I'll try showing you this way, using a deck I don't like to use because it's not 100% faithful to any historic deck. However it is reasonably close to the Conver that I am talking about, so this once I'll use it. It's the Camoin-Jodorowsky deck, about which Jodorowsky has written
La Voie du Tarot, or in its Spanish edition,
La Via del Tarot. I have shown most of his card, mitting only the title at the bottom, below left. To the right of that one I have singled out just the detail with the knife, from between the two acolytes. Camoin and Jodorowsky have colored it differently from the background, so that it will stand out. Below it is a circle, touching the point of the knife. I don't know where they got that circle. Ignore it.
Next to the Camoin-Jodorowsky knife-detail I have put the same detail as it appears in the Conver 1761. Here it is colored the knife the same as the background, but the outline of the knife, going up into the hand on the right of the detail, is there in black. And finally, on the far right, I have put the whole Conver card, with the knife the same place as it is on the whole Camoin-Jodorowsky card.
Why does Conver make it so hard to see the knife? He seems to do that with other details, too; for example, he colors the crayfish in the Moon card the same color as the water, when obviously it would be darker. That serves to make it harder to see certain details in that crayfish unless you look very closely. It gives a certain freedom in interpretation, and protection in seeing the card: the interpreter can choose to ignore the detail if he or she wishes, and people looking at the card can fail to see it for some reason they need to protect themselves from it. And if they do see the detail, then it's like they've uncovered a secret. I am not saying you are unconsciously defending yourself against seeing the knife. I am just trying to say why Conver would do such a thing. Perhaps you know Salvador Dali's art. He hides all sorts of things of sexual and aggressive things in his paintings, on purpose, using his reading of Freud and his self-examination.(Freud reporedly told him he liked art in which the artist put such themes in unconsciously better than art where they did it un purpose!) People admire his lovely paintings, done with such skill. When they learn what's really there, or had in mind, they're a little shocked. See for example
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Lands ... Dali_about.