Below is an excerpt from the Dark Days Tarot Guidebook by Emily Mundy:
The King of Swords
The primary principle in this card is mental strength. Skilled sword smiths forge their blades with a mastery that requires years of diligent practice. Your mind, too, requires a lifetime of stimulation and expansion to ensure its precise lucidity. The King of Swords card indicates an astute mental mastery, therefore a sharp sense of self. This card facing left or inverted suggests a disruption in cerebral clarity. Turn a fiery focus toward your mind’s overwhelming power. Take your intellect seriously.
Suggested prompts:
upright: mental sharpness; encompassing awareness; knowledge
right: study; practice; development
left: in need of discipline; laziness
reversed: interruption; unsound thought; ambiguity