his way, and in his left he holds a sickle with which he destroys again what he just created. People ruled by this card will be like that: strictly mental, able to take on any mental position, constantly creating mental structures and constantly destroying those structures again, almost instantly. To an outsider that process can seem quite mad, but they do this merely to exorcize the powers of their own mind, without any real purpose.

For that reason they are powerful and independent, but in a very limited sort of way. To other people this character can be extremely tiring, because he’s unable to have any sense of direction, and he thinks this makes him superior to anyone else surrounding him. He is a mass of fine ideals unrelated to practical effort. He has all the apparatus of Thought in the highest degree, intensely clever, admirably rational, but unstable of purpose, and in reality indifferent even to his own ideas, as knowing that any one of them is just as good as any other. He reduces everything to unreality by removing its substance and transmuting it to an ideal world of ratiocination which is purely formal and out of relation to any facts, even those upon which it is based.

These sort of people often wander from one cult or one vice to another, always brilliantly supporting with the fanaticism of a fixed conviction what is actually no more than the whim of the moment. They might fool a lot of people with this attitude into believing they are really so fanatic about something, but inside they are very aware that their position is strictly a formal one.