The Open Athenaeum

✶ The Study Deck

Seven of Swords

Swords, of the lesser arcana

Waite & Colman Smith, 1909 · described 1911

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.

the plate, in waite's words · the painted card will hang here in time

In divination

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.

Reversed: Good advice, counsel, instruction, slander, babbling.

The library's note

A man hurries off with five swords, leaving two still stuck in the ground near a camp close at hand. Waite admits this card resists him more than most of the suit, calling its import "uncertain," since the meanings he compiled, confidence and hope on one side, quarrelling and a plan likely to fail on the other, "are widely at variance with each other." Swords' conflict, in the suit's own most self-doubting pip, refuses to resolve into a single reading at all.

a young page · the keeper's voice pass on the note is still to come

Doors Onward

Sources & Further Reading

  1. Waite, A. E. (1911). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Card text quoted verbatim, his punctuation kept. (Public domain.)
  2. Card described at: http://sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pktsw07.htm

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