Swords are the suit of air, which makes them the suit of the mind — of thoughts, ideas, communication, and clarity. The thoughts they carry tend toward truth: true thoughts, true thought patterns. The Page is the youngest of the court cards, and in the hermetic tradition the Pages are earth — the materialization of their suit, the point where the element begins to become something physical.
A note on the court, in the system I work from: the Pages are earth, the Knights air or fire depending on the tradition, the Queens water, and the Kings fire. So the Page of Swords is earth applied to air — a youthful, grounding energy brought to the realm of thought. The ideas are no longer abstract concepts floating overhead; they're being played with, brought into being, tried on, like a teenager feeling out a personality or a role. That's why I often read this card as becoming.
The first card to wield the sword
Something that helped me read it when I was apprenticing: the Page of Swords is the first sword card to actually wield the sword. In the Five of Swords, a figure gathers blades after a conflict; in the Seven, a figure carries swords off, presumably borrowed or stolen — in both, there are swords in hand, but none are wielded. From the Page onward, the sword is wielded: the Page wields it, then the Knight, the Queen, and the King. The Page begins the process by which a thought becomes more than an abstract concept.
In a reading
When the Page of Swords turns up in a situational role, it tends to make me talk about communication — about being careful with my thought patterns, and with the actions I'm taking based on my own sense of what's true. Sometimes it says the opposite: that it's time to move further with an idea, to start wielding it, to make it materialize and bring it onto this plane.
Read as a significator, it's more about change in a person's life — abandoning old thought programs and entering a process of becoming, a new way of thinking. And not a borrowed idea, the way the Seven can be, configured out of other people's thoughts. This is a thought that's becoming part of how you actually operate.
It's a deceptively important card. Early on, I didn't struggle to remember it so much as to understand its place when it appeared in a reading for someone else. Once you see it as the first wielded sword — the moment thought begins to become — it falls into place.