Tarot card meanings · Swords
What does Seven of Swords mean in tarot?
In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Seven of Swords upright means “Design, attempt, wish, hope, confidence; also quarrelling, a plan that may fail, annoyance. The design is uncertain in its import, because the significations are widely at variance with each other”, and reversed “Good advice, counsel, instruction, slander, babbling”.
Upright
Design, attempt, wish, hope, confidence; also quarrelling, a plan that may fail, annoyance. The design is uncertain in its import, because the significations are widely at variance with each other.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Reversed
Good advice, counsel, instruction, slander, babbling.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
What does the picture show?
A man in the act of carrying away five swords rapidly; the two others of the card remain stuck in the ground. A camp is close at hand.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Where does the Seven of Swords fall in a reading?
Seven 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.