Tarot card meanings · Swords
What does Three of Swords mean in tarot?
In A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910), the Three of Swords upright means “Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being too simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration”, and reversed “distraction, disorder, confusion”.
Upright
Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being too simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Reversed
Distraction, disorder, confusion.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
What does the picture show?
Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind.Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Part 3
Where does the Three of Swords fall in a reading?
Three 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.