What does Nine of Swords mean upright?

Waite: “Delay, deception, disappointment, despair.”

What does Nine of Swords mean reversed?

Waite: “Suspicion, doubt, reasonable fear, shame.”

What does Nine of Swords mean in tarot?

Nine of Swords, from the 1909 deck drawn by Pamela Colman Smith

In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Nine of Swords upright means “delay, deception, disappointment, despair”, and reversed “suspicion, doubt, reasonable fear, shame”.

Upright

Delay, deception, disappointment, despair.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3

Reversed

Suspicion, doubt, reasonable fear, shame.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3

What does the picture show?

One seated on her couch in lamentation, with the swords over her. She is as one who knows no sorrow which is like unto hers. It is a card of utter desolation.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3

Where does the Nine of Swords fall in a reading?

Nine 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.

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Waite'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.