Tarot card meanings · Swords
What does Five of Swords mean in tarot?
In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Five of Swords upright means “with the variants and analogues of these”.
Upright
With the variants and analogues of these.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Reversed
Waite gives no reversed meaning for this card that our rules let us quote.
What does the picture show?
A disdainful man looks after two retreating and dejected figures. Their swords lie upon the ground. He carries two others on his left shoulder, and a third sword is in his right hand, point to earth. He is the master in possession of the field.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Where does the Five of Swords fall in a reading?
Five of Swords belongs to the suit of Swords. On this site you draw three cards, which take three of the places in the ten-card method Waite describes: “This covers him”, “This crosses him”, “This is before him”. The same card reads differently in each place, and the I Ching cast beside it may agree or disagree.
Ask one question. Draw three cards, and cast an I Ching hexagram beside them to see where East and West agree. Free.
Draw three cardsWaite's words are quoted as printed, and left out where they speak of money, law, illness or disaster. The pictures are the 1909 deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith. For entertainment and self-reflection.