Swords

Origin

The Sword suit, called spade in Italian and epees in French, descended directly from the Mamluk suit of swords, which themselves resembled the curved scimitars of the Mamluk warrior class. Italian playing decks rendered them as long, straight, two-edged swords, often crossed in elegant heraldic patterns. The Spanish suit of swords retains a similar form, while the modern Anglo-American Spades, derived through the French pique, abstracts the sword into a stylised leaf. In the Tarot of Marseille Swords appear as crossed curved blades that often interlace into oval frames.

Pamela Colman Smith's 1909 illustrations gave the Swords a distinctly tragic visual register. Her Three of Swords shows a heart pierced by three blades against a stormy grey sky; her Eight depicts a bound and blindfolded woman surrounded by upright swords; her Ten shows a fallen figure with ten swords driven into the back, dawn breaking on the horizon. This narrative starkness is preserved in the modern Rider-Waite deck. The Thoth Tarot renders the Swords as crossed geometric blades that vary in colour and number, with Crowley's evocative titles such as Peace, Sorrow, Defeat and Ruin.

Meaning and function

Swords speak the language of mind. They are the suit of decision, argument, communication, conflict, and the cutting clarity of truth. The Ace is the breakthrough thought, the moment of insight; the Two is the impasse where two valid arguments balance; the Three is heartbreak; the Four is the necessary withdrawal for recovery; the Five is the hollow victory of being right; the Six is the slow crossing to calmer waters; the Seven is strategy and stealth; the Eight is mental imprisonment; the Nine is anguish and insomnia; the Ten is rock bottom and dawn together.

When Swords dominate a reading, you are being told that the situation lives in the head and must be addressed by clear thought, honest speech, and sometimes by cutting. Their shadow side is cruelty, over-thinking, intellectual coldness, and the wounding precision of words used as weapons. Swords paired with Cups often describe the painful collision of feeling and thought; with Wands, conflict and competition; with Pentacles, the cool calculation of contracts and law.

In practice

Swords are the suit most often misread as "bad". They are not. They are the suit of the surgeon and the judge, of the writer and the diagnostician. When you draw a Sword, ask: what truth needs to be named, what cut needs to be made, what thought has run away with you? In love readings Swords often describe a relationship that has slipped from feeling into argument; the work is to return to Cups. In professional readings Swords describe negotiations, legal matters, disputes and cleanly-made decisions.

In a Celtic Cross a cluster of Swords often signals a season of mental burden: too many thoughts circling a single problem. A daily Card of the Day in Swords invites you to write rather than ruminate, to speak the difficult sentence, or to take the action that ends the loop. In Rider-Waite readings, attend to the sky behind the figure: stormy on the Three, breaking on the Ten, clear on the Ace. The weather of the mind is in the weather of the card.

Symbolic depth

In the Hermetic system Swords belong to the world of Yetzirah, the formative world, and to the Vau of the divine name. Their astrological signs are the air trigon: Gemini, Libra and Aquarius. In the Golden Dawn's decanate scheme each numbered Sword is assigned to a ten-degree segment and a planet: the Two of Swords is the Moon in Libra (Peace in Crowley), the Five is Venus in Aquarius (Defeat), the Ten is the Sun in Gemini (Ruin). These attributions explain why some Sword cards feel cleanly resolving and others crushingly final.

Mythologically the Sword is Excalibur, the flaming sword of the cherubim, the Buddhist sword of Manjushri that cuts ignorance, the spear of Athena, the gladius of justice. It is the active, masculine, projective principle of mind, the blade that separates true from false. To work with the Sword suit is to learn how to think without becoming cold, and how to speak without wounding pointlessly. The Hermit's lamp throws light, but the Sword cuts the knot. Visit the glossary to follow the elemental cycle into the earth of Pentacles.

Also known as

• Spades
• Epees
• Spade
• Blades
• Espadas